Idaho Semi Weekly World

IDAHO WORLD.
C. E. JONES
EDITOR
TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 1891

FREE SCHOOLS' ENEMIES.

Salt Lake Tribune.

Will the Jesuits of the Church of Rome never cease their warfare on the public schools of the United States? An Associated Press reporter reports an interview with a high ecclesiastical personage in Rome, who gives the papal view on the school question in the United States. If reported correctly he says: "The Catholics of America should have parochial schools in all parishes where it is possible, and where there are sufficient means to render them equal to the public schools. Where this cannot be done schools should be established in which the catechism may be taught, or the State should be persuaded to permit instruction in the catechism outside of the hours regularly appointed for school subjects." And he concludes that "one thing is absolutely necessary. That is, to found no parochial schools unless they can be put on a level with those of the State;" and that "the Vatican has confidence in the zeal and tactics of the hierarchy in America."

Will they never understand that the public schools of the United States were organized for the single purpose of giving the children of the country, regardless of creeds, a grounding in the elementary branches of education? That the object was to have a system of schools where Jew and Catholic and Presbyterian and Methodist parents, and parents who profess no religious belief, could all send their children, and, without question, receive the same education? And there is no more reason why the Catholic catechism should be taught in American free schools than that the Methodist catechism should be taught, or the Buddhist or the Mohammedan, or the Mormon catechism should be taught? Under our system such progress has been made as to perfectly vindicate the wisdom of the originators of the system. And when this high ecclesiastic says that the "Catholics in the United States cannot rival the State schools," he tells the truth, and they never can. No school, where the overruling thought is to instill into the children the principles of any particular creed, can begin to compare with the public schools of our country, because so sure as those schools go on they will be taught by priests, or devotees of that creed, and they will get in a little while in the same fix that the schools in this Territory were not long ago, where those in charge would employ incompetent teachers so that they belonged to the creed, rather than competent ones who did not. The public schools of the United States are something that Americans will fight for, and no matter how insidious and how persevering the attempt may be to transfer a part of the school fund to creed schools, it will not carry in this country. The people will not have it. Not long ago a priest in Boston dared to threaten a woman with excommunication if she sent her children to the public schools, and that plucky woman, good Catholic that she was, instituted a suit against that priest, and fought it out on that line and won. It will be so every time. The school is not the place to teach the catechism. That is the parents' duty; and the parent that is not true enough to the creed which he professes to see that the children are taught the catechism, is not a parent that is going to make a struggle to have that taught in the schools. The American people say to all creeds alike: "Keep your hands off our public schools, for we will not have it," and as the days go by that determination grows more and more fixed in the hearts of the American public, and the followers of any particular creed are foolish to try to fight against it.