Just what is the attitude of the Catholic Church to the American public schools? This is an important question, because there are fourteen million Catholics in our country, and they control the education, not merely of two million children in their own schools, but of other millions in public schools where the Catholic vote has elected Catholic officials and school board members, and obtained the appointment of Catholic superintendents and teachers. There has been so much controversy over this question, so much has been affirmed by one side and denied by the other, that I decided I would go into it thoroughly and settle it once for all. I may as well state at the outset that I found I had been overambitious. The question cannot be settled once for all; for the reason that no two Catholic authorities agree with each other, and in controversy with Catholic theologians the most explicit Latin and English words are discovered to be capable of so many interpretations that all meaning goes out of them.

The most detailed statement of the official Catholic attitude towards Church and State, and State activities such as public schools, is found in the “Syllabus of Errors” of Pope Pius IX. This is a list of eighty propositions of liberalism and democracy, which are lumped together and condemned as “the principal errors of our time.” I had often seen this Syllabus summarized and discussed, but I had never seen the complete text. I consulted the public libraries in Pasadena and Los Angeles, but in vain. I applied to Catholic bookstores, but likewise in vain. I applied to Loyola College and to the Catholic bishop in Los Angeles, but these had it only in Latin. I telegraphed to the largest wholesale book-seller in New York, but was informed that an English text was not obtainable. By that time I began to suspect that the church authorities were not anxious to have the American public read their fundamental law on the subjects of liberalism and democracy; when I finally obtained the text, I discovered why.

It was left to an enemy of the Church to supply me with this most vital church document. William Ewart Gladstone attacked the Syllabus with righteous wrath, and I found the text in his volume “Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion.” This Syllabus is extremely awkward to quote, for the reason that the propositions are all negative—a list of statements which are condemned; and some of the statements themselves are negative, so that you find yourself with double negatives to disentangle. A few of the most important of the propositions will have to suffice; and let me say that I have brushed up my rusty Latin for the occasion, and made certain that the translations are literal and precise. Bear in mind that this is the Supreme Pontiff speaking ex cathedra, which is the same as the voice of God; so the following statements are not subject to question or revision, so long as the Holy Catholic Church endures. Thus, formally and finally, we are told that it is an error to teach that:

This of course means that every man is not free to embrace and profess his own religion; and carries the obvious corollary that every man must let the Catholic Church tell him what religion to embrace.

This means, in brief, that all non-Catholics are damned eternally, and it is false doctrine to teach otherwise.

This means that the Church may exercise its authority without the consent of the State; that, for example, the Church may marry and annul marriage, in defiance of the civil laws. This must be taken in connection with

This means that the Church and its priests are immune to civil law, and this immunity comes from God, and cannot be taken away by the State. If the Church could maintain this proposition in America, neither the Church nor any ecclesiastic could be sued or tried by the regular courts, but only by courts of their own.

This means that civil law ought not to prevail over Church law; and since it is manifest that two laws cannot both prevail, it follows that Church law is proclaimed superior to civil law.

Such is the Church’s own version of her attitude to the State; and now, let us see what is her attitude to the schools of the State? The propositions dealing with this matter are longer, and more involved with double negatives; but we will take the time to disentangle them, and the reader who is not interested in the problem may skip.

The phrase “episcopal seminaries” means what we should call “Catholic schools” or “parochial schools”; and this proposition states that the Church is not satisfied with being permitted to teach what it pleases in these schools, but denounces the claim of the State to exclusive control of teaching in the State schools.

The next proposition, 46, defends the right of the Church to teach as it pleases in its own schools. Since that is not commonly disputed in America, we pass on.

This is an exact statement of the theory upon which the American public school system is founded, and this theory is declared to be an error.

This is practically a definition of what we call “secular education”; it is what we give in our public schools, and we are declared to be in error when we do so.

There are many other statements in this Syllabus which are of importance. Thus in 77 we learn that the Church refuses to give up its demand that the State shall maintain it as the only religion. In 78 we are told that the State should not permit non-Catholics to worship publicly in Catholic countries. In 79 we are told that freedom of worship, and freedom of manifesting opinions and ideas, conduce to corrupt the minds of the people. In 80 we are told that the Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not “reconcile himself to, and agree with, progress, liberalism, and civilization as lately introduced.” I think that will suffice to make plain to the average American why the “Syllabus of Errors” cannot be found in English translation in Catholic volumes obtainable in libraries or book-stores!

While in the midst of these researches I came upon a little pamphlet entitled: “The Catholic Answer. An Honest, Dignified Statement of Facts for Fair-Minded People,” published by “Our Sunday Visitor,” of Huntington, Indiana. This pamphlet has the American flag on the cover, and contains an entirely different statement of the Catholic attitude; also an offer of a thousand dollars to anyone who can disprove anything in the pamphlet. So I wrote to the editor of this publication, asking him for help in my researches. At the time of writing I did not have the full text of the Syllabus; I had merely a summary of some of its propositions, and I sent these to the editor, asking him to explain the matter. From the letter-head of his reply I gain the information that “Our Sunday Visitor” is “the popular National Catholic weekly with 2,000,000 readers scattered over every country in the world. Thousands of priests order it for all of their people.” The editor is the Rt. Rev. Msgr. J. F. Noll, and he tells me:

After that, of course, I was more than ever determined to get the full text of the Syllabus. When I got it, I found that the passages to which Monsignor Noll takes exception are merely a brief practical summary of a few propositions, turning their negatives into positive affirmations. Thus, one of the passages which I sent to the Monsignor and which he finds “utterly abhorrent even to the Catholic” reads as follows:

And that is covered by Proposition 24 of the Syllabus, which states that it is an error to teach that

and also Proposition 20, which denounces the error that

You will note variations in the translation; no two people, rendering the same Latin into English, would use the same English words. The Latin “potestas” is called “right” in one version, and “power” in the other; but the meaning is the same, for the power claimed by the Church is moral power, the power given by God, which is what we call “right.” So far as I can see, the statement which Monsignor Noll finds “utterly abhorrent even to the Catholic” is a perfectly fair summary of the practical effect of the Syllabus. And the same applies to the other quotation, which, as submitted to Monsignor Noll, read:

That is Proposition 30 of the Syllabus, which denounces as an error the doctrine that

Now there can be no dispute that this proposition asserts “immunity” for the Church and for ecclesiastical persons; and the word “immunity” is a technical church word, meaning immunity from civil law—a prerogative which was maintained by the Church until recent times. The question considered in the Syllabus is whether this “immunity” is derived from the State or from God. If it is derived from the State, it can be abolished by the State, and this is the “error” which the Pope is denouncing. He affirms the contrary, that the immunity is from God, and therefore can never be taken away. Is not this the very proposition which Monsignor Noll finds “utterly abhorrent even to the Catholic”?

The Monsignor goes on to discuss the propositions referring to the schools, and to say that they are applicable only where there is union of Church and State, and have nothing to do with the Catholic Church in its relation to our own public schools. “Outside of countries where there is union of Church and State, the Catholic Church does not pretend to have any jurisdiction, nor would she ever dream of interfering with the public schools. The teaching of the Church is that both the State and Church are supreme, each in its own domain.” And then, after reading that, I get the text of the Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII, which are part of the supreme law of the Church, and I read:

And once more:

In the effort to clear up these mysteries, I wrote to the fourteen catholic archbishops of the United States, also to the papal delegate in Washington, and to the Paulist Fathers in New York. The first reply came by telegraph from the archbishop of New Orleans, referring me to the Catholic Encyclopedia. I consulted in that work the topics “Pius IX,” and the “Syllabus of Errors,” and the first thing I read was that the Encyclical containing this “Syllabus of Errors” “was solemnly received in national and provincial councils by the episcopate of the whole world.” I also learned that “the ‘Syllabus’ is not only the defense of the inalienable rights of God, of the Church, and of truth against the abuse of the words freedom and culture on the part of unbridled Liberalism, but it is also a protest, earnest and energetic, against the attempt to eliminate the influence of the Catholic Church on the life of nations and of individuals, on the family and the school.” And again: “It has done an inestimable service to the Church and to society at large by unmasking the false liberalism which had begun to insinuate its subtle poison into the very marrow of Catholicism.”

But I do not find one word in either of these articles to indicate that the propositions of the Syllabus do not apply to America, but only to countries which have separation of Church and State. I find sweeping endorsements of sweeping propositions; and how can I bring myself to believe that ecclesiastical authorities, solemnly laying down the law for all time, would omit to state such vital qualifications, if they wished such qualifications to be understood?

I have before me a stack of letters from Catholic authorities, also a stack of Catholic pamphlets, and references to a great number of books; I realize now that if I were to make an authoritative pronouncement on the attitude of the Catholic Church toward the American public schools, I should have to write a volume instead of a chapter. How complicated the subject is you may judge from one sentence, quoted to me by Archbishop Keane of Dubuque. This is a statement made by Cardinal Newman, in the course of his controversy with Gladstone over the meaning of the “Syllabus of Errors.” Says the great master of Catholic apologetics: “The ‘Syllabus,’ viewed in itself, is nothing more than a digest of certain errors made by an anonymous writer.” I can only give my reaction to this sentence—it shows me that I should be wasting my time if I tried to understand Catholic controversy. The “Syllabus” is an explicit statement by the highest Catholic authority, that the propositions of the “anonymous writer” are errors; from which it follows that the contrary of these propositions is upon the highest Catholic authority affirmed. If someone tells me that I am reported to have burglarized a bank, that is an anonymous statement; but if I answer, “that is a lie,” then I am making the flat assertion that I did not burglarize a bank. And if anyone denies that, I say that he is not seeking truth, but merely juggling words, and I have no more time to waste on Cardinal Newman.