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Date: 1865-02-24
By: Perth Courier
Citation: “The Demand of the Catholics”, Perth Courier (24 February, 1865)
Other formats: TBA

THE DEMANDS OF THE CATHOLICS.

The Catholics of Upper Canada have been holding meetings throughout the Province for the purpose of memoralising the government to grant them more extended privileges in the way of Separate Schools in Upper Canada.—They also demand other concessions in regard to the education of their youth altogether beyond what they have any right to ask or reason to expect will be granted. In our last issue we published the proceedings of a meeting held in Perth for the purpose of drafting a memorial to the government for the above named purpose, along with the views of those Catholics now advocating a repeal of the Separate School law. The whole point of argument is founded on a fallacy, namely, that the Catholics of Upper Canada are deprived of certain rights and privileges extended to the Protestant population of Lower Canada. Now those speakers who talked in this way must have known that no parallel whatever exists between the two educational systems of Upper and Lower Canada in the light they wished to present it. In Upper Canada the National Common Schools are strictly secular, where no child’s religious training is disturbed. On the other hand, the National Schools of Lower Canada are directly under the control of the Catholic Hierarchy, the teachers being mostly young priests; the schools are also furnished with altars and other devices for teaching and instilling into the mind of the young indiscriminately—Catholic and Protestant—the dogmas of the Church of Rome. Of course this state of things could not be tolerated by any Protestant who had any regard for the religious training of his child; hence the just and reasonable demand for Separate Schools in that section. Had the schools been placed on the same footing as in Upper Canada, no such demand would ever have been made.

But to the recent demands of the Catholics of Upper Canada. They assert that they want a system where secular and (Catholic) religious training will be united, the first without the latter, they say, being “dangerous to the faith and morals” of the child. The Common Schools, say they, of Upper Canada are called non-sectarian, but that they are essentially Protestant—that the teachers are generally Protestant—that the ideas engrafted on the minds of the youth are Protestant, and that the books used have a tendency to bias the mind of the Catholic child and lessen its respect for the religion of its parents; hence their demand for increased privileges. To this style of argument we cannot do better than give the following reply, which we find in an article on the subject un the Toronto Leader:—

“Most of the books used are neither Protestant nor Catholic; and they are all designed to be impartial. The primer is of no church, and figures are not used to prove the truth or falsehood of theological dogmas. The art of writing is an universal, secular art. In respect to history there are two ways of describing such an event as the Protestant Reformation; two views of the conduct, considered in its results, of Henry VIII and Mary and Elizabeth, James I, and James II, and William III. Supposing the Protestant view to be given in the Common Schools, still it does not follow that these schools are so likely to produce a bias against the Roman Catholic faith, as the Roman Catholic Schools are to produce a bias against the faith of the Protestant. And if the Roman Catholic has some ground of objection to the Common Schools—we assume this hypothesis for the sake of argument—the case is met by the permission to establish Separate Schools. With regard to teachers, it may safely be asserted that no teacher of a Common School is refused on account of his religious faith. This the large number of Catholics who have charge of Protestant Schools sufficiently attest.”

In regard to the establishment of a Normal School for the Catholics of Upper Canada, the Leader thus speaks:—

“A Separate Normal School for Catholics is asked on the ground that the Protestants of Lower Canada have one. But the other part of the analogy, necessary to make out the case, wholly fails. The Normal School of Upper Canada is wholly secular; in Lower Canada there are two Catholic Normal Schools, and as a necessary result of this, one Protestant.—Make the Normal Schools of Lower Canada secular, and there would be no need of one for Protestants; indeed, in that case one might answer the place of three.”

The Catholics, not satisfied with demanding a Separate Normal School, ask, as a right, the establishment of an “adequately endowed University” and Catholic College. These two last demands are, of course, wholly untenable in the face of matters as they now stand. The Leader meets these demands with the following conclusive remarks:—

“We have one national University endowed by the State: but if we begin to endow universities for the different religious denominations, it would be impossible to stop until all claimants were satisfied. Of denominational colleges the same is true. The state cannot undertake to endow any of them. Beyond the Parliamentary aid they now get they can hope for nothing; and if the local Legislature is to have the revisal of these grants, we cannot undertake to say that they will always be continued. It can hardly be that they are ranked among the educational rights of the minority, over which a constitutional guarantee is to be thrown. The claim to have a Catholic Univer sity instituted and endowed by the State is made to rest on a very sandy foundation. In Lower Canada, it is said, the Protestants have McGill College for which they “ask a permanent endowment.” Then we are reminded that the Catholics of Upper Canada have no University; and by way of placing both universities on an equal footing, the State ought to provide them one. McGill College has been in existence over half a century. It owes its endowment to the private munificence of its founder, Hon. Peter McGill, in the first instance, and to a number of citizens of Montreal, by whom $60,000 was subscribed in 1856. Mr. McGill’s gift consisted of $40,000 in money and an estate worth $120,000 more. So far McGill College has obtained no State endowment, and all it could require would be a little supplementary aid; but that it will get this is not at all certain, nor, so far as we know, probable.—At any rate, it is plain that the demand for a State endowed Catholic University, based on the pretence of giving the minority in Upper Canada, what the minority, in Lower Canada, have or may have, in McGill College, is not one that can be sustained.”

But this agitation is just another of the train of the many evil concomitants of the revolution now going on in the country—we mean the Confederation scheme. When the Scott Bill was introduced and carried through the House, it was openly stated by its supporters in Parliament and by many of the Catholic clergy and laymen throughout the Province that it was the final request in that direction that would be demanded. Indeed, one of the Bishops in Upper Canada published a statement that he and his co-religionists regarded the bill as meeting all the grievances which they suffered from, and that no further concessions were to be asked in the future; but now that the educational institutions of the provinces are to be finally settled by an Imperial Act demands are made of the most exorbitant and unjust character with a hope, that amid the apathy and indifference manifested among the political parties of Canada at present, these demands may possibly be quietly acquiesced in along with the incongruous and much-to-be-dreaded Confederation Scheme. The very extravagance of the demands, however, will doubtless awaken an opposition which must insure defeat. The Catholics should be content with the knowledge that no curtailment of the present liberal School Bill is in contemplation.