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Show ARE CATHOLICS IGNORANT? "Why is it that Catholics are so ignorant? ig-norant? The people in Catholic countries coun-tries cannot read or write, while the people in Protestant countries are well educated? "Oh, the reason is simple enough. The Church of Rome is the masterpiece of human wisdom. She knows how to keep the people in her fold. Ignorance, she 'teaches, is the mother of devotion. Therefore, to make her followers devout, de-vout, she keeps them, ignorant. In Protestant countries, on the other hand, the people mus-t read the Bible for themselves and think for themselves. That is why Catholics are ignorant and Protestants arc educated. If you don't believe that is so, compare Catholic and Protestant countries and see the re-sulti-:. Put Mexico and the United States side by side, and look at the difference between England and Portugal." This is a common argument made against the Catholic Church, that she keeps the people in ignorance. Let us see what truth there is in it. In the beginning it may be well to notice that those who argue in- this fashion mean by the word education pqpular education, or the ability to read and write. Of course education means more than this, and many a man who is able to read and write may be very ignorant. ig-norant. But, putting this aside, let us see how Catholic and Protestant countries compare in the matter of popular pop-ular education. FALSE TABLES OF STATISTICS. There are many false tables of statistics sta-tistics hawked about which pretend to give the percentage of illiteracy in various var-ious countries. These tables are utterly ut-terly unreliable. We will take' the record rec-ord of school attendance given in the Dictionary of Statistics by Michael G. Mulhall, fellow of the Royal Statistical society. He is acknowledged to be the chief authority on statistics in the world. Before looking at this record we must bear two things in mind. First, countries coun-tries differ very much in natural wealth, in) race, in opportunity. It is not fair to compare a rich country with a poor country, nor a big nation with a little nation. It is not fair to compare England with Portugal, nor the United States with Mexico. Compare England with France, compare Belgium with Holland, and Ave shall have a better opportunity of reaching the truth. In the second place, it is well to remember re-member that in many countries the people are not all of one religion. Thus, Germany is 'not wholly a Protestant country. North Germany, with 29,370,-000, 29,370,-000, is Protestant. South Germany, with 16,789,000 people, is Catholic. In such countries it will be necessary to separate the Catholic and Protestant! provinces, and then sve how they com- i pare as regards school attendance. COUNTRIES COMPARED. j "We will, therefore, divide the court--1 triea into . three groups, Protestant i countries. Catholic countries and mixed ' countries. From each we will take four I groups of countries. The following table gives the statistics. The figures under the head "attendance" show the average attendance of school children i per 1,000,000 population: Protestant. Attendance. I Australia 140 j Norway, Sweden and Denmark .. 140 United States 130 j ( Great Britain and Ireland 12.1 Average 1:'. Catholic. Attendance. France 17o ' Belgium !"." Austria . . bid , Spain Average b;." Mixed. Attendance. Switzerland 2W Holland IT, Germany 11') Canada loo Average 1 1'i It will be seen at once that in a comparison com-parison between countries under Protestant Pro-testant government.--, and countries under un-der Catholic governments, the Catholics Catho-lics are slightly ahead in the matter of school attendance. France is away ahead of Australia, the highest, and far exceeds Great Uiitain and Ireland. Austria and the United States have the same figures, while Spain, which is so despised nowadays as a degenerate nation, na-tion, is not so far behind her ancient rival. Britain, and- is abreast with Canada. Can-ada. But it may be said that Ireland is a Catholic- country and should not be lumped with Great Britain. As Ire- j land is under a Protestant government-. , and as, in the three kingdoms, there ! are 2!.."SO.O0 Protestants to 5. lion ! Catholics, cur plan is fair. But even ; leaving out Ireland, the report of the j United States commissioner of edii'-a-tion for lSS9-tJi, vol. i.. pp. :."::-"." 7. gives the number of children enrolled in school per l.OOO of the iHjpu'ation. fer England and Wales. W; for Scotland. 1G4. which figures are lower than those for France. From the same report let us see how the various provinces of THE GERMAN EMPIRE STAND. Bavaria, which is s.-ven-tenthd Catholic, Catho-lic, has an enrollment i,i 212. Baden, two-thirds Catholic. W,; Saxony, Protectant, Pro-tectant, 202; Prussia, two-thirds Protestant, Pro-testant, 19G; Wiiei-temb.Tg, Protestant. V.)i. It will be sc.11, the;-, tore, that the Catholic provinces stand at tho head. This is a fair U.-t. because the people are of the same stock with the same opportunities, and owing to the federal character of the Geiman constitution. Catholics aiwl Protestants are free to foliow their own desires. There are j three noints which must he cleared un before completing this comparison. 1. Where are the figures for Ireland? Ire-land? 2. Whore are the figures for Italy and Portugal? What alM.ut Mexico and South America? IRELAND. Though a Catholic country. Ireland is under a Protestant government. England, for nearly 200 years, tried to make the Irii'h people Protestants. The means they employed were, first, murder; mur-der; then robbery, and finally, ignorance. ig-norance. Ciom.vcll confirm! all the Irish Catholics "to hell or to Con-naught." Con-naught." The tonal laws confiscated the property of Catholics and forbada them to own real estate, to take a lease or to possum, a horse over the value of $20. Catholics could not teach under penalty of transportation, and a Catholic Cath-olic parent who sent his child out of the country to be educated was first fined and then outlawed. These facts are stated by Henry Barnard, Bar-nard, LL. D., the first United States commissioner of education, in his Journal Jour-nal cf Education, vol. xi., p. bJl: "Until the beginning of this century the Catholics, who constituted four-fifths four-fifths of the population of Ireland, were not 'only not permitted to endow, conduct con-duct or teach schools, but Catholic parents even were not permitted to educate edu-cate their children abroad: and it was made an offense, punished by transportation trans-portation (and if the party returned it was made high treason), in any Catholic Catho-lic to act as a schoolmaster, or even as a tutor in a private family." Hence, if the older generation of Irishmen in this country was illiterate the reason wan that the Ensrlish Protectant Pro-tectant government made them illiterate. illit-erate. The middle generation was less illiterate because the Irish Catholics were winning back their ancient rights. There will be no illiterates among the new generation, for equality at least in primary education is now gained. ITALY. Tho figures for Italy and Portugal are. in the Mulhall tables, 90 and 54. These are the lowest of the countries given. What is the reason? It cannot can-not -be their religion, because we saw that other Catholic countries compared com-pared well with Protestant countries. What, then, is the cause? In Italy the causes are well known. This has been a disastrous century for the peninaula. The beginning of the centurv saw it the theatre of Napoleon's Na-poleon's wars. The middle of it saw-it saw-it oppressed by foreign enemies and agitated by domestic revolutions. The end df it sees the nation groaning under un-der a burden of taxation becoming too 1 heavy to bear. When a country is thus distracted, it is not surprising that j school attendance should fall off. Moreover, it must be remembered that Italy is the home of art and culture cul-ture now aa she has been in the past. From her came the impulse which made our modern civilization. Her libraries, her art galleries, her palaces, her churches, draw men from every race and creed and country. They are all the works of her own sons, she owes nothing to outside influences. In Rome, the city of the Popes, there has been a system for free education since 1597. In the '10's, Laing, a Protestant Pro-testant traveller, was in Rome. He wrote then: In every street in Rome, for instance there are at short distances public primary pri-mary schools for the education of the children of the lower and middle classes in the neighborhood. Rome, with a population of 158.675? souls, has 372 public pub-lic primary schools, with 4S2 teachers and 14.009 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many public schools for the instruction of those classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has onlv 264 schools." " I In 1860. when the population of Romp ! had reached 220.532, there were 23,94)5 pupils in the schools, not counting the university students. That the rate was not kept up in the rest of Italy was owing to the political troubles which made all governments insecure. Still it is worthy of remark that with all these drawbacks the number of schools in Italy was still greater than the number num-ber of schools in Germany. LATIN AMERICA. By Latin America is meant Mexico and the countries to the south of it which were colonized by the Spaniards and Portuguese. When we compare those countries we must bear in mind the fundamental fact that the manner in which those countries were colonized is entirely different from the manner employed by the English in colonszing the United States, j In this country the newcomers found I a large population of natives. They treated those natives as if they were wild animals. They stole their land, I sold them into slavery, shot them down on sight. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," was their motto. The result re-sult is that the Indians have been nearly near-ly swept off the face of the earth. The survivors are cooped up in reservations as wild- beasts are confined in cages. In the countries south of the United States the newcomers found tribes of the same stock as those that inhabited the territory now occupied by the United Unit-ed States. The first adventurers treated treat-ed the Indians just as the first of the English did. They made slaves of them, hunted them like wild beasts, shot them down. But this reign of terror ter-ror did not last long. The Catholic 1 Church interfered. The first priest ever ordained in America, Las Casas. devoted de-voted his life to the protection of the Indians. He carried their rase to the King of Spain and the Pope of Rome. The Pope issued a document, in which he said that the Indians were free men fnd should be protected in their life, iberty and property. It is not to be supposed that the laws made in ac- I cordance with the provisions of this document were always and everywhere faithfully carried out. No laws are. Even in our own- country salutary en actments are evaded or permitted to become a dead letter. But the general result of the laws was to stop the destruction de-struction of tbt- Indians. The natives were protected, brought to the knowledge knowl-edge of Christianity, were set on their way to civilization and today form Ih'i , overwhelming majority of the population popula-tion from the Rio Grande to Patagonia. MEXICO. Thf following- fi cures. t:k-n from the 1 Encyclopedia Britannka. will show h'w the Indian' race has been preserver!. In Mexico ,j4 per cent of the- populati-m I arc of pure Indian blood, 27 p, r e-mt of ! mixed white and Indian ami lit per i cent of Spanish hinod. In Guaiemala 52 per cent are Indian. 2S mixed and I Spani-sh. In Peru 57 per cent Indian. J 23 mi:;ed and 20 white. When, theiyf-.re. i we compare Mexico with tho United " ; States we should remember that nut i of i2.t1011.ooi) of people only 2,2vo.iiu a;-. I of the ;,ame rate as the people .if the United States, while; 9. 720. (Mm are of In-! In-! dian descent. The wonder will be n r i that in some respect Mexico should be i inferior to the United State.--, but that j sh" has advaii' 1 ! so far iri s flmrt a time. j Everyone admits tlv.it races, like in-! in-! dividuals, need time M de.,.,.p. Th.-j Th.-j education of an individual is counted by J years-. The edm-ation of a race is counted count-ed by centurii--. Our ancesto:- have been going to school for th past l.5"0 years. The ancestors of the Mexican- havt been going to school only years. If, therefore, they shouid b..- far behind us. we should rot wonder. bij-L as a matter of fact they are not , backward as people imagine. Mr. William J. Bryan, Demoerati-candidate Demoerati-candidate for president in 1W. paid a visit U Mexico lately. He gave hU impressions im-pressions of the country in an- artl'-l-published in the X0w York World. He Maid: -The public men of Mexico ai not inferior to our own in intelligence and general information." This is the more surprising as Mexico is ruled by men of the -same races as the Montezuma Monte-zuma s. Juarez, on of the early presidents, presi-dents, wan of pure Indian blood. Mr. Bryan continues: "Mexico is making substantial progress in education. Tim public sr-hools ar' frro. and the attendance at-tendance tri compulsory." With these worcki we may close ami leave it to mir readers to judge if all they hear about Catholic ignorance be true. I |