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Show I Conversations of Our M I "I wish," said Father John, concluding conclud-ing a remark on coilege education, "the Catholic public in our country to. take higher views of what a collegiate education edu-cation should be. I wish them to insist in-sist on a higher standard being reached and to sustain the college in reaching it." Fath--r John thought we had men fully capable to educate to the full extent ex-tent demanded. "Give them the youths," he said, "and let them have them long enough to carry them through the prescribed course, and I think there will be little cause for complaint." CHAPTER X. Continued. "Though I cannot agree to tolerate the common schools as far as Father ! John seems disposed to do." said Wins-low, Wins-low, "i can agree with him in his views ; of collegiate education. But he ought in justice to say that thing.s are already I taking the turn he wishes, and the j Plan he suggests lias already been be- gun to be noted upon. We can safely i leave the whole question to the proper authorities, and to the force of circumstances." circum-stances." "I am aware." said Father John, "that the changes ;uid modifications I i contend for have commenced, and are i approved very geneially by the intelli-' intelli-' gent Catholics, whether clergymen of j iaymen, who have much studied the ; subject. In several of the colleges un-j un-j uer the control of the Society of Jesus, J the preparatory school U; partially sep-' sep-' a rated from the college proper, and in I them all the college is separated from the seminary. The heads of colleges. J and professors in general, evon when I they see not clearly what improvements can be made, feel that our colleges, as i they have hitherto been, do not pro-i pro-i duce the desired results. For my part, ! I think we have to many colleges, and I not enough of schools of an inlermedi- ate grade between the primary school ' and the college. The college is the worst possible school tor those who are not intended to go through the entire course. The boys are sent to college j ouite too young in some instances, before be-fore they have been sent to school and they are little more than boys when they graduate. The effects of I this are bad. Our colleges as now i managed, take the boy at a tender age, watch over him with a maternal solicitude, solic-itude, provide him with all the helps religion can give him, use all the means and appliances that can be devised to make him love and preserve his faith, cram him with religious instruction, J refresh his religious sensibilities by re- treats and reiterated exhortations, place the confessional always before him, and J a director at his elbow, till he reaches I j the age when the passions begin to unfold, un-fold, and he commences the dangerous period of transition from the boy to the man. And then, when he needs more than ever the spiritual aids an counsels he has been accustomed to,, they send him out into society, weak, ignorant, without any habits of self-reliance, self-reliance, self-government, or self-help, exposed to all its seductions and temptations, temp-tations, so much the more to be dread- i ed, as they all hayp for him the charm j of novelty and leave him, wholly im- prepared, to battle with the world, the flesh and the devil, as best he may. The majority, I believe, succumb, as we might expect, in the struggle. Something Some-thing would be done to remedy this evil, by separating mors ctec-idedly the preparatory school from the college, and receiving students in the college at a more advanced age.'- "That would do: something," said Diefenbach, "but, the system of government gov-ernment and discipline of your colleges, I think, is not, and can never ' be adapted to a free state. The nursing system is carried too far, and the student stu-dent is kept constantly in leading-strings, leading-strings, never suffered, hardly even in j his sports, to think and act for himself. The maxim of the college is, everything for the boys, nothing by the boys. All this is very good, if your boys ar to be trained up to be monks or to live in a society organized on the' maxim. Kverything for the people, nothing by the people. But it will not do in the training of seculars who are to live in a republican, not to say a democratic, state. ' Your American society is founded on the maxim, Help thyself. What is wanted, first of all, in thr: government and discipline of the college, col-lege, is a system that shall form as early as possible the child to self-help, self-reliance and self-government. You fail precisely because you educate for the monastery or for a society organized organ-ized on principles which American society so-ciety repudiates. You overdo, you do all for the boy and suffer him to do nothing for himself, and keep him ignorant ig-norant where his only safety is in knowledge, and weak ana dependent on others, precisely where he needs to be strong and able to help himself. The college should image on a small scale the society in which the boys arc i to live and play their parts as men. ! and, therefore, in this' country it should be not a despotism or a mon- , arehy, where the governor is every- . thing and the governed are nothing, ; but a miniature republic, in which, j save in religious instruction and in the hours of study and recitation, the boys j govern themselves. Avhere from the first they begin to act the parts they are to i act in real life. Your system may be ( admirable in other countries constituted consti-tuted differently from this, but it will not answer here, where the boy sucks in republicanism with his mother's j milk. Tb-e failure of the non-Catholic colleges of the country for fail they do is owing to ftie adoption of a similar sim-ilar system, a system which makes the maintenance of the college authority author-ity the great thing to which, if need be, all else must be sacrificed. Your system does not and cannot fit young ' men to take their proper rank and exert their proper influence in American Amer-ican society; for it breaks down the sense of independence, too often destroys de-stroys the frankness and ingenuous- i ness of the boy, and renders him shy. j artful, false, deceiful and hypocritical in one word, what Protestants express ex-press by the word Jesuitical." "The first lesson to be taught the child is submission, and his first virtue is obedience." said Winslow: "and it is only in proportion as you can enforce en-force this lesson and obtain this virtue ' that you can organize society on a Catholic basis. In my view there is an innate antagonism between American society and the Catholic religion, and if you educate for the one you cannot educate for the other." "So say. in principle, the Know-Xothings," Know-Xothings," said Diefenbach. "Why. then, does Mr. Winslow find fault with non-Catholic Americans for opposing Catholicity on the ground that it is anti-American? Xo matter what lessons les-sons you teach in your college, a people whose chiefs are trained under your present system of government and discipline dis-cipline can never be a free self-governing people, as we may learn from th? example of the French people, who have, notwithstanding their intelligence, intelli-gence, failed i.2 every attempt at republicanism. re-publicanism. They cannot govern themselves and must have n master, and the more absolute, the more they love h'm. There is no need of words or speculation about the matter. But I deny the fact of the alleged antagonism. antag-onism. That there is antagonism between be-tween the system of government and discipline of your colleges or the habits hab-its formed under it. and the political end social order of this country, I not only concede, but assert. Yet I dare maintain that that system, which has g:-wn up in other limes and In other countries, and may have been wise and just when and where it originated, is I no part of the Catholic religion, and is not only distinguishable, but separ- able froni'it. There is Catholics have j asserted it over and over again noth-! noth-! ing in the constitution of the American ' political and social order repugnant to Catholicity, and an American priest o' , high standing has maintained at Home ill La Civiita Cattolica, that it is even ! favorable to Catholicity. I have never I heard fruin bishop or priest, whether j native born or foreign born, whether I Irish, or French, or German, or Italian, j that Catholicity can prevail here only by revolutionising the existing political and social order and introducing the Caesarism which obtains in France. Xaples. Austria and Russia. You need, in order to have this a purely Catholic country, to change nothing but the religion re-ligion of the American people." "Mr. Diefenbach is right," said Fa-iher Fa-iher John, 'and I aa'-.-c with him in his view of the organization of our colleges col-leges in regard to government and discipline. dis-cipline. The system adopted was good in its time and place, and. well adapted to the state of society for which it was j intended. That it needs essential mod-I mod-I ifoations to adapt it to the principles ' and wants of our American society I j think can reasonably be doubted by I no one. But we must give our colleges time, and not complain of them for not J having introduced at once an entirely j new system, of which the president and professors could kno.v nothing. : They naturally introduced the system with which they were acquainted and I under which they had themselves been j trained. All men are more or less the ! creatures of routine, and evils we have j long been familiar with we are apt to regard either as not evils at ail or as inevitable, and to which we must recon-! recon-! cile ourselves. .The Catholic trained under the existing system and ignorant of any other cannot be a ware of its deficiencies. de-ficiencies. O'.ir colleges had need to lparn many things from experience,. and I have seer, in them, except perhaps in here and there an individual, no tin- j willingness to profit by erperience. Many changes have already been intro- j riiiced, others are contemplated, and in due time all that can reasonably be , asked, no doubt, will be adopted, if the i public opinion of the Catholic body can j be brought to sustain them. What I i insist on is that the defects of our col- leges as they are, he they greater or b they less, shall not be ascribed exclusively ex-clusively to the college faculty or au- . thorities. Parents must co-operate ; with the college faculty and sustain it 1 in its efforts at improvement. Cnhap- pily, too many of our Catholic parents j never think of anything of the sort. I To many of them a college is a college. I partaking of the infallibility of tho church: and the best thing they can d' for their sons is to send them to col- j lege, though it be only for a year." (To be Continued.) |