The Indian Advocate. (Sacred Heart Mission, Okla. Terr.), Vol. 11, No. 1, Ed. 1, Sunday, January 1, 1899 Page: 15 of 28
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THE INDIAN ADVOCATE.
15
Of course the most rampant of these
ranters come from among the sensation-
al preachers. For all uncharitableness
irrationality and malice commend us
always to those gentry. And very
naturally upon the lips of such the
denunciation of the foreign-born citi-
zen lapsed rapidly and readily into the
abuse of the Catholic. Facts and ar-
guments are not given. Orators of
this stripo claim for themselves the
privileges and immunities of the poet.
Dealing in fancy and soaring into the
imaginative they are not to bo tram-
meled by the rules that men of other
mould yield submission to. In turgid
rhetoric flavored with the usual spice
of cant and seasoned with unstinted
malignity we are informed that the
Catholic is a menace to the nation and
its institutions a clog upon its prog-
ress and a deadly foe to education and
enlightenment! Is it not after all
little else than idle to deal with trump-
ery such as this ?
The Catholic a menace to the nation!
When? Was it when a regiment of
Catholic Irish (lung itself at Manassas
between McDowell's flying columns
and the advance of the fiery South
and covered and saved the routed army
and the national capital? Or when in
the iron storm at Gettysburg it broke
the rebel charge? Or when again the
Catholic chaplains on many a hard-
fought field inarched with their regi-
ments into the battle cheering with
words of ringing patriotism and shriv-
ing them when they fell bleeding about
them? Or when the gentle nun shrank
not from the horrors of the military
hospital with its heart-rending shrieks
and sights of horror but stilled the
trembling of her heart and taught her
soft white hand to bind up the ghastly
wound or close the eye in death?
The Catholic a clog upon tin na-
tion's progress! But is there a profes-
sion an art or a calling among us in
which a Catholic does not march in
the foremost ranks? He has directed
armies ho has commanded a fleet he
has sat chief upon the bench of the
Supreme Court he has led the bar
and in commerce in sculpture in
journalism in literature science and
research he is eminent and honored.
A deadly foe to education and en-
lightenment! The land is dotted with
colleges and schools that the Catholic
has erected and to which in no few
instances his dissenting brethren have
preferred to entrust the training of
their children. And if not only the
voice of his Church but bitter experi-
ence has taught him to look upon the
public school with suspicion and fear
is his the fault? Shall a Protestant
clergyman vauntingly declare the sys-
tem of our public education to be the
sure and inevitable enemy of Cathol-
icity? Shall he boast of the wounds it
has already dealt the Church in Amer-
ica and glory in the fatal promise of its
future and yet in the next breath
brand the Catholic parent as disloyal
and a national foe because he refuses
his children to its deadly grasp? The
bitterest words that were ever spoken
against the public schools were utter-
ed by other than Catholic lips. The
direst blows it ever encountered came
from other hands. The terrible de-
nunciation of Agassiz yet remains un-
answered. We dare not even state its
tenor; and yet he revealed not half the
truth.
But were the system of our public
education all that its most ardent
champions claim shall it be arrant
blasphemy to hint a doubt of his per-
fection or to suggest a juster fairer
plan that will commend it to public
confidence? Is there something inher-
ently sacred and inviolate about it that
must render it a sacrilege to question
its marvellous excellencies or chal-
lenge the miraculous effects it is sup-
posed to insure? Is there a special
sanctity hallowing it which is claimed
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The Indian Advocate. (Sacred Heart Mission, Okla. Terr.), Vol. 11, No. 1, Ed. 1, Sunday, January 1, 1899, newspaper, January 1, 1899; Sacred Heart Mission, Oklahoma Territory. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc69773/m1/15/?rotate=90: accessed April 25, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.