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A Christmas Card from Mary
Does Contraception Minimize the Incidence of Abortion?
Secularism, Culture of Death Hothouse
What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in Education?
Toppling Dominos
Anti-Christians don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of Secularism
"Don't Impose Your Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death Warrant?
Court Ordered Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for Catholics in this Election
Christians Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay Marriage
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Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake Cloning Bans
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No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
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Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way, Baby
The Incarnational Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them.  How Else Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of Nullity?
Dutch Treats
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Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality, and Common Sense
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Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
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"You Taught me well, Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong Side
"These are the Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few are Married
"...Prepare him for additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a Person?
The Point of a Point of View
Politically Correct, Morally Depraved
Population Controllers out of Control
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Social Progress through Immorality
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Reason and Faith
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Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal if...
Get Rid of that Worthless Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues Prior to Voting

by Monsignor James C. Brunner

Faith Points

Two states recently held referenda on school vouchers redeemable at private and parochial schools at the choice of the parents. Both lost decisively, in one case about 9 to 1. Desire for school vouchers remains strong in minority communities, particularly in areas with failing public schools. All others look upon school vouchers as potentially subversive of public schools and as illegitimate assistance to religion in the case of vouchers redeemable at parochial schools.

The relationship between public and parochial schools in this country has often been uneasy. Seventy-eight years ago hostility erupted in the Oregon School Case. At the instigation of Scottish Rite Masons and the Ku-Klux Klan there was a referendum on the right to send children to parochial schools in Oregon. A measure of the depths to which passions were stirred in this debate can be seen by the epithets hurled at the Catholic Church. The pope was the "anti-Christ of the Tiber," the priesthood became "an atrocious national enemy," the parochial school was variously characterized as "inimical to democracy," "fundamentally alien," "nurseries of disloyalty," "breeding place for disease where sunlight is absent," "salesman of falsehood," and as lacking "progressiveness." On November 7, 1922 people from Oregon voted in record numbers and passed the anti-parochial school bill. In response to this history I feel compelled to make two comments. First, is it too much to ask Catholics that belong to the Masons in spite of Church teaching that they have the sense to know who their friends and enemies are? Second, when research shows that Catholic schools succeed in educating ghetto students who fail in nearby public schools, are they still lacking in progressiveness?

After losing at the polls private schools appealed to the courts. On March 31, 1924 the District Court decision stated: "The absolute right of these [private] schools to teach in the grammar grades…and the right of parents to engage them to instruct their children, we think, is within the liberty of the Fourteenth Amendment." This ruling was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 1, 1925 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Oregon School law. The following paragraph gives the rationale for its decision:

The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public school teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.

It would be useful to compare the philosophies of those who wanted (and may still want) to outlaw parochial schools and of private school defenders with respect to theories of education and the place of religion in education. This will allow us to judge whose philosophy is most compatible with that of the Courts.

With respect to philosophy of education public school monopolists assert the following. The state has a paramount interest in education ahead of parents and religious groups. The majority should control the norms of education. Democracy may permit deviations from public education but must discourage them. Churches should not have a monopoly of education. Teaching secular subjects is not the function of the Church. Teaching religion is not the proper function of the school; religious choices should be the acts of adults rather than the reflexes of children. Religious education should take place in the churches. In education there should be no goals beyond nature. The goal of education must be democracy alone.

In reply to these contentions religious school supporters hold the following views. The state does not have a paramount right in education. It must protect the prior rights of family and Church. The family and not the majority should control the norms of education. The Courts rejected the notion of state control of the child. "The child is not the mere creature of the state." Private schools do not exist as a boon from the state but by strict right. A democracy that discourages the exercise of natural rights is a democracy in name only. Education belongs pre-eminently to the Church because of its divine commission to teach all nations. Even secular education belongs to the Church because it must decide what may help or harm Christian education. Delaying religious instruction until there can be adult choices in the matter makes no more sense than delaying the teaching of democracy until the rejection of dictatorship can be an adult choice. Democracy, which displaces the primacy of religion, is a false democracy. The Supreme Court recognized the right of parents to prepare children for "additional obligations."

With respect to the role of religion in education public school monopolists maintain that problems must be solved on natural grounds and by human solutions. Religion is not necessary for personal and religious morality. Indeed democracy itself is the proper object of religion when that word means one’s ultimate loyalty. The common virtues of democracy bind us together whereas religious theologies divide mankind. Religious objectives should be secondary to democratic objectives.

By way of contrast the Catholic view of religion and education is that no human activity can overlook the supernatural. All that a Christian does must be directed to the supreme good of saving one’s soul. Any other way of acting makes of religion a pious superfluity. Religion is necessary for personal and national morality. This was the position of George Washington:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Further, democracy has no claims on mankind’s ultimate loyalty. The current divinization of democracy and the claims made for its supremacy bear a disturbing resemblance to the divinization of Caesar and to the all-inclusive allegiance demanded by pagan Rome. It is vain to look for union from secular democracy alone since there are as many positions on its nature as there are democrats. Only a love of neighbor based on supernatural motivation can overcome the serious antagonisms of competing groups within society. If democratic principles outweigh those of formal religion, then democracy has, in effect, become one’s religion. A democracy worthy of the name supports freedom of religion; it does not require a replacement of religion by democracy.

It is clear that the philosophical views of those who prefer to limit education exclusively to public schools are not compatible with those of the Courts in the Oregon School case. School vouchers for schools chosen by parents are the best means of guaranteeing the parental control of education envisioned by our Courts. Yet they are anathema to the majority. Without them most parents are economically compelled to send their children to schools where secular humanism is the established religion. We are a long way from achieving vouchers because the majority rejects the philosophy underlying the Oregon School decision.