UNIVERSITIES AND THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. IVEheaavie u n made d
e r sutpa nt dh eti rh em V. odl us ntthaar 3t7,i all s ,c—h ut hr ce hReanddi co awl ms we nhtos by the State are infractions of the principle of justice, and bribes to the worldly to embrace, not religious truth, but reli- gious fashion. But we cannot understand those who, not being, so far as we know, Voluntaryists in principle,—often, indeed, the reverse of Voluntaryists,—are so saturated either with dread of Roman Catholicism, or with jealousy of it, that they would deny the Roman Catholics of Ireland the chance of a good University suitable to their principles and creed, only because Englishmen have made up their minds to open their national Universities equally to men of all creeds, and to permit no longer the appropriation of national endowments to Colleges dominated by sectarian aims. The real question surely for all who are not absolutely convinced of the political injustice everywhere and always of giving State aid to any form of religion, is this,—what kind of Uni- versity (if any) would a given country really make use of, and is that kind of University one which the State can render sub- servient to the welfare and highest culture of the people ?
Putting convinced Voluntaryists out of the question, these seem to us the two pertinent questions which statesmen ought to put in relation to Ireland,—and surely, as Mr. Lowe so forcibly urged on Wednesday week, the answer to the first of them at least, is not dubious. The Catho- lics of Ireland will never, in our time, take kindly to secular University teaching. Every effort has been made to get Irish Catholics to send their sons to Trinity College, Dublin, but they respond as coldly as ever to the call.
Every effort has been made to get the Irish Catholics to send their sons to the Colleges of the Queen's University, but they respond very frigidly to that call also. Rightly or wrongly, the Irish Catholics are convinced by their Bishops and priests, that there is the greatest possible danger in sanctioning the divorce between theology and secular learning at the most critical period of a young man's education. As a matter of fact, very many of them would rather not send their sons to College at all, than send them to Trinity College, Dublin, or the Queen's Colleges in Belfast, Cork, and Galway. The next question to ask then is whether, if this be so, the Irish Catholics can be put on an equal footing as regards University opportunities with Irish Protestants, without concessions fatal to the very usefulness of all University teaching, without lending a sanction to sectarian prejudices,—such as, for example, Roman Catholic restrictions on science and on history,—which would imply a failure in that loyalty to impartial inquiry, and to the strict principles of historical evidence, without which science and history are nothing but natural theology and apologetics in disguise ? If this question could not be answered in the affirmative, we, at least, would never say another word in favour of giving State aid to Colleges suitable to the Roman Catholics of Ireland. But what we claim is, that a Bill founded on the principle of the O'Conor Don's, which would give the nominees of the State the most abso- lute control of all the purposes to which the endowment • should be devoted, and which would make the amount of it paid as results-fees, dependent entirely on the thoroughness of the secular teaching, as tested by judges external to the Roman Catholic Church, could not possibly be perverted into a Bill for endorsing inadequate learning, on the ground that it • -wis dominated by a Roman Catholic spirit. At all events, if there be any fear of such a result, let those who dread it point out the blot, and take the most stringent precautions against it, to which we, at least, will give our hearty support. But let them not, for fear of a possible—we believe, a hardly possible—perversion of the proposed measure, refuse their aid to a design the very essence and intention of which is to pouf into the minds of the ablest and the most learned of the Irish Roman Catholics, the principles of true culture, true science and true historical investigation. For what do such politicians as Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, for instance, suppose that a genuine University education — 'which we take for granted that the O'Conor Don's Bill, if properly guarded, may be made to confer on Irish Catholics,— would do for the Irish Catholics ? Do they suppose that it will so sharpen the edge of Roman Catholic intellect as to render it more dangerous than ever to Protestant institutions ? Well, if they think that, they are hardly as sincere in their Awn Protestantism as we could wish them to be. If the real A,ffect of true culture,—culture founded on scientific and his- torical fact, which is what we maintain that we now have the power to secure,—be simply and solely to strengthen the hold of Roman Catholic faith on the minds of those who imbibe it, then Roman Catholicism has a clear right to its triumph. No. one who is not a Roman Catholic, however, can seriously think so. The revival of learning was one of the greatest blows which mediteval Catholicism ever received, nor can any one doubt that even in our own time the difference between the type of Roman Catholicism appropriate to men of high University culture, and the type of Roman Catholicism appropriate to an intelligent peasantry, or the devout women even of much higher classes than the peasantry, is very differ- ent indeed, and that the former is far more sensitive to the widening influence of scientific and historical ideas than the latter. We do not say, and do not think, that the effect of thorough University training would be, in any large number of eases, to wean those who receive it from the Church of their fathers. Experience shows that there are almost as many ways of modify- ing a faith, while holding fast to it, as there are of changing it for another faith. What we do believe is that true Univer- sity culture would compel the Irish Roman Catholics to hold their faith in a new way,—with implicit and explicit refer- ence to a large class of facts which would otherwise have had no meaning for them,—with reserves sanctioned, indeed, by their best theologians, but not even intelligible to the popular Roman Catholicism of their day,—in a word, to hold it in a shape in which it would be commensurable at least with that of their non-Catholic fellow-citizens, intelligible to the latter, and capable even of helping Catholics to understand the faith of their non-Catholic fellow-citizens, and of entering into the doubts and difficulties of non-Catholics, if, as may be sometimes the case, these non-Catholics should have no proper faith to understand. This is, we say, what true University culture will do for Roman Catholics ;—if it does not soften away the hard kernel of their ecclesiastical authority, it will at least help them to insist on the limits to that authority, to enforce the observance of these limits, to maintain their freedom of speculation up to a very high point, and to understand with full charity, not to say sympathy, the inability of many others to bow to that authority, even within its legitimate sphere. Now, is the securing of this great end,—and it can be secured,—really a light matter ? Is it nothing to give to the Irish Roman Catholics, leaders, who, however little they may agree with Protestants, can at least find plenty of common ground with Protestants,—can recognise the full significance of scientific ideas, on which the Church as yet frowns,—can appreciate the verdict of history on controversies and events of which the Church's version has hitherto been preposterously onesided ? We say that Protestants who do not see the value of giving the Roman Catholics such a culture as this, are not really loyal to the principles of true culture, science, and history. The difference between Roman Catholics who know where science really begins and faith ends, and Roman Catholics who know nothing but their faith,—the difference, again, between Roman Catholics who know what historians mean by evidence, and those who know only what ecclesiastics mean by the authority of pious traditions,—is the full differ- ence between faith working in the light of knowledge, and faith working under no intellectual checks at all. If the difference be insignificant, all culture is valueless. If it is not a great feat to have penetrated faith everywhere with the fixed air of culture, science, and history, the air of the purest culture, science, and history cannot be wholesome air to breathe.
Of course, Roman Catholics with full knowledge are, in some sense, more powerful than Roman Catholics without it ; but so far as they are so, they are more powerful only for safer objects. And they are not more powerful, they are vastly less powerful, for those purposes which we fear most when they are vehemently pursued by the administrators of a great popular religion. They are less powerful for the purpose of stimulating a dangerous bigotry, for the purpose of enforcing a cruel exclusiveness, for the purpose of defeating a genuinely intellectual investi- gation, for the purpose of mutilating a true national life. Cultivated Roman Catholics are stronger to influence the minds of cultivated Protestants and cultivated sceptics than ignorant Roman Catholics. But they are weaker for all that is most to be dreaded from their Church, weaker for the pur- pose of hounding on an ignorant fanaticism, for fortifying a popular superstition, for fanning the jealousies of race, for inflam- ing the prejudices of class. This is why we desire to see a popular University,—a University popular with the main body of the Irish nation,—founded in Ireland, and why we claim the sym- pathy of all Liberals who are not by principle Voluntaryist, for the great end we have in view.
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