Action through Education

...In presence of these facts, the doubt arises as to whether history has not been altered, or at least colored, by prejudice, hatred and the general repulsion which Philip II seems to have everywhere inspired, perhaps not as a man, but unquestionably as a sovereign...

...for instance, the best organization of our parochial school system...

...By practical knowledge I do not mean four years of college study under present methods, for that is too often futile...

...WHO WAS PHILIP OF SPAIN...

...These should be developed first, because of their importance in the contemporary world view, and in the Catholic world view...

...It is the real, fundamental need of our educational institutions...

...only first-rate men, with a firstrate training...

...Of course there are certain facts which one is forced to admit...

...But of far more weight in my judgment at the present moment, is the general argument that, regarding history as a whole and adding to it what little we can guess and what very little we positively know about man before he began to establish records, the Faith is but an illusion, parallel to many another such illusion to which men have been subject by the process of projecting their own imaginations upon the void of the universe...

...According to the accepted version, Philip II died terrified by the vision of his victims gathered around his bed...

...It would have seemed as if nothing in the world could change or modify the accepted version of Philip, especially after Motley had finally underlined it in his remarkable book on The Rise of the Dutch Republic...

...a college course in philosophy capable of permeating all learning and functioning in the daily world-view of the student in college and after...

...The gift of money patrick's paper may lead discussion.--The Editors...

...This depends, in the main, on our colleges of liberal arts and indirectly on the professional schools...

...If every head of a Catholic institution in this country put this problem to the wealthy men or women he knows, and pointed out the opportunity for social service which lies in it--an opportunity superior to all local or institutional interest, important as that undoubtedly is--we could bring the program to pass...

...Theodore F. McManus, of Detroit...

...Providing, that is, that to his information he would add his prayers...

...In any case, here is something to think about...

...The classical languages are the necessary tools in understanding a Catholic civilization, and furnish the Catholic college with an opportunity for distinction, if its best men are trained in the technique of productive classical scholarship...

...3- A group of men who, as a result of first-class graduate study under Catholic auspices, could give the whole movement of the lay apostolate a germinal, fertile and constructive intellectual leadership...

...the reorganization of religious instruction in the elementary school, high school and college...

...plans for teacher training in all grades of schools adequate to train students for "fundamental Christian living in a democratic society...

...This depends, in the main, on our colleges of liberal arts...

...The explanation of the social inheritance and of evolution is passing from a biological base to a sociological basis...

...If what we need is not available anywhere, what shall we do with our money ? The major educational and social problem in a Catholic American civilization is the provision of a group of intellectual leaders, a constant supply of adequately trained teachers of fine personality...

...and I think that is the fundamentally correct answer...

...Among many reasons for including history, we may take the one stated by Hilaire Belloc in The Catholic Church and History: Much the most formidable assault delivered against the Catholic Church today is the assault delivered from the historical argument...

...a love of neighbor finding its inspiration in the love of God...

...A Catholic civilization replacThe followiny paper reviews the functions of Catholic higher education as an instrumentality towards the attainment of Catholic action...

...This regional development seems imperative in view of the fact that most of the students from our best-known institutions come from within, roughly, Ioo miles of the centre...

...who, while building up the magnificent edifice called the Escorial, was living like the poorest and meanest of beggars in a narrow cell close by...

...who showed himself indulgent almost to the point of weakness in regard to his servants, treating them as if they had been members of his family...

...And there is no doubt that, in spite of the horrors attributed to and perhaps performed by him, Philip II was a great Christian, and that his soul was filled with scruples, and completely detached from everything that goes by the name of joys and pleasures on this earth...

...I think that anyone will concede that this third is at once the most important and the weakest part of the Catholic educational service...

...About philosophy I presume there would be immediate agreement...

...A supply of such men goes to the very heart of our Catholic education, and of a functional Catholic civilization...

...The manufacture of such agents of a Catholic civilization in America is the greatest social opportunity before American Catholic wealth today...

...August 2I, i929 T H E C O M M O N W E A L 397 ACTION THROUGH EDUCATION By EDWARD A. FITZPATRICK HE Catholic social purpose through the Church, the school, the hospital, through all our educational and social effort, is to create a Catholic civilization and thereby render to America the greatest service that can be rendered to it in its imperative need...

...Most of the Harvard students come from Massachusetts, most of the Yale students from Connecticut, most of Columbia's students from New York, and most of Wisconsin's from Dane County...

...They are the fields in which the conflicts of these world views have taken place, or are likely to develop in the future...

...And yet it is possible to take up the cudgels in favor of the Spanish monarch...

...They have been presented to us by all the historians who have tried to analyze this dark and enigmatic personality...

...I can see wise educational administrators in possession of this money, sensing their need of competent teachers, able both to teach and to satisfy the standardizing agency, pursuing a wild-goose chase because the men or women are not available...

...On the contrary, he was undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and refined men of his century, and in the implacable struggle which he fought against the Protestant Reformation, civilization was certainly on his side, not on that of his opponents...

...the secur...

...Let us not be narrowly institutional and parochial, and let us see, in its broad outlines, the problem and scope of our religion and Church in a democratic society...

...to interesting and beneficial ing the chaos, immoral electicism and empty shibboleths of our contemporary life, would substitute for these a religion twenty centuries old, taking on new life every day...

...an intellectual life taking all knowledge for its province, that would bring all truth into its unity, into mutual relation instead of the compartmentized specialization of contemporary life...

...The personnel able to man four institutions of the type indicated is not available, probably in the United States or Europe...

...The present fact is there is a dearth of men who meet the requirements...

...These men, guiding an adequate number of research workers, and themselves participating, could solve many of the problems before us...

...This would certainly be highly desirable and should serve, in any case, as a source of supply for the regional power-houses ultimately to be developed...

...Every other need is insignificant compared to this...

...It incorporates remarks by the author to a recent session of the Catholic Educational Association, and also the first fruits of deliberations sponsored by the Federation of Catholic Alumni, who have been aided by Mr...

...witness, for example, Finney's Sociological Philosophy of Education...

...If only one institution could be developed, the need of demonstration furnishes a basis for a great dramatic appeal by a concentration of scholars in one place...

...Educationally, our mass production might increase, but our quality would not materially change, and it is a change in quality that we want...

...The apostleship of press and platform must have an adequate intellectual foundation...

...Laboratories, lecture rooms, architectural monuments, dormitories or even stadia will not make an educational institution--only men...

...who continually wrote his daughters the most affectionate letters, and never forgot to do so, even when assailed by terribly complicated politieal difficulties...

...Our THE COMMONWEAL August 2I, I9~9 most difficult problem in our colleges and universities would be solved if the colleges had money enough to finance these men after they were available...

...The major need is not more money, but money financing intelligent programs and plans...

...if not, Father Zybura's book, Present-Day Thinkers and the New Scholasticism, would be determining...

...The more important subjects should have prece| dence in the scheme...

...If these institutions adequately do their jobs, we shall have: I. A group of men coming from the colleges of liberal arts, who are cultivated gentlemen, disciplined, able and ready to take the position of social leadership, both in their vocations and in their social life, commensurate with their opportunities...

...English study on a graduate basis should undoubtedly be included in the foregoing list, but I wish here to emphasize its use as a tool...

...From the view-point of a Catholic civilization in America, they are--tentatively at least--philosophy, classical languages, education, sociology, biology, history...

...He founded universities and innumer...

...the provision of a series of text-books for Catholic schools, conformable to Catholic ideals, and at least as good as the best, if not better than those used in the public schools...

...ing and maintenance of such men in local institutions is a need that local wealth can understand...

...and sociology is the modern substitute for a genuine philosophy...

...The really effective scholars, intellectual leaders and teachers in our contemporary life are those who can use the press and the platform as their stage setting...

...Philip II was far from being the cruel maniac, stupefied by an excessive religious fervor, that we have been led to believe him...

...A careful study of the archives of the Escorial proves, on the contrary, that the end of the Spanish king was that of a saint who, in the midst of the most terrible sufferings, preserved an admirable serenity, and a perfect confidence in the justice of God, together with the conviction that he had never been guilty of an intentional injustice, and that the only aim he had had all through his life had been the welfare of his subjects...

...Education, particularly as the method of social progress and the technique for the conservation and extension of a civilization, is obviously of major importance...

...But none of the explanations of them offered heretofore can really satisfy us...

...A wicked and perverse generation, or that part of the present generation that is wicked and perverse, may reject what is offered because of an invincible ignorance, but many will be reached, and this is almost the only way they can be reached...

...I wish to press the point home even more decisively by saying that the success of the other two in an eminent degree is conditioned on our performing the third service in an eminent degree...

...No phase of our intellectual and social life can remain unaffected by it...

...I mean a mastery of these languages, so that this European thought is immediately available...

...The provision of the supply of such men is peculiarly a problem of national leadership and cooperation...

...While the editors do not necessarily subscribe to all that is said here, they feel that publication of Dean FitzKeeping in mind the purpose here implied of an intellectual leadership competent to create a Catholic civilization in our own democratic United States, I suggest that the need of our Catholic institutions of learning as such, in the light of this purpose, is not merely money...

...The students we train must be masters of the mother tongue, not only in its oral but in its written form, not only in conversation but in the forms of public discourse...

...I can see $IO,OOO,OOO turned over to Catholic educational institutions, and not changing our present problems except to aggravate them...

...Without such programs or plans, it is just as easy to waste or misspend money on education as on anything else...

...Lay co6peration on a national scale in the financial administration of Catholic education should collect a fund, organized under a foundation, to make effective an effort, through existing institutions preferably, actually to manufacture these agents of a Catholic civilization in America...

...Such is Philip II of Spain whose memory and reputation, like that of the Borgias, have never been discussed, but simply accepted on the sole strength of tradition and prejudice...

...a method of living raised to a supernatural plane by a faith that is alive with works...

...The audiences are then unlimited, and whether they August 2I, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 399 are influenced and retained will depend on both the content and the form of what is said...

...It is this contrast between the real and the official portrait of Philip to which it is well-nigh impossible to find a satisfactory explanation, and which therefore one must try oneself to account for, independently of the judgments already passed upon him...

...A few have already done it, or at least are beginning to do it, among them Louis Bertrand, the French Academician, and the famous Spanish scholar, Menendez y Pelayo...

...the formulation of a Catholic educational and social literature permeated with the Catholic view-point, and not unmindful of the history of the fields, and the contribution of nonCatholics everywhere...

...This man who showed himself so absolutely merciless in his repression of the Flanders revolt was the same one who wept bitter tears at the story of Mary Stuart's execution...

...Biology is necessary for an understanding of the historical setting of our problem...

...It would probably be conceded by The Commonweal's readers that the way to manufacture the agents of this Catholic civilization in America is through the Catholic colleges, the professional schools and the universities...

...I may add that the extraordinary work of Catholic scholars in Europe, both in quantity and quality, compared with that of American scholars, makes a practical knowledge of both the French and German languages indispensable...

...In all fairness we ought to consider the good qualities of the man, as well as the crimes and treacheries of the sovereign...

...Has this assuredly curious problem perhaps been presented to us from the wrong side ? Would it not be right, before forming a definite opinion on one of the most enigmatical personages of history, to submit to a more rigorous examination than has been the case hitherto, the documents on the strength of which he has, been judged and condemned...

...But such expenditures would not affect vitally the education problem of the colleges and would create a demand for more money...

...But no single institution meets the requirements...

...the application of the principle of the encyclical On the Condition of Labor to the actual contemporary industrial life, etc...

...This depends, in the main, on our graduate schools...

...There should be one in the East, one in the Middle-West, one in the West, and perhaps one in the South...

...to institutions would probably mean the increase of the physical plant, an extension of the scope of the institutions, under the influence of that false ideal, institutional completeness...

...By CATHERINE RADZIWILL HERE are certain historical figures whom it seems well-nigh impossible to look at otherwise than from one particular point of view...

...2. A group of professionally trained men in law, in medicine, in engineering, who, by virtue of their social service and the economic returns to the more successful, are "radiant points of social control" in our society and, if properly educated as well as trained, make the most effective kind of lay apostolate...

...but some men are available, and next steps should be taken if the complete program cannot be inaugurated...

...There remains . . . much of the old Protestant argument, to wit, that an original excellent establishment or message of divine origin was corrupted in the course of the centuries and that the Roman Communion still defends that corruption, so that its claim to authority fails...

...the provision of vocational training in orphan asylums...

...The ideal thing would seem to be to build up in the principal sections of the country regional intellectual power-houses for this purpose...

...If the scholars, teachers and intellectual leaders are going to be effective they must have that achievement which President Butler places first on his list as the mark of a liberal education: mastery of one's mother tongue...

...or it might, wisely enough, mean an increase of salary or improvement of equipment...