The Child: State Property?

by Rev., Msgr. John F. Gallagher, J.C.D.

The Federal School Aid controversy stirs up a question not of our day only. Neither is it a question of our nation only. There is, perhaps, no other question more intimately bound up with the existential nature of man than the question: "Whose right is it to educate children?" The question was raised and discussed in ancient Greece and Rome, as it is discussed today in practically every nation on the face of the earth. There are values involved which touch the intimate nature of man. As Maritain says ". . . education cannot escape the problems and entanglements of philosophy for it supposes by its very nature a philosophy of man and from the outset it is obliged to answer the question: What is man? which the philosophical sphinx is asking."

Basically, and allowing for accidental variations, there are two philosophies of man which claim adherents in the Western world. There are the monistic and dualistic views of man. According to the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysic, man is a rational animal; a being, part animal and part spirit. In what might be termed the positivistic scientific view, man is composed solely of matter differing from other animals only in the greater refinement of his more highly developed reflexes. The education of man will depend on the educator's view of man. "As each man is, such does the end appear to him to be."¹ Again, according to Maritain " . . . if we tried to build education on the single pattern of the scientific idea of man and carry it out accordingly . . . we would have a denial or misconception of those very realities and values without which education loses all human sense and becomes the training of an animal for the utility of the state."

The scientific idea, by which education is directed solely to the utility of the state, is precisely the rather crude system of education that Plato proposed in the Fifth Book of the Republic. Wives were to be in common. Children were to be bred with scientific discrimination like pedigreed animals. They were to be raised from infancy by the state and educated for the exclusive service of the state. In view of present-day theories and methods of Communism, it is at least interesting to note that Plato is frank in declaring that to implement this crude form of statism "our rulers will find a considerable dose of falsehood and deceit necessary for the good of their subjects."² Even Aristotle, whose views on certain phases of education St. Thomas often cites with approval, cannot be said to be consistent in his discussion of the role of the family and state, respectively, in the education of children. In this, Aristotle may be said to be less culpable than many moderns who subscribe to the totalitarian educational philosophy of Plato. Aristotle did not have the light of Christian revelation to dispel the mists.

Many of our own educational theorists have harped back to the educational views of these pagan philosophers. The thunder of the gods of Olympus has reverberated down to our own day. Samuel Harrison Smith (1752-1839), for instance, warned that "it is proper to remind parents that their children belong to the state and that in their education they ought to conform to the rules which it prescribes." William C. Clairborne (1775-1817), Governor of Louisiana, re-echoed the grossly materialistic theory of Plato when he expressed the idea that a free people should cherish the doctrine of "an ancient Republic of Greece . . . The youth should be considered as the property of the state."³ The reference, of course, is to Sparta, which adopted the pedagogical ideas of Plato, with consequences detrimental to its own intellectual and moral development if not to its very survival.

Notice to Parents: Please Step Aside

In proportion as state control of education is exaggerated, the rights of parents and the Church are correspondingly restricted or eliminated. It is of more than passing interest that in the celebrated Oregon School Case an attorney for the State made the claim that the child is the property of the state as justification for an iniquitous law, subsequently declared unconstitutional, which would compel parents, under threat of severe penalties, to send their children to state schools only. In a brief submitted to the Federal District Court in the Oregon School Case by Attorney William A. Williams, who later, in 1925, submitted a brief as Amicus Curiae in the same case before the U.S. Supreme Court, the following statement appears:

The child is first a national child. He belongs to the nation even before he belongs to himself. His education is first national and after that personal."⁴

This extreme form of statism is not unknown even in judicial decision on the state level. In an opinion handed down by the Supreme Court of the State of Oklahoma in 1950,⁵ involving jurisdiction over the child as against the right of the mother, the Court held that the education of the child "belongs of strict right to the state because of its capacity of Parens Patriae." This latter expression, the Court curiously interpreted as the "sovereign right to care for the education of its members." The Court based its opinion on an earlier Maryland ruling⁶ which set forth that:

It is to be remembered that the public has a permanent interest in the virtue and knowledge of its members and that of strict right the business of education belongs to it; that parents are ordinarily entrusted with it is because it can seldom be put in better hands but where they are incompetent or corrupt, what is to prevent the public from withholding the faculties held as they already are, at its sufferance? The right of paternal control is a natural but not an unalienable one.

For most Americans who with the Founding Fathers appeal to the natural law as the vindication of their inalienable rights, this last sentence contains a curious and unwarranted distinction.

The Oklahoma Court also cited Allison v. Bryan, in its own behalf, as follows:

A child is primarily a ward of the state. The Sovereign has the inherent power to legislate for its welfare, and to place it with either parent at will, and to take it from both parents and to place it elsewhere. This is true not only of illegitimate children, but is also true of legitimate children. The rights of the parent in his child are just such rights as the law gives him; no more, no less.⁷

The Court further held:

Thus it will be found that this court has for some forty years been committed to the thesis that the state has a paramount interest in the child. And why should this not be? Is it not for the common good? Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, hundreds of years prior to the modern dictators who for selfish, sinister ends, though proclaimed for the common good, have made such effective use of the idea, said: "All who have meditated on the act of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth."

It is to be noted that the Court here invokes the "common good" as the basis of its decision. This is a concept so involved that it lends itself to varied interpretation. It is a concept intimately connected, if not synonymous, with what is often referred to as the "police power" of the state. The U.S. Supreme Court has not defined police power. It has been characterized by the Court as "a power difficult to define." It cannot be determined by any formula, as it must always be determined with appropriate regard to the particular subject of its exercise.⁸ The presiding judge in the Oklahoma case, Judge J. Powell, recognized with what facility the power was abused by dictators. He failed, however, to observe the restraint exercised by the U.S. Supreme Court. Because he and the two judges concurring with him in the decision subscribed to the educational philosophy of the dictators, the ghosts of the latter rise up to haunt them.

Whence Parental Rights?

This infectious thread of materialistic thought pervades other phases of our national life. It can be recognized in the pronouncements of some of our statesmen and educators who regard the child as our greatest national asset in fervid appeals for massive expenditures on education. John C. Haldane, for example, makes the rather weird speculation that at some point in the future, human life, at every turn, will be committed to the expert care of state-sponsored physicians.⁹

Diametrically opposed to this absolute statism, first propounded by Plato, is the Judeao-Christian tradition. This tradition is carried over in express terms in our Declaration of Independence. Man is regarded as endowed with inalienable rights by his Creator. These rights, being part of the natural endowment of every man, may not be abolished by any authority without doing violence to his nature. Parents' rights in the education of their children are just such inalienable rights, and the conscientious convictions of parents must be the prime factor in determining any true system of education.

As far back as the fifth century before Christ, Sophocles wrestled with questions of conscience involved in the upbringing of children. In his tragedy Antigone, the heroine, in carrying out her filial duty, appeals to " . . . the unwritten and unfailing decrees of heaven" as her justification for opposing the despotic power of the state represented in the person of King Creon of Thebes. "For," she says, "their life is not of today or yesterday but from all time, and no man knows when they were first put forth."¹⁰ Antigone's plea in her own behalf but foreshadows the teaching of St. Paul on the role of conscience: "For when the gentiles, who have not the law do by nature the things that are of the law . . . (they) show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them." Moses, when exhorting the Israelites to observe the law of the Lord, commands them to instruct their children also in the law. "And these words which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart. And thou shalt tell them to thy children; and thou shalt write them in the entry, and on the doors of thy house."

In the Christian tradition the natural law, which according to St. Paul is indelibly inscribed in the fleshy hearts of men, is the firm foundation on which rests parental rights, including educational rights. This tradition is as old as Christianity itself. It goes back through Paul to Christ and comes down to us through St. Augustine and St. Thomas. St. Augustine " . . . the Greatest Doctor the Church has ever had" is, according to Windelband, "the real teacher of the Middle Ages."¹¹ It is to St. Augustine that Pope Pius XI appealed when he wished to sum up his own teaching on education. This teaching is embodied in his encyclical, Christian Education of Youth. Pius, himself, sums up the profound teaching of this great encyclical by quoting St. Augustine: "Since, however," he writes, "we have spoken elsewhere on the Christian education of youth, let us sum it all up by quoting once more the words of St. Augustine: 'As regards the offspring, it is provided that they be begotten lovingly and educated religiously.'"¹² Elsewhere, St. Augustine reminds Christians that they must not supinely accept error and falsehood merely for the sake of civic harmony:

But as the earthly city has had some philosophers whose doctrine is condemned by the divine teaching . . . it has come to pass that the two cities could not have common laws of religion and that the heavenly city has been compelled in this matter to dissent.¹³

A Spiritual Womb

St. Thomas expands and develops more fully the educational philosophy of Augustine. With his usual thoroughness, St. Thomas explains that parents, by virtue of the natural law, are the first and proper educators of the child:

For nature intends not only the begetting of offspring, but also its education and development until it reaches the perfect state of man as man, and that is the state of virtue. Hence, according to the Philosopher, we derive three things from our parents, namely, existence, nourishment and education.¹⁴

The reference, of course, is to Aristotle. Developing this theme further, the Angelic Doctor, in another treatise, gives the rationale of his teaching by emphasizing the close bond of union existing between parent and child and the inviolability of the parental claim:

For a child is by nature part of its father: thus, at first, it is not distinct from its parents, as to its body, so long as it is enfolded within its mother's womb; and later on after birth . . . it is enfolded in the care of its parents, which is like a spiritual womb, . . ."¹⁵

The parental right and duty to educate is direct, immediate, and primary. It may be delegated, but it may not be renounced; nor can responsibility be transferred to any other agency or institution. The parental right to educate is an inalienable one.¹⁶

The natural-law philosophy that the parental right to educate is primary has been no less staunchly defended by non-Catholic writers and philosophers. Among the latter, Immanuel Kant is not only one of the weightiest but one of the most explicit in vindicating this fundamental right, " . . . so long as it [the child] is incapable of making proper use of its body as an organism and of its mind as an understanding . . . Hence, the right of parents is not a purely real right, and it is not alienable."¹⁷ The English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, while approving the idea of a certain standard of compulsory education on the part of the state, is nevertheless adamant in his opposition to a monopoly in education by the state. In his essay On Liberty, he states:

That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in state hands, I go as far as anyone in deprecating . . . A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.

Sir Michael Sadler, in a series of lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1930, distinguished between "state supervision which is salutary and state control, which . . . is mischievous." He stressed the danger of government control, pointing out that education is not wholly a matter of public concern, but "lies athwart the boundary which divides public function from private initiative," and hence it has connection with family life and private conviction. To limit educational freedom for political reasons, as England did in the days of Elizabeth, may sometimes be considered necessary, but it is a situation which is always to be deplored. Even temporary coercive control on the part of the government which has the effect of eliminating educational minorities or limiting their endeavors calls for apology and regret. Sadler goes on to state that the real strength of national life is shown by its willingness and ability to tolerate and promote a variety of educational systems.

The Lion Defends the Cubs

The traditional Christian philosophy of education has been authoritatively stated and re-emphasized in recent papal pronouncements. This emphasis has been necessitated by the gradual encroachment on family rights in the field of education by the modern "Welfare State." No pontiff has stated more forcefully or defended more vigorously this parental right than Leo XIII. Confronted with the demands of centralized government and the aggressive advocacy of a false philosophy attributing a monistic nature to man, Leo XIII vigorously defended the Christian teaching. This great Pope wrote some fourteen encyclicals dealing specifically with matters pertaining to education. However, it is in his social encyclicals that one finds the most forthright defense of the family right in the child's education. His extensive pronouncements touch on practically every phase of the parents' educational right, but he lays particular emphasis on the existence of the right, its source, and the dangers which threaten its exercise. "Thus we have the family," he writes, "the 'society' of a man's own household; a society limited indeed in numbers, but a true 'society,' anterior to every kind of state or nation, with rights and duties of its own, totally independent of the commonwealth . . . for it is a most sacred law of nature that a father must provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten . . ." After the manner of St. Thomas, Leo XIII declares that parental authority is an extension of divine authority bestowed by God upon parents. "For according to Catholic teaching, the authority of our heavenly Father and Lord is imparted to parents and masters, whose authority, therefore, not only takes its origin and force from Him, but also borrows its nature and character." Accordingly, "Parental authority can neither be abolished by the State nor absorbed; for it has the same source as human life itself."

Pope Leo manifested a constant anxious desire that Christians be well aware of the forces antagonistic to the rights with which God has endowed the family. Among these forces he lists the secular state, socialism, divorce, militarism, mixed marriages, so-called civil marriages and neutral schools. The Pope characterized the lay, or secular, state, against which he waged unremitting battle, as the ultimate cause of most of society's ills. In the field of education " . . . the lay state, forgetting its limitations and the essential object of the authority which it wields . . . has dared as much as it could in the matter of that natural right which parents possess to educate their children."¹⁸ His Holiness pointed out that the education which the lay state substitutes is devoid of provisions for moral training and succeeds in producing nothing more than puppet citizens. This type of education parents must oppose even at the cost of great sacrifice to themselves.

They [parents] must . . . absolutely oppose their children frequenting schools where they are exposed to the fatal poison of impiety. When it is a question of the good education of youth, we have no right to fix a limit to the pains and labor that result, however great these may be.¹⁹

He condemns, as entirely without basis in fact, any view which holds that the good of the state necessitates the absorption of a right sacred to the family.

The idea, then, that the civil government should, at its own discretion, penetrate and pervade the family and the household, is a great and pernicious mistake. True, if a family finds itself in great difficulty, utterly friendless, and without prospect of help, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid; for each family is a part of the commonwealth . . . But the rulers of the State must go no further: Nature bids them stop here.²⁰

Leo XIII laid the major emphasis on the validity and source of the family right to educate and on the dangers which threatened its exercise. The extent of the right was a phase of the question more fully developed by his successors. However, the principles which Leo laid down set the course and served as points of departure for the pronouncements of subsequent popes on this subject. One cannot but admire his keenness of vision. The social history of the last half-century bears ample evidence to his penetrating analysis and accurate prognosis. The nascent political and social ills of his day, which he diagnosed as the greatest threat to the family right to educate, have produced in abundance the evil fruit he so accurately predicted.

The Stream of Thought

Leo's two immediate successors, St. Pius X and Benedict XV, reiterated his doctrine on the family right. Pius X is especially severe in condemning the lay school through which the state seeks to usurp the right which the natural law has given to parents. "We speak of these schools which with supreme injustice are called 'lay' or 'neutral' schools, but which in reality are the prey of the domineering tyranny of a darksome sect."²¹ The evil stems fundamentally from the denial of the supernatural.

Benedict XV prosecutes this same struggle for the rights of parents over the minds of their own children. In an allocution, Women's Mission in Society, Benedict heartily endorsed the just claim these women make to complete freedom in the control of their children's education. "We emphasize the right that they claim to liberty in the education of their children, because it would be barbarous to pretend that while not excluded from the formation of the less noble part of their children, they should be shut off from the care and development of their more noble part."²²

In his encyclical, Ad Beatissimi, addressed to the American bishops, Benedict praised their efforts in behalf of Catholic education and, while saying that they are fortunate in that they are less harassed by insidious political agitators than the Catholics of Europe, he warned them against the danger of complete state usurpation of the family's right to educate.

Lest the Church should keep intact the faith in the hearts of little children, lest her own schools should compete successfully with public anti-religious schools, her adversaries declare that to them alone belongs the right of teaching, and trample underfoot and violate the native rights of parents regarding education; while vaunting unlimited liberty, falsely so-called, they diminish, withhold, and in every way hamper the liberty of religious and Catholic parents, as regards the education of their children.²³

Pope Pius XI's treatment of the educative right of parents is both profound and thorough. His encyclical, Christian Education of Youth, is for Catholics both a sacred charter and a declaration of principals. On succeeding to the Chair of Peter, Pius XI could see no improvement in social conditions generally. The state of affairs at the time, 1922, is best described in his own words: "In the face of our much praised progress, we behold with sorrow society lapsing slowly and surely into a state of barbarism." In no less than nine of his encyclicals, as well as in innumerable allocutions, he deals specifically with parental educational rights. He lays particular emphasis on the extent of the family's right and the dangers which threaten it. The so-called lay, or neutral, school in reality constitutes an attack upon religion.

Hence, it has followed inevitably that we have to deal, not so much with the total absence of religion from the schools, but with the tacit and even open attack upon it. Children have been led to believe that all those things that have been either ignored or spoken of only in terms of contempt are of little use or importance in the conduct of life.²⁴

Parents must not relinquish a trust which has been confided to the family and to the Church. "Now it is certain," he says elsewhere, "that both by the law of nature and of God this right and duty of educating their offspring belongs in the first place to those who began the work of nature by giving them birth, and they are indeed forbidden to leave unfinished this work and so expose it to certain ruin."²⁵ Pius makes it clear that the duty of parents is not fulfilled by seeing merely to the religious instruction of the child, but that their obligation must extend to the child's physical and civic education, as well as to all other matters necessary for the individual's well-being.

The family, therefore, holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to a strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.²⁶

Toward the end of his pontificate he was distressed by the crude violation of the parental educative right by the Nazis. To stern the tide of state monopoly in education he addressed his encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge, to the German bishops. This encyclical condemns state monopoly in education wheresoever it exists, not in Germany only. Even in the face of persecution, parents must not relinquish these educational rights, for "Laws and measures which in school questions fail to respect this freedom of the parents go against natural law and are immoral."²⁷

Pius XI refuted the erroneous claim of those who hold that parents may be compelled to send the child to state-established and state-controlled schools. Parents have freedom of choice in this matter.

Finally, it is confirmed by the confidence which they [Church-related schools] have enjoyed on the part of parents, who, since they have received from God the right and duty of educating their own children, have also the sacrosanct liberty of choosing those from whom they must ask assistance in this very same duty.²⁸

The Pope has words of praise and commendation for the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Oregon School Case. He states that the decision is entirely in accord with the natural law and with the elementary rights of parents.²⁹ Nor must it be said that in a so-called pluralistic society it is impossible for the state to provide in accordance with the wishes of the parents for the public instruction of all children. The actual experience of many states proves the fallacy of such reasoning and justice demands that parents who pay taxes for education get a return on their tax money for the education of their own children. In such a case it becomes the duty of the state "to leave free scope to the initiative of the Church and family, while giving them such assistance as justice demands . . . If such education is not aided by public funds, as distributive justice requires, certainly it may not be opposed by any civil authority ready to recognize the rights of the family, and the irreducible claims of religious liberty."

The Pope warmly praises Catholic organizations "in various countries" which are promoting and defending Catholic schools for the better education of their children. Such organizations, he says, are primarily engaged in a religious endeavor.

Let it be loudly proclaimed and well understood and recognized by all that Catholics, no matter what their nationality, in agitating for Catholic schools for their children, are not mixing in party politics, but are engaged in a religious enterprise demanded by conscience.

Pius XI, while most emphatic in the assertion of the natural, prior, and inalienable right of the family to educate the child, gives due recognition to the complementary and auxiliary rights of the Church and of the State. Outlining the nature, the origin, and the purpose of the family, of the Church, and of the State, this Pope continues:

Consequently, education which is concerned with man as a whole, individually and socially, in the order of nature and in the order of grace, necessarily belongs to all these three societies, in due proportion, corresponding, according to the disposition of Divine Providence, to the co-ordination of their respective ends.³⁰

Thought of Pius XII

From the first days of his pontificate Pius XII made the family's right to educate one of his chief concerns. In his very first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, he discussed the parents' role in education. He characterized as the fountainhead of the evils inherent in the modern state the denial of the one universal law of morality "by which we mean the natural law now buried away under a mass of destructive criticism and neglect."³¹ This denial has weakened family life, thus causing the greatest of society's ills and the one from which all others flow. In the field of education, he gave his complete endorsement to the encyclical, Christian Education of Youth of his immediate predecessor, calling it the Magna Charta of education.³² As had Pius XI, he emphasized that the parents have the sacrosanct right to designate the teachers for their children and reminds the school that it has only delegated authority.³³

It would be entirely erroneous, however, were we to give the impression, that Pius XII, with all his genius and the supreme authority of his teaching office, made no greater contribution to educational theory and method than the endorsement of previous pronouncements. In his own right and in the power of his office, he was a giant in the field of education. His deep and abiding interest in this important subject is made clear by the fact that he delivered more than eighty addresses on the subject during his pontificate.³⁴ The emphasis is logical in view of the tendency during his pontificate, even in allegedly Christian and democratic countries, to regard the training of youth as a function determined by social and national expediency. The rights of the family were regarded as having no existence except as defined by the government of the particular country.

Pius XII further warns against Statism:

Having recognized the school as being a powerful value in the formation of consciences, some states, regimes and political movements have discovered that it is one of the most efficacious means for gaining to their side that multitude of supporters which they need to make triumphant determined conceptions of life. With tactics as astute as they are insincere, and for ends that contradict the natural ends of education . . . They have attempted and are attempting to obtain exclusive possession through the imposition of a monopoly which, among other things, seriously violates one of the fundamental human liberties."³⁵

The Pope goes on to declare that the Church will not be daunted, but even in the face of persecution will guard her own rights as well as the essential rights of the family. "The See of Peter will never consent that the Church, which has this right by divine mandate, nor the family, which claims it in natural justice, be deprived of their original rights."³⁶ In a radio address to The Inter-American Congress on Catholic Education in La Paz, Bolivia, in October, 1948, Pius XII branded as "pernicious" the attempt to separate religion from education.

Therefore, against the pernicious attempts of those who would completely separate religion from education and from school, or who would at least place the school and education upon a purely naturalistic basis, set the ideal of a work of teaching that is enriched by the inestimable treasure of a sincere faith vivified by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.³⁷

It may be justly said that there are few phases of the parental educative right to which the late Holy Father has not turned his attention and on which he has not cast new light. True to the Christian tradition, he made the natural law, which he characterized as "the solid rock of the natural law,"³⁸ the sure foundation on which he built the structure of his educational theory and method. The measure of the validity of this teaching is the immutability of that law. Upon that foundation Pius XII built a "wall of separation" of his own when he said: "The natural law — here is the foundation on which the social doctrine of the Church rests. It is precisely her Christian conception of the world which has inspired and sustained the Church in building up this doctrine on such a foundation. When she struggles to win and defend her own freedom, she is actually doing this for the true freedom and for the fundamental rights of man. In her eyes these essential rights are so inviolable that no argument of State and no pre-text of common good can prevail against them. They are protected by an insurmountable wall. As far as this wall, the common good can legislate as it pleases; but beyond this wall it may not go. It cannot touch these rights, for they constitute what is most precious to the common good."³⁹

A Continuing Task

The late, universally loved, Pope John XXIII in no way departed from the teaching of his predecessors on this issue. He, too, was fully aware of the primary right of the parents in the education of the child and of the vehemence with which this right is challenged in many parts of the world and by many governments. Accordingly, he reiterates the traditional teaching of his papal predecessors. In his encyclical letter, Pacem in Terris, issued on Holy Thursday of this year, Pope John stated: "Parents, however, have a prior right in the support and education of children."⁴⁰

The reason for the intense papal concern with education, particularly during the last five pontificates, is not difficult to see. Powerfully centralized states have been moving relentlessly toward a monopoly in the field of education as in other matters. The tide must be stemmed if basic rights are to be guarded. Man has a purpose anterior to and independent of the state. Man's true end is not the glorification of the grandiose state. Man does not exist for the state. The state exists for man. State monopoly in education begets statism for "Education maketh the man." As Pius XI stated, "It is therefore as important to make no mistake in education as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end, with which the whole work of education is intimately and necessarily connected."⁴¹ Basically there are but two views of education as there are but two basic philosophies of man. Anthropological philosophy determines the system of education.

The prolonged attacks on the family's rights in education continue to have serious consequences. They have, however, given occasion for a clarification and a restatement of the Church's teaching in a form readily accessible to all.

End Notes

1. Aristotle, Ethic. Lib. III, cap. 5, a med.: cf. Summa Theo. I-II, q. IX, a. 2.

2. "The Republic," V, 356-373, "The Dialogues of Plato," trans., Benjamin Jovett, Great Books, Robert M. Hutchins, Ed. in Chief (Chicago, 1952), 7, 360-361.

3. Richard J. Gabel, Public Funds for Church and Private Schools, (Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., 1937) p. 163, ft. 38.

4. J. J. Findlay, The Foundations of Education (New York, 1925), I, 599; cf. Thomas Dubay. S.M., Philosophy of the State as Educator (Milwaukee, 1939), p. 45, ft. 57.

5. Ex Parte Walters, 221 P. 2d, 659.

6. Roth v. House of Refuge, 31 Md. 329.

7. Allison v. Bryan, 21 Okl. 557, 97 P. 282, 286, 18 L.R.A., N.S., 931, 17 Ann. Cas. 468.

8. New York and N.E.R. Co. v. Bristol, 151 U.S. 56 (1894).

9. Findlay, I. 98; Dubay, p. 45.

10. "Antigone," trans. Sir Richard C. Jebb, Great Books, 5, 135.

11. Lehrluch der Geschichte der Philosophie, 5th ed. (1910), p. 220; cf. D. J. Kavanagh, "St. Augustine and Education" The Cath. Ed. Review, XXXIV (June, 1936), 321.

12. De Gen. ad litt., lib. IX, C. 7, n. 12; cf. Four Great Encyls., p. 79.

13. Basic Writings, ed. Whitney J. Oates (New York: Random House, 1948), Vol. II, trans. M. Dodds, bk. XIX, Ch. XVII, 493-4.

14. Sum. Theo., III Suppl., q. XLI, a. 1.

15. Ibid., II-II, q. X, a. 12.

16. J. Messner, Social Ethics (St. Louis: Herder, 1957), pp. 153-154.

17. "The Science of Right," Ch. II, tit. II, 421, Great Books, 42.

18. "Inscrutabile Dei"; cf. John Wynne, The Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII, p. 561.

19. "Sapientiae Christianae"; cf. Social Wellsprings, 2 vols., ed. Jos. Husslein, S.J. (Milwaukee, Bruce, 1940), I, 162.

20. "Rerum Novarum," ibid, I, 174.

21. "Editae Saepe"; Amer. Cath. Quarterly Review, XXXV (July, 1910), 403.

22. The Tablet, CXXXIV (Nov. 1, 1919), 559.

23. "The Pope and the American Episcopate"; Catholic Mind, XVII (June, 1919), 264.

24. "Ubi Arcano"; Husslein, II, 13-14.

25. "Casti Connubii"; Husslein, I, 130-131.

26. "Divini Illius Magistri"; ibid., 97.

27. Ibid., 332-333.

28. "Dilectissima Nobis"; Husslein, II, 301.

29. Four Great Encyclicals, pp. 47-48, 62, 65.

30. "Divinae Illius Magistri"; Husslein, I, 92.

31. Husslein, I, 159.

32. Papal Teachings, Education, trans. Rev. Aldo Rebeschini (St. Paul Editions, 1960), pp. 499, N. 722, (a).

33. "To Italian Woman of Catholic Action," Charles Rankin, The Pope Speaks (New York, Harcourt, Brace, & Co., 1940), p. 137.

34. Vincent A. Yzermans, ed., Pope Pius XII and Catholic Education, p. Vii.

35. "Allocution to the Italian Union of Secondary Teaching," Papal Teachings, pp. 378-379.

36. Yzermans, p. 30; Papal Teachings, p. 379.

37. Yzermans, p. 18; Papal Teachings, p. 364.

38. Cf. "Function of State in Modern World"; Vatican Text, ed. Daughters of St. Paul, p. 34.

39. Yzermans, pp. 36-37.

40. Text relayed by N.C.W.C., Wash., D.C.; printed by Our Sunday Visitor Inc., Huntington, Indiana, p. 9.

41. Four Great Encyclicals, p. 38.

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