"As matters now stand in most of the country, the number educated in private schools is relatively small. But give them regular public support and they will both increase in number and tend the more surely to build a permanent 'upper class.' When this goes on for several generations, the graduates of these schools will be unable in either knowledge or attitude to communicate adequately with less affluent persons. * * * Such a cleavage in our society will seriously threaten our democracy. "When we come to the parochial school, the cleavage is further accentuated and the danger increased." * * * In larger cities the situation is different than in the small towns and the rural areas. In the latter "All the children of all the people attend public schools. Separating differences tend to disappear. Young people think of one another as individuals, not primarily as belonging to this or that church. The effect is socially healthy." A Boston newspaper, seeking advertising, said in the New York Times: "Boston is, for advertisers, two cities. For Boston is divided into two great groups of population-sharply separated by tradition, origin, sentiment, prejudice * * "What has been said here is no attack on religion or on those churches that maintain parochial schools. It is an attack on any practice of any sort that tends to break up our people into self perpetuating and contending blocs." "To educate any group in clear separation from the rest of the population is by that very process to create an abiding and self-perpetuating pressure group endowed with power in proportion to its numbers and differences of attitude." Dr. Kilpatrick said of S. 2499 and S. 717, and he would say, I believe, the same of any bill that would give aid to nonpublic schools from tax funds: "Any educational bill thus presents a clear threat to the future. Those who see what is involved must resist with all their power. Our democracy is at stake." While I hold to the right of the parent to send his child to the school of his choice, I am of the opinion that many devoted Roman Catholic parents are totally ignorant of the superior moral teachings of the public schools to those of their parochial schools to say nothing of the values of the Bill of Rights to their liberties, which has been attacked by their Popes along with the public schools. I have cited the attacks of Pope Leo against our principles of government in the early part of this statement. I shall now quote the vicious attacks made against our public schools some of which emanates from the minds of the Princes of what Hobbes, the English historian, said so eloquently is the "ghost of the deceased Roman Empire," the Papacy. It is not a pleasant task I have assigned myself to repeat these subversive things said about our Government and our public schools by the Popes and other dignitaries of the Vatican State. But as Dr. Kilpatrick said: "Our democracy is at stake" where aid from tax funds are given to sectarian institutions. So here are some of them: "The public schools have produced nothing but a godless generation of thieves and blackguards."-Priest Schaner. "We must take part in elections, move in a solid mass in every State against the party pledged to sustain the integrity of the public schools."-Cardinal McClusky. "The day is not far distant, when Catholics, at the order of the Pope will refuse to pay the school tax."-Monsignor Cappell. "When the State undertakes the work of education it is usurping the power of the church."-Bishop McQuade. "Education outside of the control of the Roman Catholic Church is a damnable heresy."-Pope Pius IX. "The Roman Catholic Church has the right to interfere in the discipline of the public schools, and in the choice of the teachers."-Pope Pius IX. "The church has the right to deprive the civil authorities of the entire government of the public schools."-Pope Pius IX. "The children of the public schools turn out to be horse thieves, scholastic counterfeiters.' "I frankly confess that Catholics stand before the country as the enemies of the public schools."-Priest Phelan. "Education must be controlled by Catholic authorities."-Priest Hecker. "The American Federation of Catholic Societies has been organized to bring the influence of the Catholic Church against the injustice of the public-school system."-Bishop McPhaull. "Unless you suppress the public-school system, it will prove the damnation of the country."-Priest David B. Walker. "We will have the United States in 10 years."-Archibishop Ireland. (This assertion was made many years ago and the Roman Catholic Church has and is making threatening progress toward this goal.) "This system of public education naturally results in the most serious moral, social, and religious evils."—Rev. James Conway, S. J. The following are quoted from the Roman Catholic press of the United States: "It will be a glorious day in this country when, under the law the school system will be shivered to pieces."-Catholic Telegraph. "The common schools of this country are sinks of moral pollution and nurseries of hell."-The Chicago Tablet (Catholic). "The public-school system is a swindle on the people, a foul disgrace in matters of morals and should be abolished."-The New York Tablet. In my opening statement I said that I would speak on the relative efficacy of Roman Catholic schools and public schools of elementary and secondary levels in inculcating morals and thus reducing crime. This I will now do; but before doing so I will quote as a pattern for the deductions you are to make, a comment made by His Eminence, Michael J. Curley, Archbishop of Baltimore, May 1926: "If, by its fruits we may know it (public school), we cannot, after three-quarters of a century of its existence, form a high estimate of it." Aside from the destructive effect on free governments in aiding sectarian education from public funds, the relative social values of sectarian and nonsectarian education challenge the closest and critical scrutiny of Congress in considering the provisions looking to Federal aid of nonpublic tax exempt schools as found in S. 199 and S. 472. In his encyclical above mentioned, Pope Pius also said: * "In general, not only for youth but for all ages and condition of man, it is the task of the state and civil society to impart that education which may be called civic, which consists in publicly presenting to individually and collectively such subjects of reasonable knowledge of imagination and of the senses as induce them toward honesty and lead them to it as a moral necessity. * * This civic education, which is so ample as to absorb almost the whole action of the state for the common good, must on the one hand be attuned to rules of rectitude and on the other must not contradict the doctrine of the church which is the divinely constituted mistress of such rules. * * * The church places at the disposal of families its ministry as a teacher and educator. Families rush to profit, thereby giving to the church their children in hundreds and, indeed, thousands. These two facts proclaim a great truth most important from the moral and social viewpoint. They say that the educative mission belongs before all and above all in the first place to the church and the family." Compared with the efficacy of public schools which are downed by the Roman Catholic Church the question is: How successfully has the Roman Catholic Church, which would receive about five-sixths of the money to be appropriated to nonpublic tax exempt schools, kept the faith in "its ministry as a teacher and educator," to the families who "rush" their children to its care? In other words: Has the teaching of religion in the Roman Catholic schools been an impressive factor in ethics and good morals to the same extent that the teaching of good behavior and reading passages from the Bible has been in the public schools where religious texts and a catechism are not used? Is the curriculum taught in the Roman Catholic schools including the catechism as productive of ethical conduct as the curriculum taught in the public schools without any pretense of teaching religion as such? I must say and with regret in a matter of such supreme importance to society that the answer is emphatically, "No." In support of this negative_answer I quote from an article entitled "Catholic Education and Crime" by Dr. L. H. Lehmann, a former Roman Catholic priest, published in the Converted Catholic magazine of January 1945 of which I submit copy for the use of the committee. This article was challenged by Mary Elizabeth Walsh, Ph. D., pages 928 to 931, of the hearings on S. 717 in 1945 when I then submitted it for the first time. Later in this statement I will present Dr. Lehmann's rebuttal to Mary Elizabeth Walsh's challenge, also I will present excerpts from an item in the New York Times in its issue of March 13, 1947, where the amazing admission of Bishop John F. Noll of Fort Wayne, Ind., is made to the effect that "Nearly all the evils of scoiety prevail most where we (Catholics) live and not where the Protestants live." The Converted Catholic magazine is published at 229 West Forty-eighth St., New York. Associated with Dr. Lehmann who is the editor are a number of former Roman Catholic priests who left the Church. Dr. Lehman substantiates his position by data taken from semiconfidential information derived from Roman Catholic authorative statistics. Dr. Lehmann says under the subtitle "Catholic Crime Statistics": If New York City be taken as a sample of wartime juvenile delinquency, the Roman Catholic Church must take the largest share of responsibility. Father George B. Ford, Roman Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, an authority on social matters, is on record as admitting that more than three-fifths of the juvenile delinquents arrested in New York City in the early part of 1943 were Roman Catholics. As quoted in the newspaper PM of February 29, 1944, he (Father Ford) declared: "During the first 4 months of 1943, 64 percent of the juvenile delinquents in children's court were Catholic. That means the Catholic Church has something to be greatly concerned about." Continuing, Dr. Lehmann stated: "How grave an indictment of the Roman Catholic Church this is may be judged from the fact that only about one-fifth of the total population of New York City is Roman Catholic. "The same amazing percentage of Roman Catholics is to be found among the most hardened adult criminals in jails and penitentiaries. A sample of this may be seen at Clinton Prison, Dannemora, N. Y., which is called the Siberia of America, both because of its frigid climate and the high percentage of long-terms and lifers. In a feature article in the New York Daily Mirror of March 12, 1941, lauding efforts of the Roman Catholic Church to reform the many Catholics there, it is revealed that of the total prison population of 1,989 at Dannemora, 1,200 are Roman Catholics. Reporting the results of a religious survey of all the jails of Connecticut, the Catholic Commonweal magazine for October 9, 1942, says: 'Catholics far outnumber Protestants in Connecticut jails, possibly by four to one'." Continuing, Dr. Lehmann states it is— "Well-known and provable fact that an abnormally high proportion of our prison population is the product of the Roman Catholic Church and its educational system where religion, the Roman Catholic religion, is the most important subject in the curriculum. In order to confirm and explain this fact, the writer of this article personally interviewed Mr. R. C. Kane, the chief observer in the criminal courts for * * * Committee on the Control of Crime. * * Mr. Kane's frank opinion was that the teaching of religion in the public schools would provide no deterrent to crime, since Roman Catholics numerically top all crime lists and the Catholic Church exceeds all others in teaching religion in schools." Continuing, Dr. Lehmann says: * "The statistics below fully bear out this conclusion. They are not taken from anti-Catholic sources, not even from the cold, impartial figures supplied by Government bureaus. In order to be scrupulously fair, I have taken them from official Catholic sources, from the published results of a lengthy and careful survey made by the Father Leo Kalmer, Order of Friars Minor, chaplain at Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, Ill., from 1917 to 1936, the year of publication. His facts and figures were supplied to him by 36 Roman Catholic prison chaplains throughout the country. There can, therefore, be no possibility that the figures have been unfairly made up by us to overstress the greater prevalence of crime among Catholics." On page 54, table II, are shown the following percentages of Catholics in the prison named: Brushby Mountain Prison, Petros, Tenn 0. 63 12. 20 32. 79 9. 96 43. 52 28. 85 21. 20 23. 44 State Penitentiary, Huntsville, Tex.- United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kans....... In judging these percentages must be remembered that Catholics according to their church's own estimates, form only about 16 percent of the total population of the United States. On page 76 of Father Kalmer's book, table III shows that in a selection of 28 States, the average Catholic population is slightly higher, but still only 17.24 percent whereas the average Catholic prison population in those same 28 States is 33.62 percent. But if we select a few typical States, we find the following: New York: 33.16 percent of total population is Catholic. 53.26 percent of prison population is Catholic. California: 16.83 percent of total population is Catholic. 43.61 percent of prison population is Catholic. Wisconsin: 23.79 percent total population is Catholic. 43.52 percent of prison population is Catholic. Wyoming: 7.13 percent of total population is Catholic. 32.18 percent of prison population is Catholic. It should be noted that these Catholic prison chaplains put forward the argument, as in their favor, that the majority of Catholics committed to prison are either of foreign birth or parentage, mostly Italian, Spanish, Polish, Austrian, and Irish. This, however, does not serve to exculpate the Catholic church, since these are Catholic countries par excellence, where "Roman Catholic culture" is most effective. On the contrary, it only serves to show that our much-maligned traditional American secular education and non-Catholic culture cannot be blamed for the crime increase in this country. The balance, therefore, in every instance— both as to religion and type of schooling-is in favor of non-Catholic upbringing and our secular public school education. If we turn to official Government statistics of the number of criminals committed to prisons each year, we find that a consistently abnormal 50 percent or more of them are Roman Catholics. This can be seen from the most recent annual reports of the commissioner of correction in the State of New York to the State legislature. In the latest available report for the year ending June 30, 1942, we find the following figures of prisoners committed to the two largest New York prisons-Clinton (Dannemora) and Sing Sing.1 1 cf. Annual report of the commissioner of correction for the year 1942 (published in 1943), p. 18. For the year ending June 30, 1941, we find the following (p. 19): For the year 1940, when Father Gannon delivered his diatribe before the New York State Chamber of Commerce against the godlessness of American secular education, the following figures on the religious affiliation of criminals committed to the above two prisons were submitted to the New York Legislature by the Commissioner of Correction (p. 18): There were no "pagans" committed that year to these two prisons. The same average of 50 percent Roman Catholic criminals committed to these two jails is listed consistently year after year in these reports. The significance of this high percentage can be judged by the fact that Roman Catholics make up only about 25 percent of the total population of New York State. THE NATURE OF CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS TEACHING This second aspect of education and crime requires probing into a matter that tolerant Americans want to avoid. Everybody is afraid to connect crime with any religious teaching. Yet if it could be provided that crime were more prevalent, say, among Mormons, Methodists, or Mennonites in proportion to crime among other religious sects, Catholic authorities would not hesitate to ask whether this is not due to the moral teachings of those sects. One should not hesitate, therefore, to pose this same question with regard to Roman Catholicism, since it is an admitted fact that crime among Roman Catholics is more than twice what it should be (all other things being equal) in proportion to the relative number of Catholics in the United States. Space here permits consideration of only one principle of Roman Catholic moral theology which could easily have a direct bearing on the question; namely, the condoning of theft and robbery under certain circumstances. This is known among Catholic theologians as occult compensation. It is also contained in catechisms and textbooks of Catholic doctrine used in Catholic schools in the United States. It is to be found, for instance, in the Manual of Christian Doctrine, which went into its fourty-ninth edition in 1928, and which bears the nihil obstat of M. S. Fisher, S. T. L., censor librorum, and of Arthur J. Scanlon, S. T. D., censor deputatus, along with the imprimatur of Cardinal-Archbishop Dougherty, of Philadelphia, and is published by John J. McVey, Philadelphia, Pa. the preface we are told that, "This book is intended as a manual of religious instruction not only in the novitiate and scholasticate of teaching congregations, but also in the classes of high schools, academies, and colleges." On page 295, this textbook describes and discusses theft, its nature and various forms, such as larceny, robbery, cheating, fraud, extortion, etc. On page 297, we have the following regarding the condoning of theft: "Question. What are the causes that excuse from theft?" In "Answer. 1. Extreme necessity, when a person takes only what is necessary, and does not thereby reduce to the same necessity the person whose property he takes. 2. Secret compensation, on condition that the debt so canceled be certain, that the creditor cannot recover his property by any other means, and that he take, as far as possible, things of the same kind as he had given." Now moral conduct can be no better than the moral principles upon which it is based. Most crimes are directly connected with thievery and robbery. If a Roman Catholic youth, for instance, can persuade himself that he has "extreme necessity" for an automobile, he will consider himself justified in stealing it |