ROMAN CATHOLICS AND THE SCHOOLS Sin,—A few years ago a
Roman Catholic bishop wrote to our Cambridge paper appealing for State support of his schools on the ground of equal justice for all citizens. I put to him a question which Cardinal Bourne had answered in vague and equivocal language, evidently presuming on a Cardinal's im- munity from close cross-examination: Would the Roman Church, in any country in which she had, not 6 per cent., but 94 per cent. of the population support non-Roman schools on the prin- ciple of equal justice? No answer could be extracted from that bishop. Yet it has been given, again and again, by standard theologians, writing, not in English for democratic readers, but in Latin for the whole priesthood of their Church. Let me quote only one, Cardinal Billot, in his Treatise of the Church of Christ (1921, Vol. II, page 102): " We are always brought back to that principle wherein lies the sum of the whole matter (italics mine). Certainly the Church pro- claims that there is in the world one single religion instituted by Gcd, and that she alone has the rights and the majesty of religion ; that ,-.1 the other hand other sects are false, wherein robberies are practised, not God's work, not the salvation of souls, not the prosecution of our eternal and ultmate aim. Hence, therefore, come two weights or two measures. For, if the Catholic religion had not these, she would 117 that very fact profess herself to be one among many, not from heav ca but from men."
This, and a good deal more to the same effect, may be read in a pamphlet which you will perhaps allow me to mentiod here. It
is entitled The R.C. Church in Politics, and may be had for 3d. post free from my secretary at 90 Kimberley Road, Cambridge.— Yours, &c., G. G. COULTON.
St. John's College, Cambridge.
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