Why was the conflict over the religious ideals of Catholic immigrants such an important issue in the development of public education?

Answer 1

Roman Catholic Answerfrom Radio Replies, by Fathers Rumble and Carty, 1942

1459. Do Catholics regard state schools as monuments of blind bigotry, that they won't use them?

They are not monuments of blind bigotry. I believe that the state school system was evolved by men who honestly but mistakenly believed it to be the best system for our country. But they appealed to blind bigotry in order to secure their purpose. Sir Henry Parkes said publicly in support of the necessary legislation, "I hold in my hand a bill which will spell death to the calling of the Roman Catholic clergy." It did not. And in order to compel Catholic acceptance of the state school system, the government unjustly refused to allow Catholics to spend their share of the educational taxes on their own children. The government cannot have any object to the standard of education in secular subjects given in Catholic schools, for they give an education fully equal to that given in state schools where these subjects are concerned.

1460. What is your attitude toward state schools? Do you think them Satanic and their founders devils?

I accuse the founders of no conscious error. But I say that the system, whilst not positively teaching Satanic doctrine, is truly an agent of the devil rather than of Christ in so far as it omits religious formation as an integral part of its program. The child may be taught to be outwardly respectable, but he finds no adequate interior motive for his private conduct. He is animal rather than spiritual. He is not conscious of being a child very dear to God. What religion he may have secured in other ways is not consolidated and it soon disappears. A very small proportion of children thus trained bother about religion after they have set out on the path of life. And all this is certainly not a matter of grief to Satan. An Anglican clergyman once said sadly to me, "We Anglicans played the part of Judas when we handed our children over to the tender mercies of the state by approving the state school system."

1461. The state offers the best schools in the world, irrespective of religion.

That is self-contradictory. Education which abstracts from religion, the very soul of true education, cannot be the best. That is not true education which fills the mind with facts and figures, but which does not form the whole man, intellectually, morally, and religiously. Every bit as much, if not more time, should be given to the child's moral and religious formation.