Posted on 11/14/2013 6:57:18 AM PST by Alex Murphy
....The effect of a tension between growing religious divisions within the student bodies and the public school curricula was that schools hit on the expedient of “secularizing” the curriculum. But soon, for some Protestants, the public, common schools, which had been started as a concession to the minority Catholics could now be used to “check the spread of Catholicism” by teaching all children “Republican values.” But, Catholics, like postmodernists of today, could see that a supposedly “secular” curriculum was actually impossible, that religious assumptions would still always be evident, even if they were simply assumptions that an education could be had by comprehending the world devoid of religious categories, as “neutral” or “secular.” Or, to put it another way, that large swaths of the universe were comprehensible without reference to God, that religion was just what existed inside the church or in catechism class. This was essentially incompatible with a Catholic view....
....One of the school trustees, a Catholic, came to school one morning and loudly protested against the reading of the Bible, or the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, or the singing of hymns during school. The principal turned to the assembled restive students and asked if any of them objected to the religious exercises, and 42 of the 45 students stood up, some of them non-Catholics. He then expelled the lot of them, which brought a crowd of furious parents to the school almost immediately. The remaining Catholic children who confronted Principal Seiberg each morning became rowdier and more obstreperous each morning during the prayers, until the day when Kate Dennen fired off her fusillade, followed by her brother’s launching of his quid....
....Seiberg was accosted on the street and had rocks thrown at him a few times. Some of the windows and sashes at the school were broken. Crowds of boys greeted Seiberg on the street outside the school each day, chanting “Don’t believe that.” A squad of four policemen took up stations outside the school. The Board offered a “compromise”: The principal would omit hymn-singing and reciting the Psalms, and would only read the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, without comment. Fr. Crimmin would not accept this because Catholics could not take part in a non-Catholic ceremony. Well, then, the Board proposed, how about if the principal read from the Catholic Bible? No, said Fr. Crimmin, the school board could not legally require any of that, and besides, why would he be willing to “inflict a grievance” on his Protestant neighbors “of which he himself had complained”? So the board backed off from its offer to compromise and ordered the principal to proceed as before....
....A great public meeting was then held, where it was concluded to petition the New York State Board of Education to void the requirement for Bible reading or religious services. Fr. Crimmin penned the petition; it was duly signed by the mass of people at the meeting, and was forwarded to Albany, along with forty affidavits from aggrieved parents. Fr. Crimmin urged his parishioners to protest, but peaceably. In addition, he invited the popular and well-known Manhattan priest, Fr. Edward McGlynn, to come to St. Mary’s and address the issue. Fr. McGlynn was in fact not in favor of parochial schools and was thoroughly at ease with “cross-denominational” civic-betterment projects and had many dealings with Protestant professionals. Some who opposed the Catholics in this matter appear to have expected him to urge compromise because he favored sending Catholic children to public schools. If they expected that, however, they were disappointed: precisely because he favored sending Catholics to public schools, he was adamant that Bible reading and prayers must not have a place there....in June of 1872, Abram B. Weaver, the (Dutch Reformed) Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of New York ruled in favor of the petitioners, and ordered that, throughout New York State, no prayers, Bible readings, or religious exercises were to be included as part of the curriculum of the public schools. William Seiberg soon transferred his duties as principal to another school in Manhattan, and the school children of New York proceeded with their now-secularized education.
It’s gone from teaching that to secularism to now teaching about Islam and reciting the Shahada.
Early Catholics against prayer in school?
Protestant prayer forced on Catholics, yes.
Hmmmmm
Catholics don’t pray the Lord’s Prayer? Rather than disrupt, the Catholics could quit at the end, then say amen. So it isn’t just the secularists that kicked God out of school.
True - it's not like Protestants offer prayers to the same triune God.
841: The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."
-- The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Of course, had the situation been reversed, and the reading prescribed by the Irish Catholic school board had been from the Douay-Rheims, followed by singing the Pater Noster in Latin in Gregorian Chant, the Protestants would have been fine with that. Sure they would ... now can I sell you some swampland in New Jersey?
Don’t miss the point of the dispute. The purpose of the Bible Reading was indoctrination. Suppose that New York had required a short service at the start using the Book of Common Prayer. Think the Baptists would have like that? In Italy, in Germany, and in France there was an assault on the Catholic Church. The Irish Catholics, whose faith had been long suppressed, were now in America and were free to oppose this. So they did.
Really? Did the principal give a sermon? How does reciting the Lord's Prayer indoctrinate Catholics? Your supposing assumes a service, the article doesn't speak of one. The assumption of the priest was that there was an indoctrination purpose. The result, in short, .org over God.
Don't know about the chanting, but the rest was proposed and shot down to not offend Protestants, result God out of school.
From the article:
The Board offered a “compromise”: The principal would omit hymn-singing and reciting the Psalms, and would only read the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, without comment. Fr. Crimmin would not accept this because Catholics could not take part in a non-Catholic ceremony. Well, then, the Board proposed, how about if the principal read from the Catholic Bible? No, said Fr. Crimmin, the school board could not legally require any of that, and besides, why would he be willing to “inflict a grievance” on his Protestant neighbors “of which he himself had complained”?
“Catholics don’t pray the Lord’s Prayer?”
Not the protestant version, no.
“Rather than disrupt, the Catholics could quit at the end, then say amen. So it isn’t just the secularists that kicked God out of school.”
It wasn’t secularists who were forcing the Protestant religion down the throats of non-Protestants.
“The Lord’s Prayer is Protestant?”
The Protestant version, yes.
“True - it’s not like Protestants offer prayers to the same triune God.”
They do, but they were doing so while forcing their heresies and prejudice onto Catholic children.
I notice you skipped reading the article. Catholic readings with no comment were rejected. No, this is all about Catholics expelling God from school.
Enlightening article! Thanks for posting.
Protestant ending to the “The Lord’s Prayer”.
“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen”
The doxology of the prayer is not contained in Luke’s version, nor is it present in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew, representative of the Alexandrian text, but is present in the manuscripts representative of the Byzantine text. It is thus absent in the oldest and best manuscripts of Matthew, and most scholars do not consider it part of the original text of Matthew. Modern translations generally omit it.
I read the entire article at the original website.
Tammany Hall.
IIRC that was the Democratic/Irish Catholic political machine that ran NYC and NY state politics. Not a perfect analogy, but close to what we see in Chicago today.
And it differs how?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.