Wheeling Register

THAT DEDICATORY ADDRESS Mr. Dryden, Says the Writer, 'Went Out of His Way to Make Ill-natured Fling at Catholicity.'

To the Editor of the Register.

SIR:—Your issue of this morning contains the synopsis of an address delivered by the Rev. M. F. Dryden, a Protestant minister of the First ward, yesterday afternoon, at the dedicatory exercises of the Washington District School. In that address Mr. Dryden went out of his way to make an ill-natured fling at Catholicity, giving it that ill-mannered nickname, Ultramontanism, of which the meaner sort of the Catholic Church's opponents are so fond. Catholics, remembering the career so lately closed—of that illustrious Catholic Irish-American, 'Gallant Phil. Sheridan,' can well afford to pass over the reverend gentleman's generalizations and unwarranted charges that Catholicity is opposed to American freedom and American institutions. That slander is beginning to die of its own inherent weakness. But Mr. Dryden also took occasion to refer to what he is pleased to call 'the revolution in Boston,' 'You are all familiar,' he says to his hearers, 'how, under the influence of the Jesuits, Swinton's history was thrown from the curriculum of the schools and the superintendent (?) suspended from his position. But the liberty-loving people of that city, with a spirit that animated their fathers, rose en masse and demanded that the book be restored to the curriculum and the worthy superintendent (?) to his position.' I write this card, Mr. Editor, simply in the interest of the truth and in no spirit of controversy. The version given yesterday in North Wheeling, of the Boston school affair, is most unfair, whether intentionally so or not, I leave to those who know how the Rev. gentleman is accustomed to use facts which are not to his liking. The facts of the case are as follows: The Boston School Committee, the majority of which are Protestants, not containing a single one of 'those horrible Jesuits,' but including a Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Duryea, decided to throw out of the public schools of that city Swinton's 'Outlines of the World's History,' because that work grossly misrepresents the Catholic doctrine of indulgence; and to suspend Mr. C. B. Travis, a High School teacher, who, in spite of the repeated protests of his Catholic pupils, insisted on teaching that indulgences are licenses to commit sin. Dr. Duryea, the Protestant clergyman referred to, voted with the majority in this action. Judge J. D. Fallon, a member of the Board, said to a newspaper reporter: 'The teaching of Mr. Travis in the matter of indulgences has been extremely improper. I have here quotations from several historical papers written by the pupils which show that a totally erroneous idea of the doctrine has been implanted in the minds of the pupils. His teaching has been worse than the book; he has gone beyond it. As to the bare statements of fact in Swinton's book, they are not so objectionable as the manner in which they are stated and the interpretation which is given of indulgences in the foot-note. But the book is bad enough, and on account of this objectionable feature, the Committee on Text Books decided to throw it out.' Now, something about the second part of the citation from Mr. D.'s address—that part referring to ''the liberty-loving portion of the community' rising in a body and demanding the return of the book and teacher. On July 12th an anti-Catholic demonstration was held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, during which the crowd, not unlike some of our bigoted Protestant friends not a thousand miles distant from the North End, frothed at the mouth and ranted and grew faint at the thought of 'Jesuits' and 'priests' and other such horrible bugaboos! If we would obtain an idea of the liberty-loving and justice-loving character of this Faneuil Hall assembly, we have only to turn to the newspaper accounts of the meeting, and see how the audience received the declaration there of the Rev. Mr. Plumb, that 'a good Catholic might be a good citizen,' and the attempt of the Rev. Mr. Maxson to apologize for Dr. Duryea, who, you will remember, voted to eject the text-book. The sentiment that a good Catholic might be a good citizen, the report tells us, was howled and hissed down, though the president of the meeting tried his best to obtain a hearing for the speaker; and a good word for the Rev. Dr. Duryea, known to be 'a gentleman of the highest character, of broad sympathies and true moral courage,' was received with the significant cry of 'Rats' and repeated hisses. Apparently a very refined audience, as well as justice-loving, was it not? And all this 'revolution' of the 'liberty' loving portion of the community' was made, why? Simply because Boston Catholics asked that the Boston public schools should really be unsectarian as they were vaunted to be; because Boston Catholics demanded the removal of the teacher who (to use Rev. D.'s words of yesterday) was 'not in sympathy with the spirit and purpose of our institutions, and who not only taught the principles of his own religion to the youth of these schools in open defiance of the law,' but grossly and knowingly misrepresented the religion of some of his pupils. This is a good opportunity for Protestants to apply the test of the Golden Rule 'Do as you would be done by.' Suppose that a Catholic teacher in a public school should misrepresent Protestantism to his pupils. What a howl of 'Romish aggression' would sweep from one end of our land to the other! With what frightened cries of 'sectarian control of the public schools' our penny press would be filled! Yet here is a case where a School Board, the majority of which is Protestant, admits that the Catholics have full cause of complaint; but for all that we are not allowed to hold up our hands and call for 'fair play.' without being covered with the foulness of bigoted know-nothingism. All fair-minded Protestants who have enough of true American manliness to desire to do justice to Catholics, no matter how black we are painted, or how grossly maligned, may learn something from the following which comes from a source neither Protestant nor Catholic. The American Hebrew is quoted on this very subject as follows: 'To our mind there should be an agitation for the condemnation of the Boston Protestants who have again introduced into the arena of American thought the horrible nightmare of sectarian controversy. Waiving aside all their sophistries and frothy rhetoric, the fact remains that their indignation is aroused, not because any Catholics have introduced, or proposed to introduce, any Catholic teachings, but because the Catholics prevented the Protestants from introducing anti-Catholic or Protestant teachings. If the dismissed teacher felt that she had a call to dispense light on the subject of 'indulgences' their relation to Luther and the Reformation, she should have made arrangements with some lecture bureau. Her vocation as a public school teacher was, however, incompatible with that of special pleader for Martin Luther. She was paid by the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish people Boston to teach their children the rudiments of knowledge without touch upon any subjects in a manner to hurt their political, social, or religious sentiments any. The crack-brained cry of No Popery is, in connection, a wanton cry Respectfully, CHARLES A. WINGERT. September 4th, 1888.