Nor have the Irish prelates been unmindful of their duty in this
respect. In 1824, that is to say, five years before Catholic
emancipation, and in the midst of the struggle for that recognition of
the existence of their people as citizens, they presented to Parliament
a petition, from which I make the following extract, which clearly shows
their conviction of the necessity of religious education:

"That in the Roman Catholic Church the literary and religious
instruction of youth are universally combined, and that no system of
education which separates them can be acceptable to the members of her
communion; that the religious instruction of youth in Catholic schools
is always conveyed by means of catachetical instruction, daily prayer,
and the reading of religious books, wherein the Gospel morality is
explained and inculcated; that Roman Catholics have ever considered the
reading of the Sacred Scriptures by children as an inadequate means of
imparting to them religious instruction, as a usage whereby the Word of
God is made liable to irreverence, youth exposed to misunderstand its
meaning, and thereby not unfrequently to receive in early life
impressions which may afterwards prove injurious to their own best
interests, as well as to those of the society which they are destined to
form. That schools whereof the master professes a religion different
from that of his pupils, or from which such religious instruction as the
Catholic Church prescribes for youth is excluded, or in which books and
tracts not sanctioned by it are read or commented on, cannot be resorted
to by the children of Roman Catholics; and that threats and rewards have
been found equally unavailing as a means of inducing Catholic parents to
procure education for their children from such persons or in such
schools; that any system of education incompatible with the discipline
of the Catholic Church, or superintended exclusively by persons
professing a religion different from that of the vast majority of the
poor of Ireland, cannot possibly be acceptable to the latter, and must,
in its progress, be slow and embarrassed, generating often distrust and
discord as well as a want of that mutual good faith and perfect
confidence which should prevail between those who receive benefits and
those who dispense them."

The Irish Bishops again expressed the like sentiments in 1826.

_Address of the National Synod of Thurles._

A National Synod met in Thurles in Au