always
what is abstractedly best. Where no direct duty forbids, we may be obliged
to do, as being best under circumstances, what we murmur and rise against,
while we do it. We see that to attempt more is to effect less; that we
must accept so much, or gain nothing; and so perforce we reconcile
ourselves to what we would have far otherwise, if we could. Thus a system
of what is called secular Education, in which Theology and the Sciences
are taught separately, may, in a particular place or time, be the least of
evils; it may be of long standing; it may be dangerous to meddle with; it
may be professedly a temporary arrangement; it may be under a process of
improvement; its disadvantages may be neutralized by the persons by whom,
or the provisions under which, it is administered.

Hence it was, that in the early ages the Church allowed her children to
attend the heathen schools for the acquisition of secular accomplishments,
where, as no one can doubt, evils existed, at least as great as can attend
on Mixed Education now. The gravest Fathers recommended for Christian
youth the use of Pagan masters; the most saintly Bishops and most
authoritative Doctors had been sent in their adolescence by Christian
parents to Pagan lecture halls.(3) And, not to take other instances, at
this very time, and in this very country, as regards at least the poorer
classes of the community, whose secular acquirements ever must be limited,
it has seemed best to the Irish Bishops, under the circumstances, to
suffer the introduction into the country of a system of Mixed Education in
the schools called National. Such a state of things, however, is passing
away; as regards University education at least, the highest authority has
now decided that the plan, which is abstractedly best, is in this time and
country also most expedient.

4.

And here I have an opportunity of recognizing once for all that higher
view of approaching the subject of these Discourses, which, after this
formal recognition, I mean to dispense with. Ecclesiastical authority, not
argument, is the supreme rule and the appropriate guide for Catholics in
matters of religion. It has always the right to interpose, and sometimes,
in the conflict of parties and opinions, it is called on to exercise that
right. It has lately exercised it in our own instance: it has interposed
in favour of a pure University system for Catholic youth, forbidding
compromise or accommodation of any kin