interests of life, the purely transitory and inferior elements of education. But if an immediate co-operation be impossible in the matter of religious education between Catholics and Protestants, is there no form of mediate or less close cooperation that would be acceptable? As a matter of fact, such a co-operation does exist in Germany and Austria, in Ireland and elsewhere. The schools are national and common, the pupils, Catholic and Protestant, attend the same scholastic courses and are taught by the same teachers, who are legally appointed without regard to religious preference, and after fulfilment of all civil requirements.

But the religious instruction is furnished according to the expressed wishes of the parents, by ministers of their faith, at fixed hours, and all children are required to attend the instructions of their own religious denomination. some places, as at Frankfort, there are occasionally two professors of history, so that in this important matter, the delicacy of the child's conscience need not be violated.

In places where the political and social contact of Catholics and Protestants has been and is very close, ways have been found of co-operation for the common welfare in the matter of religious and moral education. The attitude of the Catholic authority is not so absolutely uncompromising as has been sometimes stated. In all those delicate questions that belong to the borderland between the Roman Catholic Church and the civil society, her supreme authority will always be found quite moderate and conciliatory, bent on saving the essentials of Catholic interests, but willing to go a long way in order to encourage and confirm national and municipal concord and amity in all temporal matters.

In the present temper of the great majority of our American people we shall all have to go on as we are going, thankful that there is nothing in our written constitutions or in the habits of our people to interfere with the natural and rightful liberty of the parent-citizen to educate his children as he sees fit, without any interference from a doctrinaire bureaucracy. We can emphasize our many points of agreement among the broad and fundamental considerations that confirm this general thesis of the great need of scholastic reform in the sense of religious and moral education. We can habituate ourselves to recognize a common peril in a dechristianized American soul, equipped as man never was before, with all the powers and opportunities that our mighty State has called forth and developed, or rather has only begun to call forth and develop.

N.B.-The postage on "THE CATHOLIC WORLD" to Great Britain and Ireland, France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany is 6 cents.

The Parish Schools

OF

New York.

A Pamphlet giving heretofore unpublished statistics on the number of pupils attending, and the property and running expenses of, the Parochial Schools of New York State.

Valuable for the data which it presents, this pamphlet will be found most useful by both clergy and laity.

HE Third Annual Convention of the Religious Education Association was held in Boston from February 12 to 16 of the current year. So important was this gathering, both from the position of those who participated in the various meetings and from the nature of the topics discussed, that a brief survey thereof will assuredly interest all readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. It may be stated at the outset, by way of explanation, that this association came into existence in Chicago in February, 1903. At that time the American Institute of Sacred Literature, one of the many organizations affiliated with the Chicago University, called a meeting of prominent educators to consider the grave moral problems dealing with the modern training of the young. Over four hundred persons, eminent in many walks of life, accepted the invitation, and for three days closely discussed the moral needs of our times. The outcome of these meetings was the formation of the Religious Education Association, which was planned to meet the ethical difficulties of our time in somewhat the way as the National Education Association strives to meet the nation's educational needs.

The charter membership of the association was 1,276, each member paying a $1 enrollment fee and $2 annual dues. By

Copyright. 1905. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

VOL. LXXXI.—I