Bulletin of Catholic University of Peking

18 BULLETIN NUMBER FOUR

“Time was when the Foreign Powers sought to force their “protection” willynilly upon the Missionaries. Nowadays, however, those selfsame Foreign Powers, whether through a change of policy or from a sense of their own impotence to deal with the situation, abstain, for the most part, from any attempt to give adequate protection. Hence the Missionary of to-day may be molested, or put to death, with impunity, while Mission property may be seized, looted or destroyed at the whim of a militarist, or of a revolutionary society, without prospect of redress or recourse.

“Nor is this hostility to religion confined to the political sphere. It is, in fact, no less conspicuous in literary and educational circles. China is being flooded with an immense number of books, pamphlets, and newspapers, which are spreading the most monstrous calumnies against Christianity and which are paving the way for a future persecution of the Church. For calumnies of this kind are an incentive to persecution, they supply a pretext for persecution, they are circulated, in fact, for no other purpose than to bring about a persecution. “The reading of the works of Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, and Karl Marx is prescribed in the foremost universities of the land, while the names and works of Frangois Voltaire, Auguste Comte, and Anatole France are familiar to the average university student. Nay, even in the primers of the children in the primary grades the poisonous doctrine of materialistic evolution has already made its appearance. Hence it is with the greatest anxiety that we contemplate that future day when the students of the present generation shall take up the reins of government as the leaders and teachers of the Chinese ‘people.

“Tt is our firm conviction, that, in this great crisis, the whole future of the Church in China (so far as human judgment can foresee) depends upon the energy with which we labor to advance the interests of Catholic education. For, to the credit of the Chinese people, it must be acknowledged that, unlike Western nations, they have never held in high esteem the merchant princes and captains of industry, but have invariably reserved supreme honors for their litera-

teurs and savants. Hence in the present decline of the prestige of the Foreign Powers and the simultaneous rise of the new and growing sense of nationalism in China, nothing (except the actual saving of souls) is of greater importance to the Church in this country than that her sons should be equipped, through the agency of higher education, with the intellectual weapons necessary for combat upon a field hitherto new and untried. For solely upon these terms will they be able to hold their own among the educated classes of the nation and vindicate for their Divine religion “a place in the sun.’

“Far be it from us to minimize the great progress which our Catholic Missions have made during recent years in the matter of education. But we all know only too well, how far we still are from having achieved anything distantly resembling perfection in our educational system. We stand in need, above all else, of institutions of higher learning, which can receive the graduates of Middle Schools and by suitable training prepare good Catholic teachers for the Catholic Primary, Middle, and Normal Schools.

“To attain this purpose, we are persuaded that a University School devoted to liberal studies is of more immediate importance than schools giving courses in the natural sciences and their technical applications. Hence the Catholic University of Peking proposes, for the present, at least, to limit its scope to the teaching of the liberal arts and letters, deferring the establishment of a School of Science until some later date. For we believe that the adoption of this policy will enable us to meet the present needs of our Catholic Missions in the most effective way possible under existing conditions.

“We enclose a bulletin describing in detail our various courses in Chinese Letters, in English, in History, and in Philosophy. We wish, moreover, to call your attention to the following special advantages accruing to the Catholic student:

“(1) Besides the Benedictine monks (who will teach Western letters and sciences) eminent Chinese professors of the first rank and of national reputation have been en-

gaged.