Should not such atmosphere of infidelity or diluted Christianity in non-Catholic universities be for Catholic students a source of danger to the vigour and even to the integrity of their faith, to their constancy, in the full and faithful observance of their practical religious duties?  Familiarity with error, at the age of youth principally, breeds contempt of truth and jeopardizes faith.  The suppression of truth in its various forms, the concealment of religious profession and observance, necessarily lead to religious indifference.  How many sad examples could we not give to back this statement?  This danger which Catholic youth meets with in the very atmosphere of our neutral universities is still greater when we consider the method of teaching now in honour in these schools of higher learning.  The tutorial method, still in vogue at Oxford, has given place to the professorial.  The systematic lecture has replaced the exposition of texts.  The professor, with his frame of mind, his views on facts and ideas, is the living book from which our youth read their daily lesson.  His personality dominates the mind of the pupil.  We all know what fascination the science, reputation and eloquence of a professor have on the unarmed and impressionable minds of youth.  The “Magister dixit” is very often the supreme law, the last criterion of truth.  President Garfield’s ideal of a college, “Mark Hopkins on the other end of the log,” recognizes the educative value of the contact with a master-mind.

Authority and reason militate in favor of higher Catholic education for Catholics in Western Canada, this is the logical conclusion of our statements.

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Yes, nice theories, some may say; but we are facing facts.  How are we to contend with these well equipped, richly endowed, neutral institutions of higher education?  Where shall we find the resources to pay efficient teachers, to establish the various faculties that go to form a university worthy of its name?  Have we not a state-university marvellously well equipped and for which our Provinces are yearly spending fabulous sums?  Why not take advantage of our own money that goes in taxes for the support of these institutions?

To argue along these lines is to concede to our enemies our position on the Separate School question.  All these objections have been met with in other countries and other provinces, and the answer to them was the creation of Catholic colleges and universities.

The great fallacy of the age, and particularly in this part of the country, is State Monopoly in educational matters.  This is looked upon as the great triumph of modern democracy and the palladium of liberty.  The monopoly over the human mind by this monopoly of education is the most dangerous of all state-monopolies.  It is the resurrection of the pagan ideal, the magnification of the state to the detriment and absorption of the individual and the family.  Germany has given us an example of where “the standardization of thought and outlook” by the State education leads to.  The Prussian ideal, in its last analysis, is nothing else but the pagan ideal.