Till very recently, the secondary Catholic schools received no assistance whatever from the State, and their endowment from private sources was utterly inadequate to supply suitable remuneration for lay teachers.

It is evident that a celibate clergy _can_ live on a lower wage than the laity, and they are now charged with having monopolized the schools, because they chose to work for a minimum allowance rather than suffer the country to remain without any secondary education whatever.

Two causes, then, operated in the past, and in a large measure still operate, to exclude the laity from the secondary schools,--first, these schools were so poverty-stricken that they could not afford to pay lay teachers at such a rate as would attract them to the teaching profession, and, next, the Catholic laity as a body were uneducated, and, therefore, unfit to teach in the schools.'-- _Maynooth and the University Question_, p.

109 (footnote).
[20] See, _inter alia_, an article "Ireland and America," by Rev.Mr.
Shinnors, O.M., in the _Irish Ecclesiastical Record_, February, 1902.
'Has the Church,' asks Father Shinnors, 'increased her membership in the ratio that the population of the United States has increased?
No.

There are many converts, but there are many more apostates.