V. On Schools

75. The family is an altogether natural society, which God Himself constituted, and it is presupposed to ecclesiastical and civil society; for each, without the family, which is the first society and the foundation of the others, can neither be nor be conceived in the present order of things. Hence at once and easily the conclusion is deduced that children belong first to parents, and that the civil state cannot claim them for itself, in order to educate them both corporally and morally, with the work of parents excluded. Those who assert this and do this deny and violate the rights of nature itself. Wherefore parents at the same time have both the right and the obligation to educate children in a Christian manner, according to their own Christian and Catholic religion, which alone is true. The right education of children consists in truth, not in error.

76. Civil society can in no way hinder this; on the contrary it is bound to furnish helping work. For the elements of political society are proximately families, which, since they are imperfect societies, are developed and unfolded by civil society, which is a perfect society. For this alone is sufficient and more than sufficient for fully satisfying human necessities, and for unfolding the powers by which man strives toward the perfection suitable to himself. Therefore, when the family grows into a city or kingdom, it does not lose its preexisting rights, but perfects them. And for this reason, from the civil bond superadded, it ought both to exercise them more easily and to unfold them more fully. In civil society that further perfection is sought which cannot be obtained in domestic society.

77. Therefore the aforesaid right and obligation of Christian parents to educate their own children in the Christian and Catholic religion cannot be suppressed by civil society; nor can civil society claim it for itself, just as it cannot claim for itself, for example, the care of the economic or domestic order. Hence in the Encyclical Quanta cura of Pius IX, there are expressly condemned those professing "that domestic society or the family borrows the reason of its existence only from civil law, and consequently that all the rights of parents over children, and especially the right of caring for their instruction and education, emanate and depend only from civil law." Aptly Leo XIII: "Paternal power is of such a kind that it can neither be extinguished nor absorbed by the republic, because it has the same and common principle with human life itself. Sons are something of the father, and as it were a certain enlargement of the paternal person: and if we wish to speak properly, not they by themselves, but through the domestic community in which they were generated, enter and participate in civil society." Enc. de Condit. opificum.

78. But how grave this right and at the same time obligation of parents is, of educating children in a Christian manner in the Catholic faith, is easily clear from this: although the inseparability of marriage pertains to the natural order of mutual justice to be observed among men, nevertheless in favor of the faith, divine authority intervening, the right which one spouse has acquired over the other from the contract of marriage, and which naturally is perpetual, is taken away; namely by reason of the higher supernatural end which God most wisely intends. "Marriage," says St. Thomas, 4 D. 39, q. 1, a. 2, "was instituted principally for the good of offspring, not only to be generated, because this could happen without marriage; but also to be promoted to a perfect state, because each thing naturally intends to bring its effect to a perfect state. But in offspring a twofold perfection is to be considered, namely the perfection of nature, not only as to the body, but also as to the soul, through those things which are of the law of nature; and the perfection of grace. And the first perfection is material and imperfect with respect to the second. And therefore, since those things which are for an end are proportioned to the end, marriage, which tends to the first perfection, is imperfect and material with respect to that which tends to the second perfection," and consequently because of the defect of that second perfection, namely of grace and faith, the marriage of infidels, although naturally inseparable, nevertheless has less firmness than the marriage of the faithful. "But always a firmer bond dissolves a less firm one, if it is contrary to it; and therefore the marriage which afterwards is contracted in the faith of Christ dissolves the marriage which had previously been contracted in infidelity." St. Thomas, 4 D. 39, q. 1, a. 5, ad 1.

79. Now if parents have this most noble right and most grave obligation of educating children in the Christian and Catholic faith, children on the contrary have no right to repudiate this education, but are bound to accept it with an altogether docile mind. And this is clear not only by natural reason, but is expressly asserted in Sacred Scripture. In Proverbs, chapter 1, verses 8 and 9, it is said: "Hear, my son, the discipline of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother. My son, if sinners shall entice thee, consent not to them." And again chapter 6, verses 20 and 21: "Keep, my son, the commandments of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother. Bind them in thy heart continually, and put them about thy throat. When thou shalt walk, let them go with thee; when thou shalt sleep, let them keep thee; and when thou awakest, speak with them." And the Apostle Paul to the Colossians, chapter 3, verse 20: "Children," he says, "obey your parents in all things; for this is pleasing in the Lord."

80. Parents can exercise the aforesaid right over children through themselves, and through others, who are in the place of parents and perform by delegation of parents. These regularly are the teachers of schools. Therefore schools must be chosen by parents for their children, in which they may be educated in a Christian and Catholic manner, according to the religion of the same parents. Besides, parents are bound to watch lest from teachers, from books, from fellow-students, their children undergo danger to their own soul. But if this happens, parents must promptly recall their own children from schools of this kind, perverse schools.

81. In the present state of society, however, without doubt a certain necessity is present for sons of families to frequent public schools, so that afterwards they themselves may be able to procure for themselves suitable aids of life. Even elementary instruction in letters, although it is not absolutely necessary for all, nevertheless is necessary: those who lack it are liable to many difficulties and inconveniences, neither few nor slight, for passing life in a fitting manner, and also for averting harms to faith and morals.

82. Wherefore in a Christian and Catholic nation its rulers are held by grave obligation to establish Christian and Catholic schools, both especially elementary schools, in which the first instruction of boys is had, and also middle and higher schools. For in all schools of this kind, even in middle and in higher schools, graver and most grave dangers can be present for boys and adolescents as to faith and as to morals. And if Governments fulfilled this grave obligation, it would yield to the supreme good of families and of the nations themselves. For as all atheists, indifferentists, free-thinkers, sectarians, Freemasons, heretics, modernists, and all wicked and impious men are to the immense harm of families, so also are they to the most mournful ruin of Catholic nations.

83. The rulers of society wander away from their most grave obligation, even for the public good, by establishing schools positively non-Catholic, in which infidelity, heresy, impiety, and iniquity are taught openly in the mouth and before the eyes of all, or by establishing neutral schools, which in the instruction of boys prescind from the positive teaching office of religion. But since this can scarcely be possible in practice, what in schools of this kind is said, often at least, if not always, concerning religion, is said against the Catholic religion. And although in neutral schools of this kind nothing is said against religion, nevertheless in reality they are not neutral; for by their very silence they keep boys away from religion, and of themselves lead them to indifferentism and atheism. This is confirmed everywhere in our time by patent fact itself.

84. Where there is present at the same time a Catholic school, a positively non-Catholic school, and a neutral school, parents cannot, without grave sin, send their own children to the latter, unless grave damage altogether were imminent for them or their children. This indeed can then be tolerated, yet on this absolute condition, that boys and adolescents not be exposed to proximate danger of eternal salvation. The proximate danger in schools of this kind must be rendered remote. Therefore diligent vigilance must be applied by fathers of families, lest their children suffer harm. They themselves outside school must instruct their own children in those things which it is necessary to know for the Catholic faith and for leading a Christian life, and especially teach them those things which are attacked in the aforesaid schools. But parents will be able to furnish this either through themselves or through other suitable persons, especially priests, by whose assiduous work they may provide for the religious instruction of their own children. Nor indeed is faith alone to be placed in safety, but honesty of morals also must especially be attended to. And this other danger to morals, certainly no less grave, is in those schools which are mixed, namely which boys and girls of each sex frequent promiscuously together.

85. Moreover, if to these things which have just now been established is added the precept given by Jesus Christ to the Apostles and their successors: "Going, teach all nations... Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Matt. 28:19, 20, it is easily understood that the following errors were altogether proscribed by law in the Syllabus:

"45. The entire government of public schools, in which the youth of some Christian Republic is instructed... can and ought to be attributed to the civil authority....."

"47. The best condition of civil society demands that popular schools, which are open to all children of whatever class of the people, and public Institutes, which are destined for teaching letters and the more severe disciplines and for caring for the education of youth, be exempted from every authority of the Church, from her moderating force and interference, and be subjected to the full judgment of civil and political authority, according to the pleasure of rulers and the exact rule of the common opinions of the age."

"48. That method of instructing youth can be approved by Catholic men which is separated from the Catholic Faith and from the power of the Church, and which looks only, or at least primarily, to the science of merely natural things and the ends of earthly social life."

86. The things which have been said hitherto are worth confirming by the doctrine handed down by Leo XIII in his Encyclical Letter to the Bishops of Gaul, Nobilissima Gallorum gens, of the day Feb. 8, 1884. With most grave words the Supreme Pontiff admonishes parents that their children be educated in Catholic and duly instituted schools. "And first indeed," he says, "as regards domestic society, it is of the greatest concern that offspring received from Christian marriage be early instructed in the precepts of religion; and that those arts by which childhood is accustomed to be formed to humanity be joined with religious instruction. To separate the latter from the former is the same as in very fact to will that childish minds be moved to neither side in duties toward God: which discipline is fallacious, and, especially in the first little ages of boys, most pernicious, because in reality it prepares the way of atheism, and blocks religion. Good parents altogether ought to take care that each of their children, as soon as they have begun to have understanding, receive the precepts of religion, and that nothing occur in schools which offends the integrity of faith or morals; and that this diligence be applied in educating offspring is established by divine and natural law, nor can parents be loosed from that law for any cause. But the Church, guardian and avenger of the integrity of faith, which, by authority handed to her by God her Creator, must call all nations to Christian wisdom, and likewise watch sedulously by what precepts and institutions youth, which is in her power, is cultivated, has always openly condemned the schools which they call mixed or neutral, also admonishing fathers of families again and again that in a matter of such moment they apply their mind to taking care. In these things, by obeying the Church, one obeys utility at the same time, and provision is made for the public safety by the best reason. For those whose first age is not instructed in religion grow up without any knowledge of the greatest things, which alone can nourish in men the studies of virtues and rule the appetites contrary to reason. Such are those notions of God the Creator, of God the judge and avenger, of the rewards and punishments of the other life to be expected, of the heavenly aids brought by Jesus Christ for diligently and safely keeping those very duties. These things not being known, every future cultivation of minds will be unhealthy: adolescents unaccustomed to reverence of God will be able to bear no discipline of living honorably, and, daring never to deny anything to their own desires, they will easily be drawn on to disturbing states."

87. Indeed so true is that which the same Supreme Pontiff asserts in the cited Letters, that all attempts which harm the Church are also pernicious and fatal to the republic itself, because it cannot happen that prosperity accompany a state when the virtue of religion has been extinguished. Therefore let this flourish, and flourish exceedingly, both in Gaul and in Italy and in Spain and in Lusitania, and in Germany and in Austria, and in England and in Russia, in Europe, in America, in the whole world; and in the whole world supreme peace will reign, and with peace the true prosperity of nations and the happiness of men: the beginning of eternal happiness.