Section — Marc, Institutiones Morales
§ 2. On the Obligations of Teachers
- Principle. Teachers, both by reason of office and by reason of the stipend received, are held suitably to instruct and educate pupils. The reason: the contract entered with parents so wills.
Hence they must: 1. Hand on sound doctrine and one fit for the intended scope. If in the books which one is compelled to use there are found certain things less right or adverse to religion, the teacher must amend the ambiguous and suspect things by opportune explanations (Kenrick, tr. 13, n. 38). But if the books are by profession contrary to faith or good morals, it will by no means be licit to introduce them and use them. - 2. Teach by a convenient method and one accommodated to the capacity of the disciples, so that their minds are not overwhelmed, nor affected with weariness. Cf. St. Thom., opusc. de Virt., c. 2. - 3. Insert into the souls of the disciples the seeds of Christian virtues, be to them of good example, and watch attentively over their morals. For they are in the place of parents for spiritual education.
- Therefore they sin: 1. If they dissemble the sins of disciples, and do not correct them. - 2. If they do not promote their progress in letters. - 3. If they do not teach good morals. - 4. If deliberately they teach false things as true, or superstitious things and things harmful to salvation. - 5. If they themselves do not study so that they may satisfy the office. - 6. If they exact a stipend greater than just, or than the laws or custom of the gymnasium permit. - 7. If they deny the insignia of doctorate to the worthy, or confer them on the unworthy. - 8. If they are of evil example to disciples. - 9. If they admit to schools those imbued with evil morals and pernicious to others, or do not dismiss them from those schools (III, 362).
SCHOLIUM
On Depraved Schools
Cf. the Pontifical documents cited below; Jansen, de Facult. doc.; Zitelli, App. Jur. eccl., p. 499; Pierret, L'esprit moderne; Goyau, L'ecole d'aujourd'hui; Hammerstein, Die Schulfrage; Willems, Phil. mor., III, p. 487; Aertnys, Fasc. theol. mor., I, n. 38; Ami du Cl. (cf. Gen. Index, v. Enseignement); Stimmen aus Maria-Laach; Questions actuelles, where there are many things; Wernz, Jus Decr., III, 66.
- Notions. 1. A school is called depraved if it is not conformable to the principles of the Catholic religion concerning educating youth. - 2. Schools of this kind a) sometimes are ruled by a depraved spirit or according to the tenets of a heterodox sect, and are impious; b) sometimes prescind from every positive religion, and are called neutral; - c) sometimes admit children pertaining to any sect whatsoever, and are named mixed.
There will not be discussion here of impious schools, since in relation to these the principles are too plain. The question is only agitated concerning schools which they call neutral; and the principles which we shall establish concerning neutral schools it will also be licit to apply to mixed schools, since regularly in them positive religion is not taught.
- Principles. I. That manner of instructing youth which excludes every religious education is of itself most adverse to the Catholic cause. The reason is because 1. it induces, of itself, into contempt of religion, as if namely religion were to be esteemed nothing; 2. it is separated from the authority of the Church; whence it can happen that teachers are placed over schools and books are used which pour errors and seeds of vices into tender minds; 3. it is impossible to hand on precepts of morals without religion, and to teach certain sciences, for example history, without the teacher saying something incidentally concerning revelation and the Church, and either patronizing or opposing them; - 4. the authors themselves of this instruction have confessed that one of its ends is the overthrow of religion. Thus from the Instruction of the S. C. de Prop. F. to the Bishops of North America, 24 Nov. 1875 (A. S. S., XI, p. 44).
And Leo XIII, in the Encyclical Letter Nobilissima directed to the Bishops of France on 8 Feb. 1884, confirmed these things: "The Church ... has always openly condemned the schools which they call mixed or neutral, again and again admonishing fathers of families that in a matter of so great moment they should attend their mind to taking care."
- II. Of schools which they call neutral, some are positively, others negatively harmful. Therefore not all bring equal danger. This is gathered from the cited Instruction.
Now: 1. Those are negatively harmful in which nothing adverse to faith or morals is taught. 2. But those are positively harmful in which the integrity of faith or the honesty of morals, or both together, are exposed to proximate danger.1
Moreover, the causes on account of which they become POSITIVELY harmful are three of themselves and regularly: a) books, which little by little destroy religion or modesty, or both, in the souls of children; - b) teachers, who instill the poison of error into the souls of children, if not openly, at least craftily and gradually; - c) fellow-disciples who cultivate either a false religion or none, and are furnished with such morals and accustomed to such license of speaking and acting, that from this the faith of youths, although excellently instructed at home, is shaken, or certainly modesty and piety are consumed. It is plain that, besides these sources of dangers, which are given as regards schools in general, others can be present in this or that school, if namely boys with girls are ordered to sit on the same bench. It is plain also that in higher schools, because the mind is more imbued with religion, the influence of evil is often less than in others, especially elementary ones.
(1) It belongs to the Bishops of each region to prohibit schools which perhaps would be harmful, to condemn such or such books as positively harmful. Their mandates, as being founded in presumption of law, must be strictly obeyed. All know with how great severity the Bishops of Belgium turned the faithful away from neutral schools, not without advantage for the Catholic cause. - In the year 1909, on 15 Sept., the Bishops of France, by common decree, prohibited 14 books introduced or to be introduced in public schools (cf. Quest. actuelles, 1909, p. 263).
- III. Schools called neutral cannot be frequented with a safe conscience unless a sufficient cause is present and opportune cautions are used.2 This the natural law itself and divine law proclaim.
We have said: 1. A sufficient cause is present. This is plain from the fact that great danger of perversion is feared. But from the magnitude of the danger, weigh what cause can be called truly sufficient: a) If the neutral school is negatively harmful, the danger ordinarily will be remote, and therefore ordinary grave causes will be sufficient, for example if a neighboring school is found little fit for educating children conveniently to their condition, and the means are lacking of educating offspring Catholicly in another region. b) If the school is positively harmful, the danger ordinarily will be proximate, therefore urgent reasons are required, for example if no other school were at hand, if continual vexations from the Government were feared, etc. In each case, mentioned under a) and b), cautions are required more or less rigorous according to the gravity of the danger. c) If the school is so positively harmful that necessarily, even with cautions used, perversion infects souls, no cause can be called sufficient, and such a danger must altogether be avoided, with any temporal harm whatsoever, even of life, as is from the cited Instruction.
- Opportune cautions are used. For by these means the danger must be made remote, insofar as it can be (cf. cited Instruction).
(2) In France a dispensation of the Bishop is also required, so that the use of prohibited books in schools may become licit.
- To use cautions pertains to the parish priest, to parents, to the scholars themselves. And indeed: a) Let the parish priest devote himself much more diligently to catecheses, attending especially to those things which are more frequently attacked by the enemies of our faith. Let him teach not only publicly and through houses, but admonish each one; let him help in resistance against perverters one whom he knows to be placed in such straits (cf. Acts Ap., c. 20). b) Let parents watch solicitously over their children, through themselves or through others carefully question them concerning the lessons heard, recognize the books handed to them, and if they detect anything harmful there, furnish antidotes. But if books handed on by the teacher have been condemned by the Bishop, let them altogether forbid the children to use such books, and from competent authority strongly and persistently demand their removal. If any societies established by fathers of families, associations des peres de famille, exist in the region, let them give their name to these, so that thus, with a juridic person intervening, complaints may become more effective. c) The scholars themselves, on whom harmful books are imposed, or whose teachers or fellow-soldiers labor to infect them, should know that they themselves personally, independently of parents, are held to cautions (Ami du Cl., 1912), yet in ways convenient to their age. They cannot retain with themselves harmful books prohibited by the Bishop, and, in the case in which such things are imposed on them, they are held to resist internally, indeed also externally; internally, by not approving, strengthening their will in good; externally, by not accepting the books without protest, by using them only for the time necessary, and by similar acts by which they make manifest horror of evil and aversion from dangers.
Note. He who desires to know more very useful things should read the Decrees of the Third Council of Baltimore, n. 194 seqq., confirmed by Leo XIII, 31 May 1893; the Responses from the Secretariat of State, 5 May 1911, in relation to books prohibited by the Bishops of France (in Ami du Cl., 1911, p. 598); he should also weigh the very many practical solutions which are to be found in the above-mentioned commentary, years 1908-1913, v. Manuels condamnes, peche scolaire. Cf. also Nouv. Rev. Theol., vol. 45, p. 47.
- Consequences. 1. TEACHERS, teaching in a neutral public school, cannot of themselves introduce and explain harmful books. But if such books are imposed by office, and at the same time they foresee that resistance would be useless, they must necessarily read them in such a way that they provide an effective antidote to disciples, or, better, read those things alone which would be harmless. Cf. Ami du Cl., 1908, p. 846; 1911, p. 598; Linz. Quart. Schr., 1907, p. 375, diverse cases.
INSPECTORS should undertake their office with this mind, that they are prepared according to their powers to impede evil in positively harmful schools. The hope of good which they have must be founded; otherwise they would cooperate with evil (Konings, n. 440).
YOUTHS cannot go to schools called normal schools if they are positively harmful and they themselves remain exposed to depraved influences; if they are negatively harmful, access is not forbidden to youths, provided they form a firm purpose, in carrying out the office of teacher, of avoiding those things from which a Catholic teacher must abstain. But if they seem not about to be tenacious of this purpose, they are earnestly to be exhorted that they dedicate themselves to another office or art (Konings, l. c.).
As regards Colleges, Gymnasia, Universities, the rules handed on above can and must be applied, nevertheless with regard to the danger preserved. It is known that the Holy See has forbidden that clerics go to Government Universities without license of the Bishop, and Regulars who must teach without license of the Superior. Let especially the Encyclical Pascendi be read, by which those things are extended to the universal Church which in the year 1896 the S. C. Ep. et Reg. had sanctioned. Cf. Nouv. Rev. Theol., vol. 40, p. 750; A. S. S., vol. 29, p. 360; Ami du Cl., 1907, p. 1135.
If the University is non-Catholic, the Bishop must prescribe greater cautions as regards removing the danger. Only in recent times did the Holy See concede that Catholic youths go to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (S. Off., 26 Mar. 1891; S. C. de Prop. Fide, 17 Apr. 1895).
- PRIESTS can hand on the teachings of the Christian faith in the mixed schools of heretics, or carry out the office of chaplain. The mind of the Holy See is that, not only over schools of handing on the faith, but also over schools of other disciplines, as much as can be done, priests or honest laymen be placed. S. Off. to the Bishops of Switzerland, 17 Jan. 1866 (in Bucceroni, Enchir. morale, p. 79).
- PRACTICAL RULES. 1. To parents who, the cautions mentioned above being spurned, without sufficient cause send children into harmful schools, absolution must firmly be denied. A fortiori this must be done if severe decrees promulgated by the Bishop command that the threatening evil be plucked up by the roots. It will always be better to seek a uniform norm from the Ordinary.
To children, since they are not of their own right and are usually made conscious of the gravity of the danger only little by little, let the benefit of absolution not be denied at the beginning. With great prudence let them be taught concerning those things which natural and episcopal law demand of them, and then only let them be dismissed unabsolved when sufficient knowledge of the obligation and evil disposition of the will are present.
Parish priests, so that they may more easily avert evils from children, have the office of often admonishing parishioners concerning the gravity of sin committed in this matter, so that thus the public conscience, as they say, may be formed according to the norm of right. But if certain persons from their parish, parents, children, or teachers, confess to an outside priest, and cautions as regards prohibited books, or sufficient causes as regards access to a harmful school, are in no way present, and this is publicly established, of himself the parish priest will be able to deprive the resistant, admonished once and again, of communion. But since public denial of communion is full of difficulties, let him do nothing without the Bishop being consulted. Cf. Ami du Cl., 1909, p. 1178; 1911, p. 198, 201, 503, 666.