Chapter II. On the Obligations of Parents toward Children

Parents are held by a most grave obligation of taking care, according to their strength, of the education of their offspring, both religious and moral, and physical and civil, and also of providing for their temporal good (Can. 1113).

I Say 1st. Parents ought to cherish their children with true, efficacious, and ordered love. The reason of this obligation is founded in the very bowels of nature and in the title of generation. For just as, by the impulse of nature, each one ought to love himself, so parents are held to love children as something of themselves, or flesh from their flesh. - I said 1st, with true love, namely both with internal affection of heart and with external love, by procuring their good as much as is in them. - I said 2nd, efficacious, insofar as parents ought not, on account of sluggishness or cruel kindness, to act too remissly with children, neglecting to draw them back from vices by more severe precepts and other suitable remedies. - I said 3rd, ordered, namely insofar as the spiritual good of children ought to be preferred to their temporal good, and among the diverse kinds of temporal goods, that which is better and more necessary for them. - Hence:

1st. Parents can sin gravely if they are inflamed with a depraved affection against children, and look upon them disdainfully; 2nd, if they address them with gravely contumelious names; 3rd, if they grant or permit all things to them, lest they sadden them; 4th, if they favor one before the others very much without a just reason, and look upon the rest indifferently, or even hold them as if adulterine.

I Say 2nd. Parents ought to procure for children a suitable bodily education, namely not only to do nothing positively against their life from the moment of conception, but also to provide all those means which are necessary for sustaining life, and for preserving and perfecting strength, and to prepare a future state for them according to their proper condition. This is clear from the law of nature, according to which we see even brute animals, after they have begotten offspring, labor greatly for preserving life for them and for seeking food. Hence:

1st. Parents can sin gravely if they cast children out of the house without sufficient reason, while they cannot yet sufficiently provide for themselves; 2nd, if they do not apply at least moderate diligence to acquire goods from which they may suitably sustain children and provide for their future state; 3rd, if they do not teach children an art suitable to their state or some other manner of living decently, nor take care that they be taught.

I Say 3rd. Parents are principally held to procure spiritual education for children. The reason is that man, besides material or bodily being, which he has in common with the other animals, is endowed by God with a rational and most noble soul, created according to the image of the Divinity itself; and he was created that he might tend to God as his supernatural last end. Therefore he ought especially to be instructed and directed by parents to this end; for marriage was raised to the dignity of a sacrament so that the offspring born may be reborn in Christ, and prepared for eternal life. - Hence:

1st. Parents sin gravely or can sin gravely if, when opportunity is given, they do not take care that children be regenerated as soon as possible by the grace of Baptism; 2nd, if they do not teach them or strive that they be taught the principal heads of Christian doctrine, and do not form their morals from tenderest childhood according to the norm of the divine law; 3rd, if they do not correct them when delinquent, even with the rod being applied, yet prudently, moderately, and opportunely; 4th, if finally they furnish depraved examples to them or utter filthy words or blasphemies in their presence.

Question 1. Ought a mother nourish her little children with her own milk?

Response. Affirmatively, with the common opinion, because natural law seems to demand this. Yet this obligation does not urge under grave obligation, because in this matter grave disorder does not appear. But necessity, notable utility, or custom prevailing among noble families, etc., excuses from every fault; but then under grave obligation the mother ought to substitute for herself a nurse good as to morals and health. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 336. - Benedict XIV, de Synod. dioec., lib. 11, chap. 7, nn. 9, 10 and 11. - Kenrick, tract. 8, n. 85.

Question 2. Do parents sin gravely who, with no cause or only a futile cause, bring newly born offspring to foundling homes or expose them at the houses of private persons?

Response. Affirmatively, and indeed both against the piety which they owe to children and against justice, by imposing a grave burden upon foundling homes or private persons without reason. But if they redeem with competent money the cares expended for the good of the offspring, they sin only against piety, because only a maternal instinct can suitably satisfy the natural needs of offspring, especially in the tenderest age. But when a just cause is present, there is no sin; indeed then parents, even if they are rich, probably are not held to monetary compensation if they entrust the offspring to public foundling homes. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 336; and tract. 5, n. 656. - Kenrick, tract. 8, nn. 84 and following.

Question 3. What must be said concerning those parents who, compelled by want or to avoid infamy, place offspring at Protestant foundling homes?

Response. If they do this only because of danger of infamy to be avoided, certainly they are not excused from grave sin; because, by using money, they could by many other means provide both for their own reputation and at the same time for the eternal salvation of the offspring. But if they are oppressed by the greatest want, and a fortiori if to want there is added the danger of infamy, the distinguished Kenrick does not dare to condemn those who thus expose their own children, yet with this mind and hope: that, Baptism now having been conferred, in the future they strive to obtain their eternal salvation in the best way they can. - Cf. Kenrick, n. 84.

Question 4. Is it licit for parents to send children to positively evil schools, when a most grave cause is present?

Response. Not at all, negatively, because parents acting thus expose the offspring to evident and proximate danger to eternal salvation, which can never be licit, notwithstanding even a most grave temporal evil, and therefore absolution must be absolutely denied to these parents unless they repent. But I call positively evil schools those in which heresy, impiety, or corruption of morals is taught.

Question 5. What must be said concerning public schools as they generally exist among us, in which namely religious education is set aside?

Response. Speaking of themselves, and with the principles of both positive and natural law considered, schools of this kind are evil: namely the system itself according to whose norm they have been instituted is evil and full of dangers.

It is clear 1st from proposition 48 of the Syllabus, which sounds thus: "That method of instructing youth can be approved by Catholic men which is separated from Catholic faith and from the power of the Church, and which looks only, or at least primarily, to the knowledge of merely natural things and the ends of earthly social life."

It is clear 2nd from Conc. Plen. Balt. II, n. 426, where it is read thus: "Long experience has indeed proved sufficiently and more than sufficiently how grave are the evils and how intrinsic also the dangers which commonly come upon Catholic youth in these regions from attendance at public schools. For by virtue of the system obtaining among them, it can in no way happen that Catholic youths are not at the same time brought into great danger of faith and morals. Nor indeed do the advances which that fatal stain of Indifferentism, as they call it, has thus far had to the greatest degree in this region, and has day by day, seem to be traced back to any other cause; also that corruption of morals, by which not without tears we see even the tenderest age among us everywhere infected and ruined. For the daily intercourse of those who practice either a false religion or none, also the reading and meditation of authors who attack, gnaw at, and sprinkle with black salt our most holy religion and institutions, indeed the Saints themselves, gradually weaken in the souls of Catholic children the force and virtue of true religion. Then the fellow-students with whom they associate are commonly of such morals and examples, with such wicked license of speaking and acting, that by this association and familiar intercourse, for our adolescents, although excellently instructed at home, every modesty and piety is quickly consumed and perishes, as wax when fire has been applied."

The things which are prescribed in the new Code concerning schools accord:

Let Catholic children not attend non-Catholic schools, neutral schools, mixed schools, which namely are open also to non-Catholics. But it belongs to the Ordinary of the place alone to decide, according to the norm of the instructions of the Apostolic See, in what circumstances and with what cautions applied, so that the danger of perversion may be avoided, it can be tolerated that those schools be frequented (Can. 1374).

§ 2. Not only parents according to the norm of can. 1113, but also all who hold their place, have the right and most grave duty of taking care of the Christian education of children (Can. 1372). - Cf. Can. 2319, § 1, nn. 2, 4, § 2, where penalties are established against parents educating offspring outside the Church.

Question 6. With these things notwithstanding, can Catholic parents ever send their offspring to our public schools?

Response. Affirmatively, provided the conditions under which the Baltimore Fathers permit this are verified. The reason is that, after all, the malice of those schools consists both in the system itself of the separation of religious education, and in the danger concerning morals and faith; but parents who, compelled by grave necessity, send their own offspring to them do not approve the system but rather undergo it, and by applying cautions they either altogether remove the dangers or in great part lessen them. Therefore. ... This same thing is clear from Conc. Plen. Balt. III, which, in n. 198, made its own the very words of the Instruction which the Congregation de Propaganda Fide sent to our Bishops on November 24, 1875, concerning this matter. Therefore the Baltimore Fathers speak thus: "It can sometimes happen - as also the Instruction just cited intimates - 'that Catholic parents can in conscience entrust their offspring to public schools. But they cannot do this unless they have a sufficient cause for acting thus, and whether such a sufficient cause is present or not in some particular case, that will have to be left to the conscience and judgment of the Ordinaries; and then it will generally be present when either no Catholic school is available or the one which is supplied is little suited for educating adolescents suitably and congruently to their condition. But then, that public schools can be attended in conscience, the danger of perversion, always more or less connected with their proper nature, ought to be made remote instead of proximate by opportune remedies and cautions.'"

Question 7. Can a confessor ever deny absolution to parents who send their offspring to public schools?

Response. A twofold case can be present; for Catholic parents either do this from a just cause approved by the Ordinary of the place, or otherwise. If the first, absolution would be denied unjustly. Wherefore in the cited place the Fathers of Conc. Plen. Balt. III add: "Therefore when, on account of a sufficient cause and one approved by the Ordinary, parents wish to send children to public schools, provided the proximate dangers are removed by necessary cautions, we strictly command that no one, whether Bishop or presbyter, as the Pontiff through the Sacred Congregation expressly forbids, dare to repel parents of this kind from the sacraments as if unworthy, either by intended threats or by the act itself. This must be understood much more concerning the children themselves. Wherefore pastors of souls, while they warn the faithful committed to them concerning the dangers of these schools, should take the greatest care lest, led by immoderate zeal, they seem by words or deeds to violate the most wise counsels and precepts of the Holy See."

But if the other case is verified, then it will belong to a prudent confessor to judge from the circumstances whether the malice which Catholic parents contract is grave, by reason of disobedience, scandal, and the dangers to which they expose their own offspring, and thence to gather whether absolution must certainly be denied to them. - Cf. Amer. Eccl. Review, vol. 12, pp. 339 and following.

We give here one document from which the unshaken principles of Catholics can be derived. Thus Leo XIII in his Constitution Nobilissima Gallorum Gens:

"First indeed, as regards domestic Society, it is of the greatest importance that the offspring received from Christian marriage be instructed early in the precepts of religion, and that those arts by which the age of childhood is accustomed to be formed to humanity be joined with religious instruction. To separate the one from the other is the same in reality as to will that childish souls be moved to neither part in duties toward God: which discipline is deceitful, and, especially in the earliest years of children, most pernicious, because in truth it fortifies the way of atheism and blocks up the way of religion. Altogether good parents must take care that each of their children, as soon as they have begun to understand, perceive the precepts of religion, and that nothing occur in the schools which offends the integrity of faith or morals. And that this diligence be applied in instructing offspring has been established by divine and natural law, nor can parents by any cause be freed from that law."

Question 8. What does the Code prescribe concerning schools?

Response. § 1. All the faithful are to be instructed from childhood in such a way that not only is nothing handed on to them which is opposed to the Catholic religion and honesty of morals, but religious and moral instruction occupies the principal place (Can. 1372).

Hence in any elementary school religious instruction is to be handed on to children according to their age. Indeed, let youth frequenting middle or higher schools be cultivated by doctrine of religion, and let Ordinaries of places take care that this be done through priests outstanding in zeal and doctrine. - Cf. Can. 1373.

But the Church has the right of founding these schools, elementary, middle, and higher; to its authority and inspection the religious instruction of youth in all schools is subject. Therefore to Ordinaries of places there belongs the right and duty of watching lest anything against faith or good morals be handed on or done in any schools of their territory. Cf. Can. 1373, 1374, 1375, 1376.

But these domestic duties, namely care of the family, reverence owed to the husband, education of infants, are sacrosanct; and whatever calls wives away from these is forbidden to them. Besides, whatever introduces discord between them and their husbands, or effects that they desert the hearths and domestic walls, that they neglect infants, that they aspire to divorce, that they foster free loves, that they cast off the modesty and shamefastness adorning Christian women, is forbidden. Therefore every feminism which endeavors to emancipate a married woman from her matrimonial obligations, and to liberate the unmarried and the married from the natural and divine law, is to be avoided, since it is repugnant to the nature of civil society, of the family, and of religion. But with conjugal duties saved, if they are married, and other duties if they are not, it is licit for women, according to the measure of their condition, to have a part in social action, and to devote themselves to those sodalities whose end is that, under the care of the Ordinaries, especially in their own order, the praise of Christian morals may revive entire, that the stain of divorces may be averted from Christian marriage, that the instruction of children may be duly provided for, that there may be restrained the pest of human intercourse, the shameful license of spectacles, the obscenity of books and newspapers, the futile softness of conversations and assemblies, the shameless luxury in adornment and cultivation of the body, that laws may be issued protecting working youth by limits placed as to age, hours and manner of labor, workshops, wage, and other aids, by which both body and soul, especially of girls and women workers, may be preserved from every harm. Therefore socialistic, atheistic, irreligious feminism is to be fought with all strength. But let that pest not be confused with the social action of Catholic women working under the Ordinaries of places. Nouvelles Orientations de la morale, pp. 27 and following. - Epist. Pius X, Quae de istius, November 22, 1904.

You Will Resolve. - 1st. But let parents principally take care that children are protected from all occasions, whether of companions, books, newspapers, or theaters, by which either faith or chastity is brought into danger. Around chastity, in our times, great caution must be applied. Therefore let parents take care, 1st, that from earliest childhood modesty of the offspring truly grows, for it is the bulwark of chastity: once it has been lost, virtue is easily lost; 2nd, that boys or girls never be permitted to attend schools in which sexual education is part of the program or schedule of studies; such public instruction in this slippery matter is an occasion of monstrous crimes; may nothing more dangerous happen to youth than this; the same should be said concerning books which set forth sexual life for boys and girls to know deliberately; such books do not fortify the hearts of children with a holy fortification, but open the way to the malignant enemy of souls; 3rd, since knowledge does not give security, let them take care that conscience be well instructed and the soul strengthened by frequenting the sacraments; 4th, when age and bodily development demand instruction, then let the mother alone, or father, or faithful instructor, or confessor hand it on to the child alone, holily, reverently, and only according to necessity; let him not give the whole doctrine, but a gradual doctrine accommodated to age and conditions of time; 5th, let the parent dedicate himself wholly to preserving modesty; let the offspring be accustomed to rational care of soul and body, to victory over self, to strengthening of the will; let religious instruction be handed on in order from the first years, and let the life of the child be illuminated and enlightened by the light of faith; 6th, let the offspring approach daily, if only it can be done, to holy communion, which is a special and necessary remedy against luxury. See the golden Encyclical Letters of the Bishops of Germany, August 20, 1913.

2nd. Parents are held to watch with peculiar care lest children associate themselves with certain sodalities dedicated to the instruction of children in a certain natural morality, unless ecclesiastical authority itself has approved them or at least, the dangers having been removed, has permitted association in them. For if such a society in its norms publicly inculcates that all religions are to be held by the members in the same rank, that equal respect is to be furnished to all, that truth is in all, that there are various ways leading to the one end of blessedness, and that there is one head of all, it is wicked and cruel to permit children to enroll themselves in these assemblies. Such a society opens the way to indifferentism, lessens the powers favoring faith, increases those hostile to it, separates things not to be separated, religious and moral education, claims for itself a magisterium in a certain natural morality, which does not belong to it. Besides, that instruction is not normal, either as to method or as to matter. They are children, not soldiers; they are to be watched over, not watchers. Today the world campaigns for children. It belongs to Catholic parents to protect them from the world, to educate them in Catholic schools, to cherish them day and night and not to permit that they go alone through roads or woods, and that they guard others, being themselves guards needing guardianship. See the things just cited from Leo XIII and Pius X.

3rd. Parents are gravely obliged to guard offspring from the modern danger of cinematographic representations; indiscriminately to be present at these is certainly not licit for boys and girls of tenderer age; easily such attendance harms their eyes and nerves, lessens modesty day by day and thus can weaken chastity, indeed also here and there, on account of the matter treated, leads faith into danger. Therefore great caution is to be applied in permitting these entertainments to offspring.

4th. Not only parents or those holding the place of parents, but also masters and sponsors are obliged to take care that subjects and those commended to them are instructed in catechesis. - Cf. Can. 1335.