Support, education and religious training of children

Nature herself teaches parents their duties towards the offspring that they have brought into the world, and which stands in need of their loving care for many years before it arrives at maturity, so as to be able to lead an independent life.

Parents, then, are bound first and foremost to love their children with that special affection which belongs to the virtue of piety. They will commit grievous sin if they are indifferent to their children’s welfare, if they deliberately curse them, if they show great and foolish preference for one child over others to the serious discontent of the latter.

They are bound to support their children until these can support themselves. Even before the child’s birth, the mother must take care not to risk its life or natural development. After birth she is bound at least under venial sin to nourish it with her own milk, unless some good reason excuse her. Then there is the obligation of providing sufficiently for the child’s maintenance, according to its position in life, by a prudent administration of the family property, or by earning money and saving what is necessary for the purpose. Grave sin is committed by a father who will not work, or who squanders his wages in drink or gambling, so that wife and children are deprived of proper support. Parents are bound to instruct their children in all that is required to enable them to lead a good Christian life; they must warn them of dangers into which their inexperience would lead them, and correct them when they do wrong. Above all, they must be careful to give them good example by leading a good Catholic life themselves, and by never being a source of scandal to their children in word or deed. They must watch to see with what companions their children associate, what they read, and what places they frequent.

The Elementary Education Act, 1876, declared it to be the duty of the parent of every child between the ages of five and fourteen years to cause it to receive efficient elementary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic; and penalties were imposed on parents who neglected this duty. As such an education can in most cases only be given in a school, it becomes a practical moral question of great importance as to what sort of school Catholic parents should select. The education of their children belongs primarily by the law of nature to the parents, and if they entrust a portion of their task to others they are bound to select such as can and will educate them according to Catholic principles. The Church, too, has received a divine commission to teach, and those who by baptism have become subject to her authority are obliged to be guided by her directions in this all-important matter. The Church condemns all non-Catholic schools, whether they be heretical and schismatical or secularist, and she declares that as a general rule no Catholic parent can send his young children to such schools for educational purposes without exposing their faith and morals to serious risk, and therefore committing a grave sin. A Catholic child, if educated away from home, should be placed in a Catholic school, under Catholic masters or mistresses. Sad experience in many different countries has shown how necessary this is for the preservation of the Catholic faith. If, however, there is no suitable Catholic school to which children can be sent, they may be sent to a non-Catholic school provided that the proximate danger can be made remote by using the proper means, and provided that the parents see to the religious instruction of their children. In many countries, as in England, the Bishops have reserved to themselves the decision as to whether in any particular case these conditions are fulfilled. A priest, therefore, should not take it upon himself to deny the sacraments to parents who send their children to a non-Catholic school; the case should be sent to the Bishop (cf. Can. 1113, 1374).

What has just been said applies specially to primary and secondary schools, for the question about non-Catholic universities is somewhat different. The Church would indeed wish that all who desire it might be able to obtain a higher education in a Catholic university. As this, however, is impossible in England, the Holy See has permitted Catholic parents to send their sons to Oxford or Cambridge on account of the grave necessity, and because when a young man has already received a sound secondary education among Catholic surroundings, if there is any character in him, he can be trusted to hold his own, Suitable safeguards, however, are prescribed for the young men who avail themselves of this permission, among which is the obligation of attending Catholic lectures which are provided by the Bishops.

I. Among non-Catholic schools:

1. Some are so harmful that the danger to faith or morals cannot, morally speaking, become remote, for example if children would continually hear bad doctrine or would be compelled to be present at prohibited rites, or if the students were so perverse that scarcely anyone could keep himself unharmed.¹

2. Others are less, but nevertheless positively, harmful, either on account of doctrines to be handed on or on account of association with bad companions, which threatens in them.

3. Others are only negatively harmful, namely neutral schools, or such as merely exclude religion.

II. It is clear that the schools under 1 and 2 are to be condemned; but even neutral schools are to be disapproved. This is clear first from ecclesiastical documents. Thus Pius IX condemned proposition 48: "This method of educating youth can be approved by Catholic men, which is separated from the Catholic Faith and from the power of the Church, and which regards only, or at least primarily, the knowledge of merely natural things and the ends of earthly social life."² And Pius XI declares that "through schools which they call neutral, the whole foundation of Christian education is thrown down and overturned, since religion is wholly removed from them; these schools, moreover, will in no way be neutral except in appearance, since in reality they are or will be fully hostile to religion."³ And can. 1373: in every elementary school, religious instruction is to be handed on to children according to their age (§ 1). Youth which attends middle or higher schools is to be cultivated by a fuller doctrine of religion, and Ordinaries of places are to see to it that this be done through priests outstanding in zeal and doctrine (§ 2). Next, that neutral schools are to be rejected is clear from the fact that - as the cited documents already declare - in practice they will cease to be truly neutral, because they are separated from the authority of the Church, whereby it easily happens that the teachers to be put in charge and the books to be used harm the children; all the more because scientific instruction, for example of history, can scarcely be handed on without its being plain which religion the teacher supports.⁴

III. As to attendance at non-Catholic schools, can. 1374 establishes: Catholic children are not to attend non-Catholic, neutral, mixed schools, namely those which are open also to non-Catholics. But it belongs to the local Ordinary alone to decide, according to the norm of the instructions of the Apostolic See, in what circumstances of things and with what precautions applied, so that the danger of perversion may be avoided, it can be tolerated that those schools be attended. With these things noted, I say:

1. It is never lawful to send children to schools about which we spoke under I, 1.

2. It is also of itself gravely unlawful to send children to a less, but nevertheless positively, harmful school. By accident, or on account of a grave cause, this is lawful, provided remedies are applied by which the danger becomes remote. As to children who attend universities (especially non-Catholic ones), let parents take the greatest care that before the children are sent to them, they be cultivated by solid education and knowledge of religion; that they enroll in a Catholic society of students; that they be able to approach a learned and upright man who by his counsel may remove dangers and doubts; that they choose a religious friend, which association may draw them back from illicit companionships.

3. To send children to a neutral school, as it is called, that is, to a school only negatively harmful or such as merely excludes religion:

a) It is a grave sin: a) if it is done from a gravely bad motive, for example because one approves neutrality or spurns the authority of the Church; b) if it is done with grave scandal; this can be present if in that place there is a Catholic school equally suitable.

b) Otherwise it is of itself a light sin, provided religious instruction is cared for in another way. But parents are excused if no Catholic school is at hand, or if the one available is little suited for instructing adolescents suitably according to their condition; if otherwise grave harm threatens the parents, for example from the side of magistrates.⁵

4. What has just been said is almost also valid concerning schools about which Pius XI speaks thus: nor can that school be tolerated (especially if it is the "only" one and all children are bound to attend it), in which, although the precepts of sacred doctrine are handed on separately to Catholics, nevertheless the teachers are not Catholic who instruct Catholic and non-Catholic children together in letters and arts.⁶

Finally, it must be seen whether the local Ordinary has prescribed anything concerning the aforesaid matters.

Corollary I. Unworthy of absolution are parents who "neglect to impart necessary Christian education and instruction to their children, or who permit them to attend such schools in which ruin of souls cannot be avoided; or finally who, although there is a Catholic school in the same place, suitable and aptly equipped and prepared, or although they have the ability to educate their offspring in a Catholic manner in another region, nevertheless entrust them to public (neutral) schools without sufficient cause and without the necessary precautions, by which the danger of perversion may be removed from being proximate."⁷

Corollary II. It is lawful for someone, on account of a grave cause, to assume the office of teacher in neutral schools, provided he is not compelled to use bad books. Likewise it is permitted to hold the office of inspector: 1. if a grave cause is present and the schools to be inspected are not positively harmful; 2. if the schools are indeed positively harmful but there is hope that they will be rendered notably less harmful. Yet it must be considered to what extent public scandal perhaps prohibits the aforesaid things.

¹ Instruction of the Holy Office, November 24, 1875 (Collectanea de Propaganda Fide, n. 1449).

² Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1748.

³ Encyclical Divini illius magistri, December 31, 1929; cf. Pius IX, letter Quum non sine, July 14, 1864; Leo XIII, allocution Summi Pontificatus, August 20, 1880; encyclical letter Nobilissima, February 8, 1884; encyclical letter Quod multum, August 22, 1886; letter Officio sanctissimo, December 22, 1887; encyclical letter Caritatis, March 19, 1894, etc.

⁴ Instruction of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide, November 24, 1875 (Collectanea, n. 1449).

⁵ Cf. encyclical of Pius XI, Divini illius magistri.

⁶ Cited encyclical.

⁷ Instruction of the Holy Office, November 24, 1875 (Collectanea, n. 1449).

Coeducation is to be rejected; this is clear first from the fact that Pius XI, in his encyclical On the Christian Education of Youth, rejects it. "Equally fallacious," says the Supreme Pontiff, "and hostile to Christian training must that method of instructing adolescents be held which is commonly called coeducation." Next, education of this kind, on account of human nature inclined to illicit things and vitiated by the stain of our first parents, is not without danger. It is added that each sex precisely on account of the difference of body and soul must mutually complete itself and coalesce into one thing; hence that very difference must be held and fostered in education and instruction by apt distinction and separation, suitable to ages and conditions. And this must be observed "not only in all schools, through the anxious years of adolescence, on which the plan of almost the whole future life altogether depends, but also in gymnastic games and exercises, in which special care must be taken for the Christian modesty of girls, since it is most unbecoming for them to display themselves and to put themselves before the eyes of all."¹

¹ Cited encyclical.

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.

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.

943. State of the question. Socialists, adhering to the footsteps of J. J. Rousseau,² contend that children belong to the Republic rather than to parents, and therefore that the office of feeding and educating them is incumbent upon the State: for parents, they say, often imbued with many prejudices, inculcate the same in their offspring, and thus dissensions arise among citizens, because not all have received the same discipline; wherefore, for placing national unity in safety, it is necessary that children be snatched away from parents, so that each and all may be instructed in the same way in public schools; then there will be no distinction between rich and poor, noble and ignoble, Catholics and non-Catholics; all, imbued with the same principles, will defend liberty of thinking, social equality, and perfect solidarity; no preeminence will be acknowledged except that which is owed to each one's talent and merit.³ - Anarchists, who altogether reject the authority of the State, nevertheless do not wish children, procreated from a free union, to be educated by parents, but by those who love them more, and adopt them as children, and freely consent to furnish them food and education.¹ - Not a few of those who defend the rights of women beyond what is fair (feministes) are more or less imbued with the same errors; for since they contend that women have, by equal right with men, the faculty of managing public affairs, they wish them to be immune from domestic cares and the education of children, so that they may give themselves to civil offices.²

¹ Taparelli, Essai de Droit naturel, n. 1555-1575; Meyer, Instit. juris naturalis, t. II, n. 107-111; 660-678; A. Jansen, De facultate docendi, 1885; Castelein, Droit naturel, Paris, 1903, p. 625-640; R. Lavollee, L'Etat, le Pere et l'Enfant, Paris, Plon, 1904.

² For he holds that the family is indeed older than any other society, but that children do not remain joined to parents except as long as they need them for protecting their life: "The oldest of all societies, and the only natural one, is that of the family: and even so, children remain bound to the father only as long as they need him in order to preserve themselves; as soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved." (Contrat social, l. I, ch. 5.) But afterward (ch. 6-8) he declares that, by force of the social pact, all authority is in the Prince's possession.

³ Thus G. Renard, Le Regime socialiste, Paris, 1898, p. 89-100, where among other things he writes: "The child, a moral person in potency, or, to speak still better, in the way of development, must no longer, as formerly, be considered the property of his parents. The power of the father or of the mother is justified, like every authority exercised over human beings, only on condition of being a creator of liberty, and not of oppression... If the parents remain absolute masters of his education, I fear over his mind a pressure all the more powerful because the pupil is naturally predisposed to undergo the affectionate suggestion of those who are nearest to him. Beware then hereditary prejudices, which are the very negation of scientific progress... Teaching being gratuitous and the maintenance of children being put at the charge of the community, one will no longer see, as in our mercantile society, this unreasonable anomaly: public instruction reserved to those who can pay for it... education will address itself equally to all intelligences which will be capable of profiting from it."

¹ Thus J. Grave, La Societe future, ch. 23, where he says: "The child is not a property, a product, which can belong more to those who have procreated him, as some wish, than to society, as the others contend." Whose therefore will children be? "To those who love the child most... Instead of being a charge for those who will adopt him, the child will no longer be anything but a pretty little creature to love and caress." - This system C. Turgeon sets forth and refutes, Le Feminisme francais, Paris, 1902, t. II, p. 405-420.

² In Turgeon, op. cit., t. II, 417-420.

944. Thesis: The right and office of educating their own offspring belongs primarily to parents, and only secondarily to the State, namely when parents are lacking. - For if it is certainly and publicly established that certain parents do not furnish the education necessary to their children, and there are no others who act in place of the parents, it pertains to the State, insofar as it is the provider of the public good, to provide for this education.³

³ We do not here treat of the rights of the Church, whose office it is to hand on moral and religious education to all those who have arisen from Catholic parents, or who through baptism have entered the Church, as was declared in Tr. on the Church. As to human sciences, spiritual authority has the right of teaching them, by at least the same right as private citizens or private associations. - Cf. F. Cavagnis, Instit. juris publici, l. IV, n. 1-145.

(A) It is proved by reason. For the right and office of educating offspring naturally belongs to those who have begotten the same: "It is a most holy law of nature that the father of a family should protect, with sustenance and every cultivation, those whom he himself has procreated."⁴ For children, as long as they have not attained the use of reason, are altogether unable to protect their own life; likewise, when reason now first dawns, they can obtain the truth in the intellectual, moral, and religious order only with the greatest difficulty by their own powers, without any external aid, and therefore they need some authority which directs them in the right path of truth. Now nature itself manifestly shows that the work of education is primarily to be performed by the parents themselves.

⁴ Leo XIII, Encyclical Rerum Novarum.

"For the son," says St. Thomas,¹ "naturally is something of the father; and at first indeed he is not distinguished from the parents according to the body, as long as he is contained in the mother's womb; but afterward, after he comes forth from the womb, before he has the use of free will, he is contained under the care of the parents, as under a certain spiritual womb." In reality nature gave breasts to the mother, but not to the State, for nursing children; to each parent, but not to the City or to strange nurses, it gave a maternal or paternal heart for pursuing their own offspring with tender and at the same time generous love; to parents, but not to strangers, at least from things commonly occurring, it gave an inclination that they gladly hand over not only their own things, but even themselves and their own life, for the welfare of their offspring. Wherefore long and universal experience establishes that children educated at home, fed with maternal milk, and carefully guarded by the vigilant care of parents, much more easily escape the dangers of diseases and death, and progress much more than those who are nourished by strangers.²

¹ St. Thom., 2. 2., q. 10, art. 12.

² For many of those who are handed over to strange nurses die: "Already in 1889, at the congress of hygiene and demography, Dr. Fleury attested that at Lyon the mortality of nurslings rose to 49 percent." (C. Raff, Natalite, Paris, 1901, p. 364.)

945. The same must be said concerning intellectual and moral education; no one, as the mother, can look into the mind of her offspring, no one can detect and correct their depraved inclinations, or direct the powers of the will to good: for led by maternal instinct, she naturally performs all these things, and besides by native inclination the child is inclined to follow the sweet direction of the mother. Afterward, when the boy is now growing up, he needs a virile education, for furnishing which no one is more suitable than the father: for, because of the special and generous love with which he pursues his children, he tempers with gentleness the authority necessary for restraining the depraved habits to which they incline, and helps them by opportune counsels to avoid dangerous occasions;³ by words and examples he draws them to the practice of virtues; indeed he himself is induced to lead a more honorable and more perfect life, led by this reason, that unless he gives a good example, he will scarcely be able to exhort his boys to honesty. - Hence experience establishes that children educated at home, other things being equal, generally progress much more in studies and in the practice of virtues than those who are instructed by strangers.¹

³ To the point it is read in the Expose des motifs du Code civil, where the matter concerns paternal authority: "The child is born weak, besieged by needs and diseases; nature gives him his father and mother to defend and protect him. When the time of puberty arrives, the passions awaken at the same time as intelligence and imagination... It is then that the child needs a counsel, a friend, who may defend his nascent reason against the seductions of every kind which surround him."

¹ On the office of each parent in education, cf. Turgeon, II, 341-362.

946. Socialists indeed object that children have rights which parents are not permitted to oppress. - It is certainly wonderful that these men complain of the tyranny of parents, while they themselves wish tyrannically to inculcate their opinions in the young; do they not thus contradict themselves? - We by no means deny the rights of children, since Christ himself and the Church have diligently vindicated these against the unspeakable errors of the pagans, as was proved elsewhere, on True Religion, n. 155; but since the child himself cannot protect these rights, it pertains to parents, rather than to strangers or to the State, to preserve them whole and intact; for those who begot and nourished children are joined more intimately with them, and are more apt to instruct them than any others. For the family is historically and logically prior to the State, nor is it consonant with right reason that civil power at its own judgment penetrate even to the interiors of homes, and disturb domestic peace; paternal power ought neither to be extinguished nor absorbed by the republic, but rather confirmed by it.² And certainly, if prejudices are in parents, is it not to be feared that the State, imbued with worse prejudices, may wish to inculcate them in the young, and thus oppress the liberty of children equally and of parents by intolerable tyranny? - And, since besides the opinions and theories of the State are diverse according to the diverse ministers who manage public affairs, will children also be held to change their ideas at the will of various officials? Where, I ask, is liberty? - Nor should it be said that the young are to be educated in such a way that they are instructed neither by the State nor by parents in religious or ethical disciplines, until, mature in age and reason, they are able freely to choose among various religions or diverse systems of ethics; - for this is nothing other than to promote indifferentism in matters altogether necessary for the right ordering of life, and to deprive the young of the means by which they need to restrain depraved inclinations.¹

² Leo XIII declared this excellently, Encyclical Rerum Novarum: "Therefore to wish that civil power at its own judgment penetrate even to the interiors of homes is a great and pernicious error... 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 the life itself of men. Children are something of the father, and as it were a certain amplification of the paternal person; and if we wish to speak properly, they do not of themselves, but through the domestic community in which they were generated, enter and participate in civil society." Cf. Brunetiere, Le Droit de l'Enfant, in the periodical Reforme sociale, Feb. 1, 1903, p. 202-221.

¹ G. Bonjean, Enfants revoltes et parents coupables, Paris, 1895; A. Fouillee, Les Jeunes Criminels, l'Ecole et la presse, in the periodical Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 15, 1897, p. 417-449; H. Joly, L'Enfance coupable, Paris, 1904, among others, have described into what excesses the young frequently fall who are educated without religion and moral discipline.

947. They insist, saying that by paternal education those dissensions are preserved and strengthened which draw one region and city, as it were, into two or more factions, and invincibly stand in the way of national unity. - I turn the argument back: are there not factions and dissensions in the State itself, and indeed among the socialists themselves? Do not anarchists, collectivists, and moderate socialists try to draw the minds of the young to their systems? - Therefore this difficulty rests on a false concept of unity: for it is impossible, especially in our days, where unbridled liberty of thinking, speaking, and writing flourishes, that all citizens of one City think and will the same thing concerning religious, philosophical, or political matters. Therefore those who vindicate national unity in this sense, that they wish all citizens to have the same principles concerning all these matters, not only promote intolerable tyranny, but dream of a thing altogether impossible. No unity can flourish among rational and free citizens other than that which arises from mutual tolerance and fraternal charity;² for all citizens ought to tend toward the common good of the fatherland, and devise nothing which turns to its detriment; but concerning the better reason for pursuing this end, discussion ought to be free, according to that saying: in necessary things unity, in doubtful things liberty, in all things charity. This is clearly evident by the example of nations which are eminent among cultivated nations, such as Great Britain and America: there certainly flourishes a singular love of fatherland, precisely because the greatest liberty flourishes for parents in educating children; and certainly the fatherland is loved the more, the more securely and efficaciously the liberty of domestic life is protected.

² Cf. Ch. Dupuy, in the speech held to the Senate Nov. 5, 1903, in Questions actuelles, t. 71, p. 168-192; E. Faguet, Le Liberalisme, Paris, 1903, p. 128-169, where he lucidly shows how much they contradict themselves who, under the pretext of unity, strive to extinguish liberty of teaching.

948. (B) The same is established by history. For Nations which assigned the office of educating boys to the Republic alone soon fell into despotic tyranny; thus the Spartans, ignorant of human dignity, who had committed the education of children to the State, instituted not men nor free citizens, but soldiers. Thus also the leaders of the French Revolution, Danton and Robespierre, who assigned to the fatherland alone the right of educating children, oppressed their fellow citizens with bronze tyranny and cruel persecution. Hence those who favor Caesarism, as Napoleon I, State Socialists, in one word, all haters and oppressors of liberty, vindicate for themselves the exclusive right or monopoly of teaching.¹ - On the contrary, however, the Christian religion, which liberated peoples from tyranny, has always asserted and defended the rights of parents to educating their own offspring; likewise everywhere and at every time it has favored those institutes and Universities which, independently from the State, hand on various disciplines. Wherefore even in our days truly cultivated nations, which pursue not only the shadow and name of liberty, but the thing itself, such as Belgium, Switzerland, Great Britain, and the Federated States of America, gladly acknowledge and protect the rights of parents to instructing their own offspring in various disciplines, and at the same time confer the greatest liberty on independent schools and Universities.¹ Unless therefore we wish to say farewell to the liberty of private persons and families, we ought unceasingly to vindicate, by all legitimate means, especially by rightly ordered associations of fathers of families, the rights of parents as to the education of offspring.

¹ This indeed is admitted by a man otherwise most hostile to the doctrines of the Church, Clemenceau, in the speech held to the Senators Nov. 17, 1903: "The State, I know it: it has a long history, all of murder and blood. All the crimes which have been accomplished in the world, massacres, wars, breaches of sworn faith, pyres, torments, tortures, everything has been justified by the interest of the State, by reason of State... I understand well: you dream of the ideal State. Thus Plato, thus Aristotle, thus Thomas More, thus other dreamers. You dream of the ideal State. This State, in books, you make it as beautiful as it can please you; but here we are weak men, changing, grappling with reality... If you could succeed, you would put into the hands of universal suffrage, into the hands of the changing majorities which succeed one another in Assemblies, the most formidable instrument of reaction which has yet been seen in the world, for the responsibility would be ungraspable, scattered in the anonymous crowd." (In Questions actuelles, t. 71, Dec. 12, 1903, pp. 197, 198, 199; ibidem p. 177-183, read what Lamarzelle spoke excellently concerning liberty of teaching.)

¹ Thus J. Stuart Mill (Principles of Political Economy, New York, 1882, t. II, p. 576-577) writes that no right belongs to the State of teaching exclusively, or even of conferring special privileges on those who frequent the State's schools; and that it is intolerable tyranny to wish to subject all schools to its rule: "to possess such a control, and actually exert it, is to be despotic." - R. Lavollee sketches the history of this question and the laws of diverse Nations, op. cit., p. 3-202.

949. Corollary. A twofold office belongs to civil authority concerning the instruction of children, namely to take care that independent schools not favor the corruption of morals, and to found schools necessary for the right instruction of citizens.

(A) The reason for the former is that it pertains to the State to promote the public good, and therefore to prohibit those things which manifestly stand in the way of this good. Now, if there were any school which notoriously corrupted the minds of the young by doctrines evidently contrary to natural right, or weakened good morals, civil authority would deservedly restrain those abuses, since the right and office is incumbent upon it of warding off dangers which can overturn the foundations of the republic. - Yet we said notoriously, because public authority ought not to be too solicitous about hidden things, lest perhaps, while it tries to restrain abuses, it take away all liberty altogether.

(B) The same reason of the public good often urges civil authority to institute schools and colleges. For although it pertains primarily to parents to educate their own offspring, nevertheless many can fulfill this office neither through themselves nor through private teachers; wherefore it pertains to the City to remedy this insufficiency by the foundation of public schools, to which parents can send their offspring: for the right instruction of the young greatly profits the public good.

But the Republic cannot institute a monopoly of education, namely by commanding that parents send their children to public schools, with the faculty excluded of educating them privately through teachers well seen by themselves: for this would be a usurpation of domestic right and an open violation of liberty of conscience.

Indeed that system, now flourishing among not a few nations, by force of which public schools alone are sustained from the common treasury, harms the equality and liberty of citizens; for then the school tax is paid by all, although many receive no advantage from it.¹ Much fairer is the system prevailing in Great Britain and other regions, by force of which public and private schools are equally sustained, provided that they attain a certain degree of progress: for thus the liberty of families remains intact, burdens are equally distributed, and noble emulation prevails among the diverse schools.

¹ Faguet sets this forth thus, op. cit., p. 134: "It is as if from Paris to Bordeaux there were two railways, one by Chartres, the other by Orleans, operated by two different companies, and I had the right to go to Bordeaux by Orleans, but on condition of paying my place to the Company of Orleans and also to the Company of Chartres."

If a marriage is blessed with children,¹ parents and children together form the social community called family. The bond which unites its mem- bers is love, not by virtue of some secondary or artificial arrangement, but by the voice of nature and divine Revelation.² The duties of parents to their children are manifold and various. St. Paul sums them up in the passage: “And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.”³

¹ Even aside from religious motives, a child has a “right,” as it were, to brothers and sisters. A recent non-Catholic writer (Mary Vida Clark) says on this subject: “If the plural is in all cases too much to demand, at least one ‘sibling’ should be a minimum concession. The liability of the only child to the danger of being ‘spoiled’ has been long and widely recognized. The expectation of moral life which can be calculated for an only child is about equal to that of the proverbial ‘minister’s son.’ But it is not only in the strictly moral sphere that to be an only child is an extra hazardous occupation. Our ultra-modern psychologists and psychiatrists are calling attention to previously unrecognized mental risks, and warning us that this way madness lies. The first decade of life is no longer pictured as a garden of delight, but as a field of battle where ‘invisible armies clash by night.’ It is in these infantile conflicts (‘conflict’ is the technical word) that those wounds of the spirit are acquired, which, after festering in ‘the unconscious’ for a few decades, break out in the neuroses and psychoses of middle life. One of our leading Freudians has produced a learned monograph entitled The Only or Favorite Child, a signpost pointing out the descensum Averno down which these preordained victims of infant damnation are pushed by the fatuous and doting parents who are called by an inscrutable Providence to do the work. According to this school of thought, the superior opportunity that the only child is afforded by his freedom from domestic competition is that of ending his days in an insane asylum—and being able to be a paying patient. But even without these lurid lights on this dark subject, we can feel our way to the sensible realization that an only child is at best a forlorn and unnatural object, arbitrarily and unjustly deprived of the company of his peers, and condemned to excessive and demoralizing association with rude-mannered adults, constantly intruding their unwelcome attentions, and making the unfortunate an object of ridicule to the more happily situated groups of brothers and sisters to be observed in the outer world. To fail to conform to the requirements of this abnormal environment, where one is the only one of his kind in his world, makes for immediate misery; and to conform, it now appears, results in even more serious disaster in the future. A cruel dilemma indeed for a guileless enterer in life’s handicap! And yet the senile speak of ‘childhood’s happy hours’! Consider next the child’s right to respectful treatment. The rudeness exhibited by most adults in their relations with children is fully recognized only by the victims themselves, who are too forbearing and well-mannered to speak out in their own defense. The child is a very serious-minded individual, engaged in a life and death struggle for existence and growth and knowledge, in a world ill adapted to meet his needs, to which he must by increasing and herculean effort learn to conform. Self-respect and consideration for others demand the repression, so far as possible, of external indications of the conflict going on within the soul; but to the combatant, conscious of the struggle, life and himself are very serious propositions. To the adult, however, whose growing pains have ceased and been forgotten with the conclusion of his stunted development, the child, because of a certain meretricious outer appearance of calm, seems for some inscrutable reason an object of hilarity, to be treated jocosely when not subjected to autocratic domination and suppression. A sense of humor, in cases where it exists at all, is a development of maturity, a thing not born but made. The child still regards life as real and earnest. Yet his serious observations on his discoveries in the natural and supernatural world are treated by thick-headed grown-ups as funny sayings to be bandied about for public entertainment. The child, naturally sensitive to ridicule, soon learns to keep to himself his queries and his discoveries, painfully and laboriously acquiring knowledge by putting two and two together through æons of time.” North American Review, Vol. 216, No. 3 (Sept. 1922), pp. 407 sqq.

² Is. XLIX, 15; Matth. VII, 9–11; Luke XI, 11–13; cfr. John XVI, 21.—J. P. Gury, S. J., Comp. Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 378.—Tit. II, 4; cfr. Matth. X, 37; Luke XIV, 26.

³ Eph. VI, 4.

1. This bringing up,—education as we are wont to call it,—comprises a threefold care on the part of the parents, namely, a) Care for the physical life and well-being of their children. Parents are bound to protect their children against everything that is apt to prove injurious to their life and health. In positive terms this means that they must provide for them whatever they need to grow up and develop their physical powers. This duty begins long before the child is born, at the moment of its conception in the maternal womb. Hence parents commit a mortal sin if they deliberately induce abortion or expose their children to any other grave danger to life and health, either before or after birth.

b) In regard to support (victus), the first duty devolves upon the mother. She is bound to give the new-born infant the food which nature has provided for it, and if she is unable to do so, either because of ill health or for some other weighty reason, she must provide an adequate substitute for mother’s milk. After the infant is weaned, father and mother must share in his care by providing him with food, shelter, and clothing in accordance with their station in life, until the child is able to take care of himself.⁴

⁴ Col. III, 21. Cfr. Gury, Compend. Theol. Mor., I, n. 379–381.

The mother’s duty of nursing her babies obliges under pain of mortal sin, and it is a grievous mistake to think that compliance with this duty injures a woman’s health or mars her youthfulness. Under normal conditions the contrary is true: neglect to nurse her baby is apt to induce serious disturbances in the physical organism of the mother. It is foolish to regard nursing as immodest or degrading. But if a mother is really incapable of nursing her infant, which is nowadays unfortunately but too often the case, in consequence of unnatural habits continued through many generations, the best substitute that can be had is a wet nurse. In engaging a wet nurse preference should be given to healthy married women of good repute, not only for moral reasons, but also because unmarried mothers are more likely to transmit diseases.⁵

⁵ Lam. IV, 3.—Gury, op. cit., I, n. 381.—H. Noldin, S. J., Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. II, p. 310; H. Muckermann, S. J., Der biologische Wert der mütterlichen Stillpflicht, Freiburg 1918; J. Antonelli, Medicina Pastoralis, Vol. II, pp. 10 sqq.

A relatively large proportion of infants nowadays die of neglect. They are mostly the offspring of mothers who entrust their little ones to strangers while they, compelled by poverty, go out to work. This is a deplorable evil, which can not be effectively combatted by the erection of foundling asylums. Such institutions, even when conducted according to the most approved rules of Christian charity, cannot supply to the foundlings what their nature demands and their mothers refuse to give them. A certain monarch once suggested as an appropriate motto for a foundling asylum the words: “Ici on fait mourir les enfants—Here infants are made to die.” There is more truth than poetry in this inscription. Foundling asylums are not without their merits, but statistics show that the majority of the children entrusted to them either die prematurely or become degenerate in after life.

If possible, orphans should be entrusted to good Christian families, rather than to asylums, where they usually feel as if they were in prison. Still a well conducted orphanage is superior to a private home in which the children are allowed to grow up wild or are exploited for profit.

Experience teaches that men often abandon girls whom they have seduced and that the young unmarried mothers are unable to support their offspring with their meagre earnings. This condition of affairs is responsible for many crimes, such as abortion, child-murder, and suicide. Relief should be furnished by the State or municipality by erecting institutions for the proper care of such mothers and their children. Institutions for receiving girls about to become mothers are also a desideratum, especially in our large cities, and can do much good, not only by relieving such poor unfortunate creatures of worry, but likewise by leading them back to virtue. To accomplish this double end it is advisable that the girls should remain in these institutions for some time both before and after delivery. The charges should be moderate, and poor girls should be received and treated gratis. Upon being dismissed, the unmarried mother should be given an opportunity to leave her baby in a home connected with the institution and herself be provided with safe lodging if she is obliged to go out to work.⁶

⁶ F. X. Linsenmann, Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, p. 646.—P. G. Kammerer, The Unmarried Mother, A Study of Five Hundred Cases, Boston 1918.—C. Bruehl in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Vol. XXIII (1923), no. 10.

Motherhood insurance (against the risks of maternity) is a good thing because it secures to mothers proper care during and after confinement and enables them to nurse their babies if they are physically able to do so.

c) Parents are further bound to aid their children in choosing a vocation or profession and in preparing them for it. This means, under modern conditions, that they have to accumulate a certain amount of money in order to enable the children to equip themselves properly for the battle of life. St. Paul expressly teaches that parents should lay up treasures for their children, not children for their parents.⁷ St. Thomas states the reason as follows: “Since a father stands in the relation of a principle, and his son in the relation of that which is from a principle, it is essentially fitting for a father to support his son, and consequently he is bound to support him not only for a time, but for all his life, and this is to lay by. On the other hand, for the son to bestow something on his father is accidental, arising from some momentary necessity, wherein he is bound to support him, but not to lay by as for a long time beforehand, because naturally parents are not the successors of their children, but children of their parents.”⁸

⁷ 2 Cor. XII, 4.

⁸ Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 101, art. 2, ad 2: “Since a father has the character of a principle, while a son has the character of one existing from a principle, it therefore belongs to the father in himself to assist his son; and for this reason he ought to assist him not only for the present hour, but for the whole of his life, which is to lay up treasure. But that a son should contribute something to his father is accidental, by reason of some pressing necessity in which he is bound to assist him, but not to lay up treasure as though for the distant future, because by nature parents are not the heirs of their children, but children are the heirs of their parents.”—Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 382: “Finally, parents are bound to procure for their children a station in which they may someday live honorably according to their condition. Hence the following sin gravely: 1. Those who do not employ at least moderate diligence to acquire goods from which they may suitably support their children and provide for their future station, according to that saying of the Apostle (2 Cor. xii, 14): Children ought not to lay up treasure for their parents, but parents for their children; 2. Those who neither teach nor have their children taught a trade suited to their station or some other honorable manner of making a living; 3. All the more, those who dissipate the family property through sloth, negligence, drinking, feasting, games, and gravely imprudent transactions; 4. Those who without legitimate cause obstinately deny a daughter a suitable dowry for contracting marriage or entering religion.”

Parents are not, however, bound to go to extraordinary pains, or to impose privations upon themselves, in order to enrich their children. The best they can do for them is to fit them for a position where they can take care of themselves.

It is wrong for parents to spend money without stint to help along their sons and at the same time to make no provision for their unmarried daughters.

Just how much or how little a child needs to be properly provided for, cannot be definitely determined by any general rule. Often the sons of poor families become prosperous, nay wealthy, whereas the pampered scions of the rich grow poor. “To surround the young with what they ought themselves to achieve,” says Archbishop Spalding, “is to enfeeble and corrupt them. Happy is the poor man’s son, who, whithersoever he turns, sees the obstacles rise to challenge him to become a man; miserable the children of the rich, whose cursed-blessed fortune is an everpresent invitation to idleness and conceit. O mothers, you whose love is the best any of us have known, harden your sons and urge them on, not in the race for wealth, but in the steep and narrow way wherein, through self-conquest and self-knowledge, they rise toward God and all high things.”⁹

⁹ J. L. Spalding, Means and Ends of Education, 5th ed., Chicago 1909, pp. 124 sq.

A good education, or a trade or profession, is worth more than a large fortune. “He who hath a trade hath an estate,” says Poor Richard.

Parents are not obliged to go to the limit of their ability in providing for their children. For a good and appreciative child they will naturally do more than for a wicked and ungrateful one. “Parents cannot do too much for good children,” says Lessing; “but if a foolish father deprives himself of the necessaries of life to support a wayward son, love degenerates into folly.”

Among the duties of parents, says a recent writer on ethics, is that of training their children so that they will avoid sloth and pleasure-seeking, and teaching them to work diligently, to employ their time in useful pursuits, to be methodic and frugal, and to save money. To many a thriftless and prodigal parent might be applied the words of Homer’s Lycophron, when he says of the father of Mestra, that “he hath consumed everything.” They consume, i. e., waste everything, and not only fail to provide for their children, but abandon them to material and moral ruin. Pauperism with all its misery too often has its source in gross parental neglect.

2. The most important duty which parents have towards their children is to educate and train them in the fear of God.¹⁰

¹⁰ Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 383: “Parents are bound chiefly to provide a spiritual education. The reason is that man, besides that material or bodily being which he has in common with the other animals, is endowed by God with a rational and most noble soul in the image of the divinity Himself, and was created to tend toward God as his final supernatural end; consequently he ought above all to be instructed and directed by his parents toward this end. For this reason Matrimony was raised to the dignity of a sacrament, that the offspring born might be reborn in Christ and prepared for eternal life. Hence the Apostle (1 Tim. V, 8) says: If anyone does not have care for his own and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. For this education are required: 1. Instruction; 2. Correction; 3. Example.”—St. Augustine, De Bono Coniug., c. 17, n. 19: “For among them the desire for children itself is carnal; among them, however, it was spiritual, because it accorded with the sacrament of that time. Now indeed no one perfect in piety seeks to have children except spiritually; but then it was an operation of piety itself to propagate children also carnally.” (Migne, P. L., XL, 386 sq.).

a) Children need instruction (doctrina), that they may acquire proficiency in the things a man needs to know in order to be enabled to take care of himself when he grows up and, in his turn, to provide for his own offspring. The most necessary and elementary branches of knowledge are the so-called three R’s, i. e., reading, writing, and arithmetic, commonly conveyed in elementary or grammar schools. To these Catholics are wont to add a fourth “R,”—namely religion. Hence parents, who are unable to instruct their children themselves, are bound to send them to a good Catholic school. If a boy is fit for and aspires to a higher education or profession, parents should cheerfully provide the means to achieve his ambition, but compulsion should never be exercised in the choice of a profession or occupation.

It would be a travesty of liberty and a suppression of rights if parents were prohibited from choosing their own schools for their children, where the latter will receive the kind of instruction that is in keeping with the parents’ outlook on life and their religious beliefs. Right gives way to might and liberty becomes tyranny when education is made a monopoly of the State and when thoughts and ideas are shaped and controlled by a party in power, by “vested” interests, or a hostile majority.

When a child shows signs of a vocation for the priesthood or for the religious life, the parents should encourage it, but they are not allowed to interfere with the child’s freedom of choice.¹¹

¹¹ Conc. Trid., Sess. XXV, De Regular. et Monial., c. 16–18; St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 104, art. 5.

Parents who let a child grow up without giving him all the opportunities for mental development which they can command, or who oppose the child’s desire for a higher education and forcibly try to keep him in ignorance, commit a grievous sin, especially if they could give him the desired opportunities without great sacrifices on their part. A boy who shows a talent for a higher profession should not be denied an education on the plea that his help is needed at home and the family would have to deny itself certain luxuries if he quit working.

In all questions pertaining to education parents should above all remember that they may under no circumstances entrust their children to institutions in which faith or morals are exposed to direct danger.¹²

¹² J. L. Spalding, Means and Ends of Education, pp. 151 sqq.; Linsenmann, Lehrb. der Moraltheol., p. 647. Cfr. Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 386; Lehmkuhl, Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 937 sqq.

b) So much for instruction. Of equal importance is moral and religious training (disciplina). It must comprise the intellect, the will, and the heart. The child must be instructed in its duties to God, to himself, and to his fellowmen, and taught to acquire a firm and enduring tendency toward moral goodness, in order that he may acquire true culture and nobility of character and attain to “the age of the fullness of Christ.”¹³ Consequently, parents are in duty bound to instruct their children at an early age in those moral and religious truths which are necessary for salvation, to accustom them to the daily practice of religion, to protect them against the danger of seduction arising from servants or companions, and particularly to train them in obedience and respect to authority.

¹³ Eph. IV, 13.—Cfr. Brother Azarias, Phases of Thought and Criticism, Boston 1896, pp. 72 sqq.

Some parents fancy that in sending their children to a religious school they have discharged all their obligations towards them. Even in secular quarters apprehension is growing on account of the remissness of parents at home in the matter of supplying a background for the teaching in the schools. Miss Sarah Louise Arnold, dean emeritus of Simmons College, recently registered the following complaint: “The modern American home is no longer filling its former place in the education of the child. We are leaving to the school the responsibilities of the home. Education is not for the school alone. Where can re- sponsibility and co-operation be taught, if not at home? The home is the environment that is natural for a proper training for responsible citizenship. But to-day our homes too often lack the permanence that made the homes of a generation ago so fundamental in training our present generation. To-day our homes, too, often lack the books and the chores and the duties toward the family.”

Still graver consequences than those which follow the state of affairs set forth by Miss Arnold are produced by faulty home environment and false standards of life. “In many a Catholic home,” says a current Catholic writer, “the inspiring and helpful teaching given to the children at school not only remains unencouraged, but principles and modes of action are stimulated which are directly opposed to what the child has learned while under the care of Catholic teachers. What is the result of this twofold standard, presented almost daily to the impressionable character of the young persons? They will be apt to follow the example, and to adopt the views of their elders at home. After all, the adolescent boy or girl understands quite well that it is not the school, but the home where father and mother and friends and neighbors meet, which really counts. In the minds of the young it is the home, and not the school that pre- sents a sample of what goes on in the great world around. The child looks upon the school as an episode to be gotten through with as soon as possible, in order to start real life.”

When it becomes necessary to correct or punish their children, parents must proceed with prudence and moderation. Punishment, especially corporal chastisement, when applied in anger or to excess, produces discouragement, bitterness, and contempt of authority, and is apt to prove an obstacle rather than a help to education. “Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.”¹⁴

¹⁴ Eph. VI, 4; cfr. Col. III, 21; Prov. XIII, 24; XXIII, 13 sq.; Ecclus. XXII, 6; XLII, 5.—Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 385.

No partiality should ever be shown, because it is a hindrance to the right development of character.

The best and most effective means of training a child, especially in religion, is good example.¹⁵ Parents are, therefore, under a particular obligation to fulfill their religious duties regularly and conscientiously. “You will give [your daughter] very much if you give her nothing but your [good] example,” says Seneca; and Horace: “The virtue of good parents is a rich dowry.”¹⁶

¹⁵ St. Jerome, Epist., 107 (al. 7), n. 9: “Let her have you as her teacher; let her inexperienced childhood imitate (admire) you. Let her see nothing in you and in her father which, if she does it, she sins. Remember that you are the parents of a virgin, and that she can be taught by examples more than by voice. . . . Let her never go out in public without you. . . . Let our little virgin so celebrate the days of vigils and solemn night watches that she does not depart from her mother even by the breadth of a fingernail.” (Migne, P. L., XXII, 875).—St. Gregory the Great, Regula Past., p. 3, c. 4 (al. 28): “Let these [fathers] learn how also to furnish outwardly to those committed to them examples of living well. Prelates must also know that if ever they perpetrate perverse deeds, they are worthy of as many deaths as the examples of perdition which they transmit to their subjects. Hence it is necessary that they guard themselves from fault all the more cautiously, since through the evil things which they do, not only do they themselves die, but they are guilty of the souls of others, which they have destroyed by evil examples.” (P. L., LXXVII, 54).

¹⁶ Seneca, De Consol. ad Helviam, XVIII, 8: “You will give her much, even if you give her nothing except an example.”—Horace, Carm., l. III, c. 24, 21: “The virtue of parents is a great dowry.”

“Education,” says Archbishop Spalding, “is always the result of personal influence. A mother, a father in the home, a pure and loving heart at the altar, a true man or woman in the school, a noble mind uttering itself in literature, which is personal thought and expression, these are the forces which educate. Life proceeds from life, and religion, which is the highest power of life, can proceed only from God and religious souls. Not by preaching and teaching, but by living the life, can we make ourselves centres of spiritual influence.”¹⁷

¹⁷ Means and Ends of Education, p. 125.

The dread which prevents so many parents from being strict with their children is not a sign of a humane disposition, but rather a proof of mental unsteadiness, moral weakness, and lack of principle. They hesitate to impose a law upon their children because they themselves have no law to guide them, and because father and mother proceed on different principles, or have no principles at all. Parental discipline, to be effective, must be concerted, reasonable, moderate, and uniform. Though the father is stricter than the mother, both should communicate to each other their experiences and observations and never let the children notice any difference of opinion that may arise between them. There should be no partiality in the treatment of children, yet, on the other hand, each should be dealt with according to his or her individual character, with due regard to his or her idiosyncrasies, and all should be made to know and feel that they are equally dear to their progenitors. That parents love those of their children who cause them trouble with a special tenderness seems to be natural, but to treat the younger children more leniently than the older is neither just nor prudent.¹⁸

¹⁸ Linsenmann, Moraltheologie, pp. 647 sqq.

Though instruction in matters of sex may be necessary in some cases, it cannot be regarded as a general duty incumbent upon all parents, for three reasons: First, not all are able to give this sort of instruction effectively; secondly, a great many children, in consequence of temperament, education, or environment, do not require such instruction, at least not in childhood; third, it is not at all certain that instruction in matters of sex always produces the desired effect, but experience teaches that, on the contrary, this sort of enlightenment, no matter how well-intentioned, often entails great danger.¹⁹ For very good reasons drawn from personal experience many moralists, pedagogues, and parents oppose this new fad. The words of the noble Bishop Sailer²⁰ remain as true to-day as when they were spoken nearly a century ago: “The lure of curiosity and forbidden desire, aided by the imagination, often overcomes the trained reason of the adult man; what will they do to the boy whose reason is so very weak and whose imagination is so immensely strong? Hence sexual instruction must not be the rule. Whether it may be employed beneficially in exceptional cases, must be left to the judgment of the wise and prudent lover of youth.”²¹ Consequently, there can be no duty in this matter for parents except in individual and exceptional cases, when such instruction appears necessary, and even then only to the extent in which it is necessary. The general rule is that parents should instruct their children in the unchangeable principles of Christian morality, inculcate especially the necessity of watchfulness and prayer against the temptations of the flesh, train the children to be chaste and modest, and instil into them at an early age fear of God and a deep aversion for the sins against the Sixth Commandment.²²

¹⁹ Cfr. F. Damian, “Eine aktuelle Frage,” in the Theologisch-prakt. Quartalschrift, of Linz, 1906, pp. 750 sqq.; F. Tischler, Prinzipielle Gesichtspunkte zur sexuellen Aufklärung, ibid., 1908, pp. 783 sqq.; Th. J. Gerard, The Church and Eugenics, London 1921, pp. 61 sqq.

²⁰ On Sailer see the Cath. Encyclopedia, Vol. XIII, p. 328.

²¹ Schmetz, Das Glück im Heim, p. 191. Cfr. F. W. Foerster, Sexualethik, 3rd ed., pp. 183 sqq.

²² L. Auer, Die Einführung in ein richtiges Geschlechtsleben, Donauwörth 1907, pp. 22 sqq.; M. Gatterer and F. Krus, Die Erziehung zur Keuschheit, 2nd ed., Innsbruck, 1910, pp. 4 sqq. (English edition by Van der Donckt).

Father Thomas J. Gerrard, a very competent authority, says that parents and teachers have to steer between Scylla and Charybdis in this matter of sex instruction:

“The difficulty arises from this, that there is an intimate nervous connection between the imagination and the bodily functions; so that knowledge may cause keen physical sensations and they in turn may become a source of temptation and sin. If the knowledge is gained before the mind can rightly grasp the motives for self-control or the will acquire the habit, the removal of ignorance may mean the loss of innocence as well. Whereas if when knowledge is due it is withheld, an unhealthy curiosity may seek gratification in wrong ways or be suppressed by an equally unhealthy prudery.

“Once the necessity of this instruction is admitted, the solution of the problem must take the form of an answer to the questions—Who? When? and How? Who is the proper person to give the instruction? As the parent stands in the closest relation to the child and is primarily responsible for its moral education, it is clearly the parental duty to see that the offspring gets the requisite knowledge neither too early nor too late. It is never too early to begin to train children in habits of modesty as regards themselves and others, but the time will come when that training must be supplemented and confirmed by a disclosure of the rational and religious grounds for those habits. Of the parents, the mother is normally the best fitted in herself and in her opportunities to undertake this duty, but if she for some reason cannot do it, she is bound to provide an efficient substitute.

“As to the when and how, clearly the disclosure must be gradual. As generally it is the phenomenon of birth that first arouses the child’s curiosity, the mother should be prepared to use the analogy of reproduction amongst irrational animals, such as cats and rabbits, to illustrate such part of the human process as concerns herself. Answers to some questions may readily be deferred for a time, especially if the child leads a sheltered life, but false information should never be given. God’s share in the process, both in ordaining it and actually creating the rational soul, should be emphasized, so as to show its essential sacredness, and, whilst it is described as too intimate to be discussed with others, care must be taken not to let the child think that there is anything improper in the function itself. Not until much later, when the occurrence of the phenomena of puberty seems likely to arouse youthful curiosity again, should the part the father takes be indicated. Then it is time that the growing youths should learn other reasons, besides God’s stern prohibition, for preserving continence, such as reverence for the purity of others and the personal and social harm of indulgence.

“So much for what we may call home instruction, normally indispensable if the moral character is to be duly developed. But it should always be accompanied or followed up by that training in religion by which young minds are best enlightened and young wills best strengthened against sexual sin. The explanation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, if given clearly and fully, should, by indicating precisely what is wrong, and the penalties which are assigned by God to transgression, suffice to preserve any Catholic child from unconsciously forming habits of vice. Unfortunately, as every confessor can testify, owing to a mistaken reticence on the part of parents or to the difficulties attending class instruction in so delicate a subject, many children are allowed to grow up and to leave school inadequately or even wrongly informed as to what is and what is not sinful. Such ignorance is widespread outside the Catholic Church, but, with Catechism instruction as a basis of enlightenment, it should be impossible for a Catholic child to be misinformed on so vital a matter. It is the grave duty of those entrusted with the task of teaching the Catechism to see that the nature of the obligations imposed by these two commandments, and the reason for them, are clearly understood by their pupils. This obviously cannot be done by questioning in public, both because of the nature of the subject and the different degrees of precocity exhibited even by children of the same age and standing. For this reason, detailed class instruction in this matter is strongly to be deprecated. The state of the child’s knowledge is best ascertained by judicious questioning in private with the view to removing misapprehensions, and correcting, if need be, both laxity and scrupulosity of conscience.”

Closely akin to this question, and equally important, is when and how to tell the young of the harmful physical effects of sexual indulgence. It is a pressing question to-day when the looseness of morals, induced by the Great War, has greatly increased the incidence of venereal disease. The medical profession are seriously alarmed at the spread of this racial poison, which affects the innocent as well as the guilty, and are casting about for means of checking its ravages. One of these means is the diffusion of knowledge both as to the painful and health-shattering character of veneric diseases, and as to the methods by which they can be cured once they have been incurred. “In the conveyance of this information,” says Fr. Gerrard, “the moralists (and genuine eugenics put morality foremost) see a double effect: the revelation of the terrible nature of the infection is clearly a deterrent, whilst the indication of a ready means of recovery tends to make the sinner more reckless. However, the need of promoting public health and of protecting the innocent from loathsome complaints, outweighs the possible danger of making the way of the transgressor less hard; and, the crisis being what it is, no Catholic moralist would refuse to second the efforts of the health authorities, both to warn the public and to heal, as speedily as may be, those who do not heed the warning.

“Again, the risk attending public instruction of adults must necessarily be run, if only because of the impossibility of conveying the knowledge otherwise. Members of non-Catholic bodies, deprived of explicit moral teach- ing and the counsels of the confessional, must be treated thus en masse and appealed to mainly on physical and social grounds. But we hold out against such instruction being given publicly in schools, and we insist on the religious motive as being the highest and most permanent in fighting this great evil. Religion, as we said above, is the only eugenic force in the world capable of realizing the final aim of eugenics.”²³

²³ The Church and Eugenics, Appendix.

All further explanations may, as a rule, be postponed to the time immediately preceding marriage.²⁴ Innocence of mind and heart has this great advantage that it turns away the imagination of the adolescent boy or girl from the sexual organs and their functions, which in not a few cases is of greater advantage than the most profound knowledge concerning these things.

²⁴ See the excellent specimen instruction for bridal couples by Dean J. H. Keim in Dr. F. Schulze’s Pastoral Theology, 3rd ed., St. Louis 1923, Appendix II.

A Catholic lay writer on these subjects says that the instruction which he and his bride received from an experienced and pious priest immediately before marriage, was of greater benefit to them than all professed instruction in matters of sex could possibly have been. Given in the confessional, such instructions are frequently even more effective, because they turn the attention to the sacred purpose of Matrimony at a time when and in a place where the mind is most receptive to such things.

READINGS.—Sporer-Bierbaum, Theol. Mor., Vol. I, 2nd ed., pp. 794 sqq.—Elbel-Bierbaum, Theol. Mor., Vol. I, 3rd ed., pp. 730 sqq.—Reuter-Lehmkuhl, Neoconfessarius, pp. 166 sqq.—J. M. Sailer and J. Baier, Über Erziehung für Erzieher, Freiburg 1899, pp. 160 sqq.—D. Dupanloup, L’Éducation, Paris 1850.—W. Becker, S.J., Die christl. Erziehung oder Pflichten der Eltern, 3rd ed., Freiburg 1907.—F. A. Göpfert, Moraltheologie, Vol. II, pp. 419.

Marriage was instituted first of all for the due propagation of the human race.

Because propagation of any sort would satisfy neither the dignity of the parents, nor the education of the children, nor the interests of society.

Because it might be the work solely of animal passion, whereas man’s dignity requires in all his free actions intervention and even control by his superior or spiritual part.

Because it might leave paternity uncertain, it might be the fruit of transient unions, and it would then afford for the education of the children neither the security nor the continuity nor the unity which are needed.

Because the citizen is no better than the man of whom he is made; and a promiscuous propagation of mankind, by compromising the right formation of men, would expose society to the risk of being in want of that which it needs most, virtuous citizens who are devoted to their country.

by requiring in advance of the corporal union a First, sincere affection uniting the souls; secondly, by providing for education by means of the stability of the union; finally, by creating through the fusion of two persons a common principle of vigilance, tenderness and care, by which the children benefit from the qualities of both sexes harmoniously combined. “Man and woman together constitute the principle which is destined to transmit and develop human life.”¹

¹ Dermine, work cited, p. 44.

Such a death is an accidental misfortune. Sad though it be, it does not entirely destroy the unity in duality which was realized in the marriage. The surviving spouse is guided in his life and in his task of education by the remembrance of the lessons and counsels of the departed one, and by all that the deceased has left him. He knows the counsels and wishes of the deceased partner, and tries to conform to them; and thus the education of a legitimate child is never the work of one parent alone.

The Creator of the human race Himself [says the Encyclical] who in His goodness wished to use men as His

helpers in the propagation of life, taught this when, instituting marriage in Paradise, He said to our first parents, and through them to all future spouses, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth,” as St. Augustine¹ admirably deduces from the words of the holy Apostle St. Paul to Timothy when he says, “The Apostle himself is therefore a witness that marriage is for the sake of generation: ‘I wish,’ he says, ‘young girls to marry.’ And, as if someone said to him, ‘Why?’ he immediately adds, ‘to beget children, to be mothers of families.’”² We prove it from the fact that the faculty of reproduction brings together intimately persons of different sexes; also because apart from this power of reproduction the institution of marriage would be inconceivable; because the right use of that power is a safeguard of the other blessings of marriage; and because the right propagation of mankind closely concerns the good of society as a whole.

¹ De bono conjugali, c. 24, n. 32; PL, 40, 394.

² Pp. 24-25.

Yes, a great blessing. In the first place what an honor it is for man to be associated with the creative work of God, to bring forth a king of visible creation, to prepare one of the elect for Heaven, to furnish to the Church a son, in whom, once he will have been regenerated by baptism, Jesus Christ will dwell! What happiness to survive, as it were, one’s self in the persons of dear ones who love you, and thus obtain even on earth a kind of perpetual memory! Besides, the child cements the union of the parents; in the little quarrels which are almost inevitable he is the conciliating element; because he requires good example he is an educative factor, and makes the work of mutual upbuilding easier for the parents. The sacrifices he demands are compensated for by satisfactions of a higher order; the cares he requires make him the more beloved. The human mind is unable to imagine or to taste this dignity, or to appreciate that feeling of pride in being the father or the mother of a child of men and a child of God. Even then they will not appreciate it when they see the look in the eyes of their child in whom shines the immortal soul; or when afterward they reflect that that soul is the breath of God, that the Son of God died for that child, that enriched as he is with the gift of sanctifying grace, he is more like a God than a man, that he is destined to live forever *De bono conjugali chapter 24. number 32, Latin Patrology. 40, 394. *Pp. 24-25.

and when, thereupon they exclaim: “This is my child! He owes his existence to me! Without me he would not be there, and would never come to be!”¹ If a true Christian mother weighs well these things, she will indeed understand with a sense of deep consolation that of her the words of Our Saviour were spoken: “A woman . . . when she hath brought forth the child remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world”; and proving herself superior to all the pains and cares and solicitudes of her maternal office with a more just and holy joy than that of the Roman matron, the mother of the Gracchi,² she will rejoice in the Lord, crowned as it were with the glory of her offspring. Both husband and wife, however, receiving these children with joy and gratitude from the hand of God, will regard them as a talent committed to their charge by God, not only to be employed for their own advantage or for that of an earthly commonwealth, but to be restored to God with interest on the day of reckoning.³ “Such,” says St. Augustine whom the Encyclical cites, “is the law of marriage, which sets off the glory of fecundity while it puts a brake to the shameful disorder of incontinence.”⁴

¹ Schilgen, work cited, p. 11.

² The Encyclical here recalls an event of Roman history. Whilst other matrons were displaying their jewels to their hearts’ content, the mother of the Gracchi presented her two sons, saying: “These are my jewels.”

³ P. 26.

⁴ De Gen. ad. lit., Book IX, chapter 7, number 12; Latin Patrology, 34, 397.

Not at all; it is completed only by the right education of the child. In giving them this little being who is entirely incapable of providing for himself, nature, in a general way, designates the parents as those who must provide for him: physically, by the mother’s milk and the means of subsistence; morally, by the education of the mind and heart which begins immediately and lasts continuously, thanks to the constant influence which the common life exerts on those who share it. The parents have an inviolable right to fulfil this mission of education with which nature has entrusted them, and in view of which they have been instilled with a love which nothing can replace.

Since this twofold duty entrusted to the parents for the good of their children is of such high dignity and of such great importance, every use of the faculty given by God for the procreation of new life is the right and the privilege of the marriage state alone, by the law of God and of nature, and must be confined absolutely within the sacred limits of that state.¹ Certainly, outside of marriage, education is deprived of the double guaranty which a lawful union provides: the guaranty of its duration by the perpetual bond which attaches the parents to each other; the guaranty of prudence by the intimacy which gives to education the resource of a common principle rich with the complementary qualities of both sexes.

¹ P. 27.

A training which curbs selfishness and cowardice in the presence of temptations; training to generosity and self-command.

Those who are determined to help each other in everything; to save their souls and to work for their mutual perfection; to be real fathers and mothers to their children,

and to provide for them at home that happiness which money cannot buy and which is a reminder of Heaven.

Precisely those who have prepared in this way for marriage.

Future spouses must pass through, as it were, an apprenticeship for conjugal life by practising generosity and cultivating moral fibre. Educators must correct the disordered tendencies of children from their early years, and develop their good inclinations; imbue their minds with the doctrines that come from God, and prepare their hearts to receive the help of Divine grace.

It insists in the first place—and with what good reason!—on the importance of that choice. How many have to rue during their whole lives the rashness and frivolity of an ill-considered match! Hence it demands mature deliberation, in which neither God nor religion are left out: in which the aspirants to marriage reflect on themselves, their character, education, propensities, and qualities; and consider, also, the other party and his or her fitness under these same respects, the children whom they must be ready to receive willingly from God's bounty, and finally society and their place in it. It demands a prayer that this choice may be enlightened, pure and high in its motives. It demands that the wise counsel of parents on the subject be not neglected; they have experience on their side; and besides this deference to them draws down the blessing of God.

826. The office of education. - Education is the progressive and harmonious development of the faculties, by which infants are transformed into perfect men: progressive indeed, because man naturally can attain perfection only step by step and is impeded in this by many obstacles; but harmonious, by which all his faculties, whether corporal or spiritual and moral, are cultivated proportionately to their importance, so that the whole man is formed. Whence education ought to be chiefly spiritual, so that it eradicates evil inclinations, restrains untamed passions and directs them to good, strengthens good qualities and orders them to human perfection; but also corporal, so that the body is perfectly disposed for its proper operations, and is a fitting instrument of the soul: let there be a sound mind in a sound body. Moreover education ought to be manly, fitting, that is, proportioned to the disposition of the child and preparing him for his future condition, and Christian, ordered to the supernatural end.

A. Corporal education imports three things: for it intends the life, nourishment, and state of the children.

1. As to life, as soon as it is established that an infant has been conceived, parents are bound under grave obligation to avoid everything which probably could harm the life of the child; wherefore:

a) The mother ought to abstain from those dances, violent motions and actions, and all other things which induce more vehement shocks of the body, from immoderate labors, excitements, anxieties, drinks, lustful acts, angers, in one word from those things which can induce abortion of the fetus or a harmful influence upon it.

b) The husband also ought to avert from his pregnant wife all things which would be to her detriment; whence he himself, as all others, would sin if he treated a pregnant woman inhumanely, exasperated her, struck her, with danger to the fetus.

c) After the birth of offspring, parents ought carefully to watch that from it there be kept away whatever would induce danger of death; especially that they not keep the little one with themselves in bed with danger of suffocation.

2. As to nourishment, parents per se are bound under grave obligation to furnish sufficient nourishment and the other things necessary for sustenance, namely, food, clothing, and dwelling, until the children are able to provide for themselves: for they are bound to guard the life of those to whom they gave it. In particular:

a) The mother is bound to nourish children with her own milk, as often as this can be done, both because nature itself inclines to this, and because maternal milk is the most natural nourishment, indeed the only perfectly apt one, and also because on the part of a nurse there can not rarely be danger for the health or morals of the infant; wherefore a mother not nursing fails in an office imposed by nature. The office indeed is not always and necessarily grave, yet it would be grave in the case in which, from the defect of the mother and the use of another nurse, great future evils are probably foreseen; nevertheless mothers are excused from this office on account of scarcity of milk or weakness, their own infirmity, or another reasonable cause, such as labor for procuring food for themselves, but not on account of mere custom.

b) Afterward the father especially, and if he is lacking also the mother, are bound to furnish all things necessary for the honorable sustenance of children according to their condition, nor are they altogether immune from this obligation if the son has dissipated the part given to him; indeed the father ought to pay debts contracted by the son for procuring food for himself, but not other debts.

The office lasts until the age at which children are able to provide for themselves; but even afterward, if they are in extreme or grave necessity, parents are especially bound from piety to help them.

c) Parents sin against piety who do not apply moderate diligence to acquiring goods by which children may be fed. Likewise those who, without grave necessity, expose offspring in public ways or at the door of an orphanage, so that they may free themselves from the burden of feeding it, when they can easily provide for its education; also against justice, by harming the offspring whom they induce into suspicion of illegitimate origin, or even sometimes into danger of life. Nevertheless, in the case of illegitimate offspring, prudence can suggest this in certain circumstances, as we noted above (n. 388).

3. As to state, parents ought to take care that by corporal exercise and labor proportioned to age, children develop physical strength in an orderly way and establish health, so that the body may be a fitting instrument of the soul and they themselves may be apt for a becoming state. Let parents avoid an education that is too delicate, so that children may be strengthened against the inclemencies of weather and be content with substantial but simple and moderate food.

B. Spiritual education imports five things: religious and Christian instruction, the discipline of virtue, good example, vigilance, and correction.

1. As to instruction, parents are bound under grave obligation, either by themselves or partly through others, to hand on to their children Catholic doctrine concerning all things necessary for salvation and for Christian life; hence parents ought to take care:

a) that children be baptized as soon as possible, so that they may receive faith and grace, necessary for Christian instruction; notable delay of Baptism is a grave sin, and even a small delay, if danger for the life of the child is absent;

b) that children from tender years learn the principal truths of faith, and ordinary prayers; but if they are notably negligent in this, parents sin gravely.

2. As to the moral discipline of virtue, parents are bound to form children to the love of God and the practice of virtue, so that they keep the commandments of God and of the Church and be imbued with honorable and Christian morals; hence they ought to take care:

a) that children become accustomed to the exercises of Christian life which are common to all: morning and evening prayers, hearing Mass, frequenting the church and catechism, reception of the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist, etc.

b) that they avoid depraved companions and dangerous readings, and not be corrupted by impious or dishonest servants or companions;

c) that they learn to exercise virtues, especially those which more suit their age: piety, obedience, charity, justice and sincerity, chastity, meekness, etc.

3. As to good example, recalling the axiom, Examples move more efficaciously than words, they ought to furnish to children an example of honorable and Christian life, and a fortiori carefully to abstain from all things which can scandalize them, not only from sins, such as blasphemies, imprecations, immodest acts, but also from incautious ways of speaking and acting, especially regarding religion and chastity.

4. As to vigilance by which they ought to guard children, they must remove from them all things which can be harmful: companions, books, schools, spectacles, dangerous courtships, or things by which they may inflict harm on others; and procure that children fulfill their offices duly.

5. As to correction, parents are bound to correct delinquent children moderately, with kindness and discretion indeed, but also with firmness, not with harshness or passion, and as though reproving everything; namely, so that it may be manifest that this is done for the sake of necessary amendment, not from anger (Eph. VI, 4; Col. III, 21; Prov. XXIII, 13).

Parents who are very negligent in the office of vigilance or correction are gravely guilty toward their children.

827. Corollary on Catholic schools. - Parents who cannot provide by themselves for perfect education are bound to send them to honorable teachers and good schools. Concerning this canon 1374 says: "Catholic children are not to frequent non-Catholic, neutral, or mixed schools, namely, those which are open also to non-Catholics. But it belongs to the local Ordinary alone to decide, according to the norm of the instructions of the Apostolic See, in what circumstances and with what precautions employed, so that danger of perversion may be avoided, it can be tolerated that those schools be attended."

Therefore schools are distinguished: non-Catholic, which are destined for non-Catholics, and in which heresy, unbelief, or religious indifferentism, or even atheism, is positively taught; neutral, which in education negatively abstract from every religion, but teach nothing heretical or impious; mixed, which are open also to non-Catholics. Now not only 1) positively non-Catholic schools are to be condemned, as those which of themselves constitute a proximate danger of perversion, but 2) neutral or mixed schools also are very dangerous, because in them a) the dignity of religion is much diminished in the minds of adolescents, if they see it relegated within domestic walls; b) indifferentism is necessarily fostered, since they see teachers and fellow-students not much caring for religion or even openly attacking it, and since it can scarcely happen that abstraction be made altogether from religion, especially in historical and moral matters, but often, under the pretext of neutrality, Catholic doctrine is attacked or derided; c) finally, not rarely purity of morals is exposed to great dangers.

Hence 1) it is gravely illicit to send children to positively non-Catholic schools, in which proximate danger of perversion cannot be removed;

2. if, all circumstances having been considered, the danger can be removed with moral certainty, and, other schools of the same grade and kind being lacking, a grave reason urges attendance at such schools, this can be tolerated, provided the necessary precautions are employed, and a) outside school the students receive Christian instruction and education in religion and good morals, especially concerning those things which are attacked in the schools; b) parents watch solicitously lest children suffer detriment in religion or morals from lectures heard, depraved books, or association with depraved companions;

3. it is also regularly illicit to send children to neutral schools, on account of the danger which usually adheres to them; nevertheless it can more easily be permitted for a grave reason, and with the necessary precautions always employed.

To judge concerning the concrete circumstances in which attendance at the aforesaid schools can be tolerated, and concerning the precautions to be employed for this, belongs to the local Ordinary alone.

For practice it follows that parents cannot be absolved:

a) if they send children to non-Catholic schools for this reason, that they approve their principles, and therefore prefer them to Catholic schools;

b) generally, if they commit children to be instructed by positively non-Catholic schools, from which ordinarily the danger of perversion cannot be removed;

c) if they hand over children to a negatively non-Catholic or neutral school without at the same time taking care that the danger of perversion be removed;

d) besides, even if parents per se are excused by fitting motives, per accidens they can sin gravely and become unworthy of absolution by reason of scandal or cooperation in promoting depraved schools.

For that reason let Catholics not undertake the office of teaching in these schools, unless for a proportionately grave cause and scandal being excluded. And if priests teach Christian doctrine there, let the people prudently be warned that this is done so that the evils which flow from schools of this kind may be averted as far as possible, and that parents are not therefore excused from sending their children to truly Catholic schools.

These principles hold concerning schools of every grade: primary, secondary, and higher schools and universities.

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.'"

Titius, a Catholic father of a family, sent his children to a Catholic elementary school, but when, as he thought, they were unjustly and cruelly beaten by the schoolmistress, and the greater part of the boys who attended the school were from the lowest class, he afterward transferred them to a school provided by public authority. In it, indeed, no religious education was given besides the reading of the Bible; but on Sundays Titius sent the boys to the Catholic church, where they were instructed in Christian doctrine. Paul, the parish priest of Titius, tries in vain to bring him to a better course, and remains doubtful whether he ought to deny him the sacraments, or what should be done in the case. Hence it is asked:

1. What right belongs respectively to the Church and to parents concerning the education of children?

2. Is there an obligation, and what kind, for parents to send their children to a Catholic school if one exists in the place?

3. When is a penitent to be judged incapable of receiving absolution?

4. What is to be said of the case?

1. What rights have the Church and parents, respectively, over the education of children ?

The Church has received the right and the duty from

God to teach, train, and educate especially, all those who belong to her by Baptism. This right of the Church directly extends to religion, faith, and morals, but as these can not, in practice, be separated from education in other branches, and no attempt should be made to separate them, therefore the Church claims authority over all the education of her children. The parents by natural law have the right and the duty to bring up and educate their children, and in fulfilling this duty, as all others, Catholic parents should follow the guidance of the Church. If parents commit part of their office to others, they are bound to select those who can and will give a Catholic education to their children.

2. What sort of obligation are parents under of sending their children to a Catholic school, if there is one in the place?

The bishops of the Province of Westminster declared, in a circular read Sept. 17, 1905: “We desire to call the earnest attention of all Catholics to the grave departure from Catholic teaching and tradition, and to the very serious dangers to Catholic faith and spirit, which are involved in the placing of Catholic children, of whatever class in life, in non-Catholic schools. Owing to the usually proximate nature of these dangers, it is under ordinary circumstances a grievous sin on the part of parents to expose their children to such risks, and this has been expressly declared in the instructions of the Holy See, and of the bishops of this province. There is not infrequently also a grave sin of scandal. . . . The social advantages to be gained at certain schools manifestly do not constitute such a necessity. No individual priest or confessor is entitled to decide where necessity of this nature exists, but the matter is one to be referred to the Ordinary of the diocese for his counsel and judgment.”

3. When is a penitent to be judged unfit to receive absolution ?

A penitent is unfit to receive absolution for his sins if he is not sorry for them, if he has not made, at least, a formally integral confession, and if he is not prepared to fulfil all his duties which impose on him a grave obligation.

4. The case. Titius, a Catholic parent, transferred his children from the Catholic elementary school to the provided school, because, as he thought, they had been unjustly and cruelly beaten by the mistress, and because the greater portion of the children were from the lowest classes. No religious instruction besides Bible reading was given in the provided school. Titius sent his children to the Catholic Church on Sundays where they were taught their catechism. Paul, the parish priest of Titius, having tried in vain to get him to send the children to the Catholic school again, is now in doubt as to whether he should refuse him the sacraments, or what he should do.

Such questions, as to whether and how far Titius was justified in his action or not, have been reserved to the bishops in the Province of Westminster. Paul, therefore, should not take upon himself to refuse the sacraments to Titius, but he should refer the case to the bishop. Objectively it will seldom be advisable to proceed to extremes with people like Titius, unless their example is likely to be imitated by many others if some drastic remedy is not found.

We do not assert that socialism aims at the legal prohibition of marriage or at the compulsory dissolution of the family. Kautsky feigns great indignation at imputations of this sort made against social democracy. “It is a most palpable falsification,’ he says, “to impute to us any such intentions; only a fool can imagine that a family is created or abolished by a legislative enactment.”¹ It has become a real mania with socialist writers to wax wroth at objections which no one thinks of raising. All we maintain is that the dissolution of the family is the necessary consequence of socialist principles and demands. The proof for our assertion is not far to fetch.

¹ Das Erfurter Programm, etc., p. 146.

The destruction of the marriage bond involves the destruction of the family. Marriage is the root and foundation of the entire family. Socialism, however, by its theories of equality loosens the marriage tie, and introduces instead some amorous relation based on mere whims and passing inclinations. The truth of this statement is vouched for by the express testimony of prominent socialists. Already Marx has pointed out that modern industry, by assigning an important part in socially organized production to women, young persons, and children, and thereby removing them from the sphere of domestic life, is creating the economic basis for “a higher form of the family and of the relation of the sexes.” And he adds that it is rather silly to consider the Christian Germanic form of marriage or any other form as absolute and unchangeable.²

² Capital, vol. I. p. 455.

What are we to understand by the higher form of sexual relations? The Erfurt platform calls for the “abolition of all laws which subordinate woman to man in public and private life.” This demand implies at least the destruction of the unity of the family, which necessarily postulates one supreme head. Who is to decide the dispute, if man and wife disagree as to their dwelling-place and similar affairs? But to make us understand more fully what is meant by that higher form of marriage, it will suffice to hear the evidence of a leader, who may be said to represent the almost universal sentiment. Bebel writes of the position of woman in the socialist state as follows:

“In the choice of the object of her love she [woman] is no less free than man: she loves, and is loved, and enters into the marriage alliance with no other regard than that of preference. This alliance is a private agreement, without the intervention of any [public] functionary, just as marriage was a private concern till late in the Middle Ages.”¹ . . . Man should be free to dispose of the strongest instinct of his nature as of every other natural instinct. The gratification of the sexual instinct is not a whit less the personal affair of every individual than is the satisfaction of any other natural appetite. Therefore no one is obliged to render an account of such gratification; nor is any uncalledfor intermeddler permitted to interfere in this matter. Prudence, education, and independence will facilitate and direct the proper choice. If disagreement, disappointment, or disaffection should arise, morality [!] demands a disruption of the unnatural and, consequently, immoral alliance.”²

¹ This is a mistake. The Church never looked upon marriage as a purely private concern, beyond the limit of her jurisdiction. According to Catholic doctrine, marriage is a sacrament instituted by Christ and entrusted to the care of the Church. Therefore marriage laws and marriage impediments were promulgated. Moreover, every marriage not celebrated according to the ecclesiastical rite (in facie ecclesiæ) was declared illicit. If, nevertheless, up to the Council of Trent clandestine marriages were acknowledged as valid (that is to say, if there existed no other impediments), this was done to prevent greater evils. But also, then, the contracting parties were bound forever. What is there in common in this institution with the promiscuity of sexual intercourse advocated by Bebel, who permits the utmost freedom of tying or untying the marital bond without the least interference from any one?

² Die Frau, p. 342. Similar ideas are propounded by Engels in his Origin of the Family, by Stern and Liebknecht. Among American socialists these views on marriage have been popularized by Edward Carpenter's Love's Coming-of-Age. According to Carpenter, marriage relations are raised to a much higher plane by a continual change of partners “until a permanent mate and equal is found.” A man of ordinary common sense, however, will characterize such proceedings as rank promiscuity.

Here we have unvarnished “free-love.” What remains of the bond of marriage if the parties, following every whim and transient disaffection, are free to separate and to enter upon another alliance? However, we do not mean to confine ourselves to such explicit teaching of socialists. We shall endeavor to show that socialism of its very nature demolishes the family, which is the foundation of the social order.

In the first place the atheistic and materialistic tenets of socialism are incompatible with the unity and indissolubility of marriage. If man has no higher aim than to revel in earthly enjoyment, how can he be induced to bear the yoke of indissoluble monogamy? Is he to be tied for life to a partner whom he no longer loves, who is perhaps subject to loathsome diseases, who is guilty of adultery or other crimes? If even many defenders of the existing social order look upon divorce as excusable in many cases, how can socialists, with their striving after enjoyment, be brought to respect the sacredness of the marriage bond? An indissoluble marriage contract is incompatible with Epicurean principles.

The basis upon which the indissolubility of marriage, and consequently the stability of the family, chiefly rests is the education of the children. It is chiefly for this purpose that the lifelong union of man and wife is necessary; for such a lifelong union is generally required for the suitable education of their offspring. Therefore whoever wrests the education of their children from the hands of parents, and makes it a function of the state, thereby undermines the lowest foundation of the family. But socialism puts education and instruction altogether into the hands of the commonwealth. The Gotha platform demands: “Universal and equal education of the people by the state.’ This demand is re-stated somewhat obscurely by the Erfurt platform: “Compulsory attendance at the public schools. Instruction, use of all means of instruction, and board free of charge in all public elementary schools and in the higher institutions of learning for such pupils of both sexes as, on account of their talents, are judged fit for higher studies,” whilst the American Socialist Party platform advocates “education of all children up to the age of eighteen years, and state and municipal aid for books, clothing, and food.”

On this point we may yet insert the words of one of the great apostles of socialism.

“Every child that comes into the world, whether male or female, is a welcome addition to society; for society beholds in every child the continuation of itself and its own further development; it, therefore, perceives from the very outset the duty, according to its power, to provide for the new-born child. And, first of all, the mother who gives birth to and nurses the child is the object of the state’s concern. Comfortable lodging, pleasant surroundings, and accommodations of all kinds suited to this stage of motherhood, careful treatment of herself and of her offspring, are the first requisite. It is self-evident that the mother must be left to nurse the child, as long as this is possible and necessary... .

“When the child waxes stronger his equals await him for common amusement, under public direction. Here again all things are supplied which, according to the perfection of human knowledge and wisdom, for the time being, tend toward the development of soul and body. Then comes the kindergarten with its playrooms; and, at a later period, the child is playfully introduced into the elements of knowledge and human activity. Mental and bodily labor, gymnastic exercises, free movement on the playground and in the gymnasium, on the ice field and in the natatorium; marching, fencing, and other exercises for both sexes, shall succeed and relieve and supplement one another in due order. The introduction to the various kinds of useful labor—to manufacture, gardening, farming, and to the entire mechanism of production—follows in due succession. But the intellectual development, in the meantime, on the various fields of science, is not to be neglected. Corresponding to the high grade of social culture shall be the outfit of the lecture-halls, the educational appliances, and the means of instruction. All means of education and instruction, clothing and food, supplied by the community, will be such as to give no pupil an advantage over another. The number and the ability of the teaching body will be in proportion to the demands.

“Such will be the education of both sexes—equal and common —for the separation of the sexes can be justified only in those cases in which the distinction of sex makes it an imperative duty. And this system of education, strictly organized, under efficient control, continued to that stage of life when society shall declare its youth to be of age, will eminently qualify both sexes for all rights and duties which society grants or imposes on its fullgrown members. Thus society can rest satisfied that it has educated members that are perfectly developed in every direction.”¹

¹ Die Frau, pp. 322-324, 328.

This is one of the midsummer night’s dreams in which Bebel’s “Frau” delights to revel. How grossly immoral such dreams are needs hardly to be stated. The usurpation of education by the state, however, is quite logical according to the principles of socialism. If socialism is to effect absolute equality in the conditions of life, it must first of all remove the universal source of social inequality, i.e., unequal education; and this can be done only by making education a social concern. Such a regulation would, of course, not hinder mothers from suckling their own children and nursing them to a certain age. But mothers and children would be placed under the supervision of the body social; for there would be no servants in those days: physicians, surgeons, midwives, etc., would be in the service of the body politic; those able to work would have to contribute their share to the social production, while the care of those unable to work would devolve upon the community. The care and treatment of mothers in confinement and of their children would, of course, be the concern of the state. For if the care of the children were left to the parents, it might happen that childless husbands and wives who have never been prevented from work would attain to a much higher income than others who would have to provide for the support of a numerous family, and would thus be prevented from taking an active part in production. And if the father or mother should fall sick it might easily happen that an entire family would be exposed to starvation, while another would enjoy all comforts. And how could a mother, without the aid of servants, bring up and educate a large family, say of ten or twelve children? If, therefore, education were left to the parents themselves it would be the duty of the community at least to give an additional allowance from the public produce for their support, and to make provision for them in case of sickness. In brief, parents would have to be relieved by the state of the burden of supporting their children.

Therefore both the nourishment and the education of the children in the socialist state would be a public affair, and would be directed and controlled by the entire body social. Thus the chief duty of parents, for the sake of which marriage has been instituted as an indissoluble union, would cease to exist; for a life-long union and co-operation on the part of parents is not required for the mere propagation of children. And even though in the socialist state the indissolubility of marriage might be sanctioned by law, yet the integrity of the family would receive the death-blow. That which binds husband and wife most closely is not only the actual existence of offspring, but, above all, the consciousness that upon their united efforts and care depends the weal or woe of their children. Parents have to provide for the support and the development of their children; upon their care, in the first place, depend the life, the future position, the social standing, the honor, and the eternal welfare of their children. This consciousness urges them on to untiring activity. What they have been able to accumulate by their toil falls to the advantage of their offspring, in whom they, as it were, continue to live, and who naturally inherit the fruits of their cares and toils.

On the other hand, the consciousness that they owe to their parents, not only their life itself, but also their preservation, education, and position in society—in short, all they possess—binds the children in intimate love to their parents. They know that their own fortune is closely linked together with that of their parents. Hence there exists between them mutual sympathy in joys and sorrows. In socialism all this would cease to exist; for the entire social body would form but one family. What would become of parental authority if children knew that the state provided for their sustenance, or, at least, remunerated parents for the care bestowed upon them? Would not such a system greatly promote rash marriages and facilitate divorces, particularly as in the socialist state marriage would be a purely private concern?

Let us now cast a brief glance at education and instruction in the socialist state. As we have already stated, Bebel promises the most marvellous results in the field of education. But now let us imagine children collected in large numbers, separated from their parents, first in the spacious playrooms of the kindergarten, then in the elementary schools, where they are “playfully” introduced into the elements of knowledge. Will this mass of wholesale education lead to satisfactory results? We might consider this possible if there were question only of a military education for the formation of future soldiers. But the universal application of such a system is simply absurd. Nor can the socialist point to the example of present educational institutions in which children receive not only instruction, but also their board and education, as in the family. For, to say nothing of the fact that the children are generally not confided to such institutions before the age of ten or twelve years, and that the pupils of such institutions form but a small fraction of the entire youth, while socialism would have all children without exception confided to public institutions for care and instruction— the chief difference consists in this, that our present boarding educational institutions presuppose and are based upon the existence of the family and of home training. The teachers of such institutions are the representatives of parents, and are supported by the parents’ authority; and if a pupil of such an institution is incorrigible, he will, to his own disgrace and the shame of his parents, be expelled from the institution. But this would not be the case in the socialist state. Besides, we must bear in mind that the socialist youth would be brought up without religion; that there would be no separation of the sexes. What then, would be the result? Nothing would remain but forcibly to lash the socialist youth into discipline and order. And yet how ineffectual is mere physical force in education!

However, we have not done with the difficulties arising from the socialistic principles of education. It is impossible that all children should be instructed and educated in all branches of knowledge and industry. Bebel repeatedly asserts the contrary; yet it remains simply impossible. Let us suppose that up to a certain grade the instruction and education is the same for all. Beyond this grade, however, a division would have to take place. Not all have talents for arts and sciences, and still fewer there are who have abilities to take up all studies. Not all have sufficient skill for the practice of all trades and industries. If, therefore, the socialists would not be satisfied with a very low and insufficient grade of culture, if they would not make shallowness and superficiality universal attributes of education, they must at a certain stage, say at the age of twelve or thirteen, draw a line, and then allow their pupils to devote themselves to some special branches of knowledge or industry. But who is to determine the studies to be pursued? The simplest system would be to submit the pupils to examinations; for a decision by the children themselves, or by their parents, or by the verdict of a committee, or by the vote of the majority, would be impracticable. The parents manifestly would in most cases present their children for the highest grade of education, as they themselves would not have to bear the expenses and trouble. The children, on the other hand, even the most gifted, if left to themselves, would in most cases be satisfied with little learning. If the decision were left to a committee it would lead to unjust treatment, and consequently to endless complaints on the part of those parents whose children would be slighted.

The promotion to higher studies, therefore, would have to be made dependent on the results of examinations. But even this method would be attended with serious difficulties. For either we suppose that higher grades of education would be connected with certain advantages in regard to income and social standing, or we suppose that they would not. If a higher grade of education has no advantage for future life, very few would be found to aspire to it. If, on the other hand, it should have some influence upon the future social standing of the possessor, it would result in a difference of social position, and thus there would be an end to the socialistic equality of the conditions of life. Moreover, if social position is not made altogether dependent upon the labor performed according to the logical programme of socialism, but upon other conditions, why should talent alone be taken into account? Do not also virtue, diligence, and the descent from parents who have merited well of the commonwealth, deserve consideration? Is it not harsh, nay, unjust, to make the entire future of a man’s life depend upon a school examination to be undergone in his youth?

As the promotion to higher studies, so also the decision what trade or industry each one should embrace would have to depend upon examinations; for as in branches of knowledge, so also in trades and industry an equal education of all is a thing of impossibility. If too many candidates would pass the examination for a certain branch of industry, they would have to be applied by superior authority to different industries. Therefore from the very outset the body social would have to decide the course of education and the future vocation of all and each of its members, lest there should be too great a rush to any profession, or to any particular trade or industry. Socialism and freedom, therefore, are incompatible with each other. The irreconcilable contradiction between freedom and the “universal systematic control” of the national labor is the rock upon which socialism is destined to be shipwrecked.

THE Catholic position with regard to education is nowhere stated more plainly, more briefly, and more authoritatively than in the recently issued Code of Canon Law. In a few short paragraphs the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church on this important subject is set forth, and the policy to which the Church has constantly adhered is explained. It may be worth while to direct the attention of our readers to those Canons. They will help to clear up hazy notions on the subject, and they will help us to realise how closely it is bound up with our Christian faith. One of the fundamental principles is laid down in Canon 1113, which is as follows: " Parents are bound by a most serious obligation to procure as far as possible the religious, moral, physical, and civil education of their children, and to provide also for their temporal welfare." By "civil education" without doubt the Code means the imparting of that knowledge and training to the children which will enable them to fill worthily the place which they are destined to occupy in civil life. We may notice how broad are the ideas of the Church. She is influenced by no narrow spirit in her educational aims. By the law of nature the young during their years of immaturity are to be fitted to take their place in life. The duty of so fitting them is imposed by nature on those who brought them into the world. By the very nature of things parents are responsible for the education of their children, and, as long as they do their duty, they cannot be deprived of that responsibility by any human power. Religion gives its sanction to this natural duty and enforces it. The Fourth Commandment indeed only makes express mention of the duty of children to respect, love, and obey their parents; parents have a right to this. But they have this right because they have the corresponding duty of bringing up, educating, and providing for their children as long as these are unable to provide for themselves. The mutual relation of parental duties and parental rights is brought out in Canon 1372 of the new Code: “Parents, and all who are in the place of parents, have the right and most serious duty of procuring the Christian education of their children." There we come to another great principle of Catholic education, the rights of the Christian Church. Catholics, as members of the Church, fully recognise and admit the rights of the Church in the education of her children. She received her commission to teach from her Divine Founder. "Go," He said, "teach all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." The Church, then, is under the obligation to teach especially her own members what their duties are, and what is the extent and limit of them. She is faithful to her office and insists that baptised Christians shall receive a Christian education. A Christian education means that nothing should be taught Christian children which may weaken their faith or endanger their morals. It means that the relative importance of the various departments of education should be settled according to the teaching of Christ. The tendency is to relegate religious and even moral education to a secondary place in the school curriculum, or altogether to pass over those all-important subjects. Christ put them first, they belong to the greatest and the first Commandment. In a scheme of Christian education they must retain their pre-eminent position. As Canon 1372 says: "All Catholics are to be brought up from childhood in such a way that not only nothing be taught them which is opposed to the Catholic religion and to good morals, but so that religious and moral training hold the first place." Practically, as the Catholic Church knows only too well from long experience in many lands, this position of honour for the Catholic religion and for Catholic morality can only be secured by Catholic teachers in Catholic schools. In other schools, even if there is no hostility to Catholicism, the atmosphere is chilled by a still more deadly indifference in which the tender plants of Catholic faith and morals in the young cannot live and thrive. The Church has the duty and the right to protect her children from these dangers, and so she forbids them to go to non-Catholic schools. Canon 1374 enacts: “Catholic children must not go to non-Catholic, undenominational, or mixed schools, which are open to non-Catholics." In order that Catholic children may be able to obtain the kind of education which their faith requires, the Catholic Church claims the right to found Catholic schools. For many centuries she has exercised this right. The Third Council of the Lateran decreed as follows: " Since the Church of God, like a good mother, is bound to provide so that the poor who can get no help from the wealth of parents should not be deprived of the opportunity of learning and making progress in letters, let a competent benefice be assigned in every cathedral church to a schoolmaster, who will teach clerics and poor scholars for nothing." The Fourth Council of the Lateran in A.D. 1215 renewed and extended this law to all other principal churches. Those decrees were inserted in the “Corpus Juris” authorised by Gregory IX., and they were taught in all the schools of Canon Law throughout Christendom. They were quoted as Chapters 1 and 4 in the Title “De Magistris.” It is not without precedent, then, that the Catholic Church enacts as follows in the new Code the Catholic education of their people. In striving to obtain their educational rights they are not striving after power or money, they are simply doing their duty. The new Code is not silent on this point. Canon 1379 prescribes: “If Catholic elementary and secondary schools do not exist, Bishops must take care that they be built." The Catholic position, then, on the education question is clearly outlined in the new Code of Canon Law. It may be stated in this way. The education of children belongs by natural and divine law to their parents. This does not mean that the parents can give them any sort of education they like, or no education if they so please. They have the right because they have the duty to so educate their children that they may be fit to take the place in life which is destined for them, and attain the end for which they came into the world. Catholic parents recognise this duty, and they also recognise their obligation to accept the teaching and guidance of the Catholic Church as to the nature, extent, and limits of this and of all their other duties. Moreover, the Catholic Church has received a divine commission to teach religion and morality to all men, and more especially to her own baptised members. Practically, she can only exercise her right and fulfil her duty by requiring that Catholic children should be educated in Catholic schools under Catholic teachers. For centuries she has exercised this right, as history abundantly testifies. I can imagine some of my readers asking: “And where does the State come in? Has the State no rights and duties with regard to the education of its citizens?" The State has similar rights and duties with regard to the education of its citizens to those which it has with regard to their other natural rights. The State has the duty and the right to defend and protect the lives of its citizens. It cannot deprive them of their lives unless they have forfeited them by their crimes. The State has the right and the duty to protect the property of its citizens. It cannot deprive them of it, although it may levy contributions for the common good. Just in the same way it is the province of the State to protect and defend the natural right of parents to educate their own children. The State was founded to protect the natural rights of its members. It betrays its trust and becomes a tyrant if it takes them away. A Socialist State would be guilty of robbery if it deprived its members of their property against their reasonable wish. A State which obliges parents to send their children to schools where they receive an education of which the parents reasonably disapprove introduces Socialism into education. The State has the right to compel negligent parents to do their duty. If parents are bringing up their children in crime and vice, the State in the last resort can remove such children from the control of their unworthy parents. But as long as parents do not abuse their parental rights and desire to do their duty by their children, it only remains for the State to provide them with the means of giving their children an adequate education. This is all that Catholics at any rate ask of the State. They ask for a fair share of the public money which is devoted to education. The State may, of course, see that it gets good value for the money that it provides. If it were satisfied with fulfilling these legitimate functions, the education question would be solved as far as Catholics are concerned.

“The Church has the right to found schools of all kinds and of all grades” (Canon 1375). It is well known that very many of the oldest educational foundations in the country owe their origin to the provident action of the Catholic Church. To prevent the main object of Catholic schools being forgotten the new Code lays down that "Religious instruction must be given in all schools of whatever grade suitably to the age of the scholars" (Canon 1373). It is to be noted that the Catholic clergy, Bishops and priests, are bound by these laws, not less but more than the laity. One of the chief burdens and anxieties of the Catholic clergy is to provide for The State would have no reason to mistrust or complain of its Catholic subjects. They have shown in the great war that they yield in patriotism to none, and that they are fully ready to take their share in the common burdens. The Catholic ideal is that parents, Church, and State should loyally work together to give such an education to the young that when they come to maturity they may be fitted to take their place in the national life, lead good, decent, and useful lives, and save their souls in the end.

Printed in England

American fellow-citizens—America is my home! I have no other country. After my God and my religion, my country is the dearest object of my life! I love my country as dearly as any one else can. It is this love that makes my heart bleed when I call to mind the actual state of society in our country, and the principles that prevail everywhere. It is indeed but too true that we live in a most anti-Christian age; principles are disregarded, and iniquity is held in veneration. We see nothing but confusion in religion, in government, in the family circle. Sects spring up and swarm like locusts, destroying not only revealed religion, but rejecting even the law of nature. Fraud, theft, and robbery are practised almost as a common trade. The press justifies rebellion, secret societies, and plots for the overthrow of established governments. The civil law, by granting divorce, has broken the family tie. Children are allowed to grow up in ignorance of true religious principles, and thereby become regardless of their parents. The number of apostates from Christianity is on the increase, at least in the rising generation. Current literature is penetrated with the spirit of licentiousness, from the pretentious quarterly to the arrogant and flippant daily newspaper, and the weekly and monthly publications are mostly heathen or maudlin. They express and inculcate, on the one hand, stoical, cold, and polished pride of mere intellect, or on the other, empty and wretched sentimentality. Some employ the skill of the engraver to caricature the institutions and offices of the Christian religion, and others to exhibit the grossest forms of vice, and the most distressing scenes of crime and suffering. The illustrated press has become to us what the amphitheatre was to the Romans when men were slain, women were outraged, and Christians given to the lions to please a degenerate populace. The number of the most unnatural crimes is beyond computation. A wide-spread and deep-seated dishonesty and corruption has, like some poisonous virus, inoculated the great body of our public men in national, state, and municipal positions, so much so that rascality seems to be the rule, and honesty the exception. Real statesmanship has departed from amongst us; neither the men nor the principles of the olden time exist any longer.

The shameless cynicism with which the great public plunderers of our day brazen out their infamy, is only equalled by the apathy with which the public permits these robberies, and condone for them by lavishing place and power upon the offenders. "The way of the transgressor" has ceased to be "hard"—unless he be a transgressor of very low degree—and rascality rides rampant over the land, from the halls of Congress to the lowest department of public plunder.

The poet has well said that Vice, once grown familiar to the view, after first exciting our hate, next succeeded in gaining our pity, and finally was taken into our embrace.

The familiarity of the public mind with daily and almost hourly instances of public peculation and betrayal of high trusts has created this indulgent disposition, until at last the wholesome indignation, which is the best safeguard of honesty, has been diluted into a maudlin sympathy with the malefactors. And the rankness of the growth of this evil is not more startling than its rapidity. It is a new thing—a foul fungus, suddenly forced into fetid life, out of the corruptions engendered by the war. It is "a new departure" in a wrong direction—down that smooth, broad path to the devil.

We all remember the sensation which, before the war, was ever caused by the discovery of a public defaulter, and the indignation which drove him ever forth from place and country, on his detection. Punishment sure and swift was certain to seize upon him, if he dared linger after the facts were known.

A breach of trust was not then considered a joke, nor theft elevated into the dignity of a fine art, whose most eminent professors were to be regarded with envy and admiration.

Think of the clamor which was raised over the comparatively petty peculations of Swartwout, Schuyler, Fowler, and other small sinners like them, who even found the country too hot to hold them, and died in exile, as an expiation to the public sentiment they had outraged.

Yet their frauds were as molehills to the mountains which the busy hands of our public peculators have heaped up, and are daily piling higher. Within the last ten years, where they stole cents, their successors stole by thousands and tens of thousands; and, instead of flying from punishment, flaunt their crimes and their ill-gotten wealth in the face of the community, heedless either of the arm of the law, or the more potent hiss of public scorn.

And this financial dishonesty of the times is as true of commercial as of political circles, and as patent at Washington as at New York and other cities. "Think you that those eighteen men on whom the tower of Siloam fell, were sinners above all others in Jerusalem? I tell you nay!" Think you that those six or seven on whom the axe of the public press fell, are sinners above all in New York and elsewhere? If all men that have been guilty of fraud in New York and elsewhere were to have a tower fall on them, there would be funerals enough for fifty years.

One of the saddest symptoms of degeneracy in a people is evinced by a desperate levity—a scoffing spirit such as that which inspired the French people when they denied even God, and substituted a prostitute to be their "Goddess of Reason." Much of that spirit is unhappily manifesting itself in our country.

That most fearful picture of a corrupt community drawn by Curran in his description of the public pests of his day—"remaining at the bottom like drowned bodies while soundness remained in them, but rising only as they rotted, and floating only from the buoyancy of corruption"—seems, unhappily, destined to find its parallel here, unless public virtue and public indignation should awake to condemn and chastise the corruption which is tainting and poisoning the air around us.

The judgment which overtook the men of Siloam was visited on them for sins not unlike those which seem to invite a similar judgment from offended Heaven upon our modern Siloams, and is no jesting matter. Nay, in view of the many recent terrible visitations which have fallen upon different parts of our country, many voices have already been raised proclaiming them as marks of Divine wrath against national sins, perpetrated by a people who should, by their lives, testify their sense of the blessings showered upon them in more prodigal profusion than on any other nation in the annals of mankind.

That the great body of our people are corrupt, or that they at heart approve of corruption, no one will be mad enough to maintain. But they are responsible before Heaven and to posterity for the criminal apathy they manifest in their silent sanction of the corruption and crime which are fast making the American name a synonyme for theft, for brazen impudence and unblushing rascality.

In the life of a nation, as in that of an individual, there are periods which are critical; and a restoration to health, or the certainty of speedy death, depends on the way this malady is met. The crisis which now menaces the life and health of the United States cannot be far distant; for private virtue cannot long survive the death of public honor and honesty, nor private morality fail to catch the contagion of public profligacy. If the representative men of a country, those in whom its high trusts are reposed, be corrupt and shameless, they will drag down into the same mire the morals of the people they plunder and misrepresent. Indeed we want no prophet, nor one raised from the dead, to tell us the awfully fatal results. What can be done to stem the fearful torrent of evils that flood the land? We all know that when, in 1765, the famous Stamp Act was passed in the British Parliament, on the news reaching Boston the bells were muffled, and rang a funeral peal. In New York the "Act" was carried through the streets with a death's head bearing this inscription: "The Folly of England and the Ruin of America." So great was the opposition to the "Act," that it was repealed during the spring of 1766. This shows how quickly the evils of society can be put down if people set to work in earnest.

Now we cannot expect the people to set to work in earnest about stemming the torrent of the great evils of the land, unless they are well enlightened as to the source from which they flow. This source is principally that wrong system of education introduced into this country about fifty years ago. At that time very few, perhaps, could foresee what effects it was calculated to produce. After a long trial, we can now pronounce on it with certainty by its results. The tree, no longer a sapling, can be judged by its fruits. These fruits have been so bad that it is high time to call the attention of the public to the tree.

Now in calling attention to this tree, I wish it to be once for all distinctly understood, that whatever of a seemingly or even really harsh nature I may say in this discussion on the Public Schools, is intended and directed solely against the system. For those who manage or officiate in them, as teachers or otherwise, I have, I trust, all the courtesy, charity, and respect due from one citizen to another. If I offend the prejudices, convictions, or susceptibilities of any on this strangely misrepresented subject, no one can more regret it than myself; I can truly say it is not intended. All I ask of my fellow-citizens is a fair discussion on this great question of education, to look at it without prejudice, without bigotry; for if prejudice and bigotry stand in our way, they will stand in the way of the glory and stability of this country, whose future God only knows. It is the duty of all citizens to labor with a good heart, a clear mind, an earnest soul, to do all they can in building up, and strengthening, and making still more glorious this great American people.

The question of Education is, of all others, the most important. It has for some time back received a good deal of attention in public meetings, in newspapers, and in the pulpit. In fact it has become a question of the day. On this question, however, there is unfortunately such an amount of ignorance, prejudice, and confusion of ideas, that it is almost impossible to make the public understand it. The reason of this is, because so many follow the vague views expressed on this subject in newspapers. Many a paper is undoubtedly political, and so far partisan; and as such its editor will defend and advance what he believes to be the principles of his party. But the question of education rises above party politics; yet when you read many a paper you will find that the editor appeals to the prejudice and passions of party in a way quite unworthy of an independent journalist, and of the grave subject under consideration. He advances principles which, at first sight, seem to be quite true; for instance: "Public School Education is necessary for our republican form of government, for the very life of the Republic." "It is an admitted axiom, that our form of government, more than all others, depends on the intelligence of the people." "The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republic form of government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people. The State must, therefore, take all means within its power to promote and encourage popular education, and furnish this intelligence of the people through her public schools."

At first sight such principles seem to be true, and the people in general will accept them. Experience teaches that the public will accept, without question, almost any maxim or problem, provided it be formulated in such a manner as to convey some specific meaning that does not demand reflection or complex examination. For the same reason no small portion of the public will reject anything that at first sight seems to exceed the measure of their understanding. Knaves and charlatans, knowing this, impose on the public by flattering their intelligence, that they may accomplish their own ambitious and selfish ends. In this way a multitude of pernicious religious, social, and political maxims have come into vogue, especially in reference to the question of public instruction. Yet on the sound principles concerning this question of education, and on the right understanding of them, depend not only the temporal and eternal happiness of the people, but also the future maintenance and freedom, nay, even the material prosperity, of the Republic.

In the discussion of the system of education it will no longer do to use vague, unmeaning expressions, or to advance some general puzzling principles to keep the public in the dark on this important point. It is high time that the public should be thoroughly enlightened on the subject of education. Everybody is talking about education,—the advantages of education, the necessity of education; and yet almost all have come to use the word in its narrowest and most imperfect meaning, as implying mere cultivation of the intellectual faculties, and even this is done in the most superficial manner, by cramming the mind with facts, instead of making it reflect and reason. The great majority even of those who write upon the subject take no higher view.

The term education comprehends something more than mere instruction. One may be instructed without being educated; but he cannot be educated without being instructed. The one has a partial or limited, the other a complete or general, meaning. What, then, is the meaning of Education? Education comes from the Latin "educo," and means, according to Plato, "to give to the body and soul all the perfection of which they are susceptible"; in other words, the object of education is to render the youth of both sexes beautiful, healthful, strong, intelligent and virtuous. It is doubtless the will of the Creator that man—the masterpiece of the visible world—should be raised to that perfection of which he is capable, and for the acquisition of which he is offered the proper means. It is the soul of man which constitutes the dignity of his being, and makes him the king of the universe. Now the body is the dwelling of the soul—the palace of this noble king; the nobility of the soul must induce us to attend to its palace—to the health and strength and beauty of the body;—health, strength and beauty are the noble qualities of the body.

The noble qualities of the soul are virtue and learning. Virtue and learning are the two trees planted by God in Paradise; they are the two great luminaries created by God to give light to the world; they are the two Testaments, the Old and the New; they are the two sisters, Martha and Mary, living under one roof in great union and harmony, and mutually supporting each other.

Learning is, next to virtue, the most noble ornament and the highest improvement of the human mind. It is by learning that all the natural faculties of the mind obtain an eminent degree of perfection. The memory is exceedingly improved by appropriate exercise, and becomes, as it were, a storehouse of names, facts, entire discourses, etc., according to every one's exigency or purposes. The understanding—the light of the soul—is exceedingly improved by exercise, and by the acquisition of solid science and useful knowledge. Judgment, the most valuable of all the properties of the mind, and by which the other faculties are poised, governed and directed, is formed and perfected by experience, and regular well-digested studies and reflection; and by them it attains to true justness and taste. The mind, by the same means, acquires a steadiness, and conquers the aversion which sloth raises against the serious employments of its talents.

How much the perfection of the mind depends upon culture, appears in the difference of understanding between the savages (who, except in treachery, cunning and shape, scarce seem to differ from the apes which inhabit their forests) and the most elegant and civilized nations. A piece of ground left wild produces nothing but weeds and briers, which by culture would be covered with corn, flowers and fruit. The difference is not less between a rough mind and one that is well cultivated.

The same natural culture, indeed, suits not all persons. Geniuses must be explored, and the manner of instructing proportioned to them. But there is one thing which suits all persons, and without which knowledge is nothing but "a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal": this is the supernatural culture of the soul, or the habitual endeavor of man of rendering himself more pleasing in the sight of God by the acquisition of solid Christian virtues, in order thus to reach his last end—his eternal happiness. It is for this reason that our Saviour tells us: "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? For what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"—(Matt. xvi. 26.) It is, then, the supernatural culture, or the perfection of the soul, that is to be principally attended to in education.

Now what is the perfection of soul? The perfection of each being in general, is that which renders the being better and more perfect. It is clear that inferior beings cannot make superior ones better and more perfect. Now the soul, being immortal, is superior to all earthly or perishable things. These, then, cannot make the soul better and more perfect, but rather worse than she is; for he who seeks what is worse than himself, makes himself worse than he was before. Therefore the good of the soul can be only that which is better and more excellent than the soul herself is. Now God alone is this Good—He being Goodness Itself. He who possesses God may be said to possess the goodness of all other things; for whatever goodness they possess, they have from God. In the sun, for instance, you admire the light; in a flower, beauty; in bread, the savor; in the earth, its fertility; all these have their being from God. No doubt God has reserved to Himself far more than He has bestowed upon creatures; this truth admitted, it necessarily follows that he who enjoys God possesses in him all other things; and consequently the very same delight which he would have taken in other things, had he enjoyed them separately, he enjoys in God, in a far greater measure, and in a more elevated manner. For this reason, St. Francis of Assisium often used to exclaim: "My God and my All"—a saying to which he was so accustomed that he could scarcely think of anything else, and often spent whole nights in meditating on this truth.

Certainly true contentment is only that which is taken in the Creator, and not that which is taken in the creature; a contentment which no man can take from the soul, and in comparison with which all other joy is sadness, all pleasure sorrow, all sweetness bitter, all beauty ugliness, all delight affliction. It is most certain that "when face to face we shall see God as He is," we shall have most perfect joy and happiness. It follows, then, most clearly, that the nearer we approach to God in this life, the more contentment of mind and the greater happiness of soul we shall enjoy; and this contentment and joy is of the self-same nature as that which we shall have in heaven; the only difference is, that here our joy and happiness is in an incipient state, whilst there it will be brought to perfection. He, then, is a truly wise and learned, a truly well-educated, man, who here below has learned how to seek God, and to be united as much as possible with the Supreme Good of his soul. He therefore imparts a good education to the soul, who teaches her how to seek and to find her own Good.

Now what is it to teach the soul to find her own Supreme Good? It is to train, to teach, to lead the child in the way he should go, leading him in the paths of duty, first to God, and secondly to his neighbor. All not professed infidels, it appears to me, must admit this definition. But as very many believe in "Webster," or "Worcester," I give the former's definition of education: "Educate"—To instill into the mind principles of art, science, morals, religion, and behavior. According to this definition of education, morals and religion constitute essential parts of education. Indeed, the first and most important of all duties which the child must learn are his moral and religious duties; for it will, I hope, be universally admitted that man is not born into this world merely to "propagate his species, make money, enjoy the pleasures of this world, and die." If he is not born for that end, then it is most important that he be taught for what end he was born, and the way appointed by his Creator to attain that end.

Every child born into this world is given a body and soul. This soul, for which the body was created, and which will rise with it at the last day, be judged with it for the acts done in life, and be happy or unhappy with it for all eternity, is, in consequence of the "fall," turned away from God, and the body, no longer acting in obedience to right reason, seeks its own gratification, like any irrational animal. Religion (from religio) is the means provided by a merciful God to reunite the chain broken by the sin of our first parents, and bridge over the chasm opened between man and his divine destiny. To give this knowledge of religion is the principal purpose of education. Without this it is mere natural instruction, but no education at all. It would be worse than giving, as we say, "the play of Hamlet with the part of the Prince of Denmark left out."

Religion, then, forms the spirit and essence of all true education. As leaven must be diffused throughout the entire mass in order to produce its effects, so religion must be thoroughly diffused throughout the child's entire education, in order to be solid and effective. Not a moment of the hours of school should be left without religious influence. It is the constant breathing of the air that preserves our bodily life, and it is the constant dwelling in a religious atmosphere that preserves the life of the youthful soul. Here are laid the primitive principles of future character and conduct. These religious principles may be forgotten, or partially effaced, in the journey of life, but they will nevertheless endure, because they are engraved by the finger of God Himself. The poor wanderer, when the world has turned its back upon him, after having trusted to its promises only to be deceived, after having yielded to its temptations and blandishments only to be cruelly injured and mocked, may, at last, in the bitterness of his heart, "remember the days of his youth," and "return to his father's house." So long as faith remains, however great the vice or the crime, there is something to build on, and room to hope for repentance, for reformation, and final salvation. Faith or religion once gone, all is gone. Religion is the crystal vase in which education is contained, or rather the spirit which infuses and vitalizes it. Religion is the very life of society, the very soul of a Christian State.

All nations and governments know and understand that to exclude Christian education from the schools is to exclude it from their law, legislature, courts, and public and private manners. It should, then, ever be borne in mind that religion, though distinguishable, is never separable from true civil and political science and philosophy. Enlightened statesmanship will always accept and recognize religious education as a most valuable and powerful ally in the government of the State, or political society. The great Washington clearly asserts this in his farewell address to the American people: "Of the dispositions," he says, "which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Where is the security for property or for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are administered in our courts of justice? And let it not be supposed that morality can be maintained without religion." Accordingly our legislatures are opened with prayer, the Bible is on the benches of our courts; it is put into the hands of jurymen, voters, and even tax-payers; indeed, from its late use and abuse, one might think that we were living under the Pentateuch, and that the whole moral law and Ten Commandments were bound to the brows of the public or State phylacteries.

Indeed, the politics of every tribe, nation, or people, will reflect in an exact degree their moral and religious convictions and education. If these are false, the political society will be violent, disorderly, and abnormal; if true, the State is calm, prosperous, strong and happy. If these propositions be true, and I claim they are as axiomatic and undeniable as any proposition in Euclid—yea more so, for they are the maxims of inspired wisdom—how immeasurably important is a true Christian education!

And if its influence is so great in determining even the political conduct of men, it is still more necessary and powerful in forming the character of true woman—the Christian wife, mother, and daughter. The influence of Christian woman on society is incalculable. Admitting it possible, for a moment, that irreligious men might construct or direct an atheistical State, yet it would be utterly vain to build up the family, the groundwork of all organized communities, without the aid of the Christian woman. She it is who, in the deep and silent recesses of the household, puts together those primitive and enduring materials, each in its place and order, on which will rest and grow, to full beauty and development, the fair proportion of every well-ordained State. This foundation is laid in the care and rearing of good and dutiful children. The task of the Christian mother may indeed be slow, and unobserved; but God makes use of the weak to confound the strong, and this is beautifully illustrated in the Christian woman, who is strong because she is weak, most influential when she is most retired, and most happy, honored, cherished and respected when she is doing the work assigned her by Divine Providence, in the bosom of her household.

It will be admitted, then, that the education of girls demands a special culture. Generally upon mothers the domestic instruction of the children, in their infancy, mainly depends. They ought, therefore, to be well instructed in the motives of religion, articles of faith, and all the practical duties and maxims of piety. Then history, geography, and some tincture of works of genius and spirit, may be joined with suitable arts and other accomplishments of their sex and condition, provided they be guided by and referred to religion, and provided books of piety and exercises of devotion always have the first place, both in their hearts and in their time.

They should, then, from their earliest years, if possible, be separated in their studies, their plays, and their going and returning from school, from children of the opposite sex. They should be placed under the surveillance and instruction of mature and pious women. Every possible occasion and influence should be used to instil into their young and plastic minds, by lesson and example, principles of religion and morality. Their studies should be grave and practical. Their nervous organization is naturally acute, and should be strengthened, but not stimulated, as it too often is, thereby laying the foundation for that terrible and tormenting train of neuralgic affections of after-life, debilitating mind and body.

A thorough Christian education, then, is the basis of all happiness and peace, for the family as well as for the State itself; for every State is but the union of several families. It is for this reason that we find good parents so willing to make every sacrifice for the Christian education of their children, and that all true statesmen, and all true lovers of their country, have always encouraged and advocated that kind of education which is based upon Christian principles.

Good, dutiful children are the greatest blessing for parents and for the State, whilst children without religion are the greatest misfortune, the greatest curse that can come upon parents and upon the State.

History informs us that Dion the philosopher gave a sharp reproof to Dionysius the tyrant, on account of his cruelty. Dionysius felt highly offended, and resolved to avenge himself on Dion; so he took the son of Dion prisoner, not, indeed, for the purpose of killing him, but of giving him up into the hands of a godless teacher. After the young man had been long enough under this teacher to learn from him everything that was bad and impious, Dionysius sent him back to his father. Now what object had the tyrant in acting thus? He foresaw that this corrupted son, by his impious conduct during his whole lifetime, would cause his father constant grief and sorrow, so much so that he would be for him a lifelong affliction and curse. This, the tyrant thought, was the longest and greatest revenge he could take on Dion for having censured his conduct.

Plato, a heathen philosopher, relates that when the sons of the Persian kings had reached the age of fourteen, they were given to four teachers. The first of these teachers had to instruct them in their duties towards God; the second, to be truthful under all circumstances; the third, to overcome their passions; and the fourth teacher taught them how to be valiant and intrepid men.

This truth, that good children are the greatest blessing and that bad children are the greatest affliction that can befall parents and the State, needs no further illustration. There is no father, there is no mother, there is no statesman, who is not thoroughly convinced of this truth. Can we, then, wonder that the Catholic Church has always encouraged a truly Christian education?

There is nothing in history better established than the fact that the Catholic Church has been at all times, and under the most trying circumstances, the generous fostering-mother of education. She has labored especially, with untiring care, to educate the poor, who are her favorite children. It was the Catholic Church that founded, and endowed liberally, almost all the great universities of Europe. Protestants and infidels are very apt to overlook the incalculable benefits which the Church has conferred on mankind, and yet without her agency civilization would have been simply impossible.