p. 34Father and Mother

God has given to fathers and mothers a nobler and more sublime authority than He has given to the kings and queens of this world. The latter have power over the external actions of men; the former have power over the souls of those committed to their charge. A temporal ruler has the power of life and death over his subjects; but he has no power of causing them to be saved or lost eternally. A parent, however, has this power over his child. Look at that infant newly born: it is fluttering between life and death, and a few hours will take it back to eternity. Its soul is not pleasing in the sight of God, for it is still overshadowed by the curse that humanity brought on itself by its first sin. Will it be saved, or will it be shut out from God’s face for ever? The father and mother can answer: for its eternal destiny is in their hands. If they have it baptized, it will be saved; if they neglect its baptism, it will be deprived of the graces and blessings of the Redemption. See again that father training his son in a profession of sin,—stealing, I will say. There is a regular, business-like apprenticeship served; and after it the boy plies the trade on his own account. He grows to manhood, living by it and perhaps thriving on it. He knows it to be sinful; but there are no holy influences around him to strengthen and ripen this knowledge into a determination to give it up. He pursues his career then until death comes to summon him to judgment. And what is that judgment likely to be? and if it be an unhappy one, who was the moral cause of it? Another instance: see that woman with the baby in her arms, coming with unsteady step out of that public-house, in one of our large towns. She is the wife of a labourer. She has been drinking, and has been wetting the infant’s lips with strong drink, until, lulled into a stupor, it now lies, an incipient drunkard, on its drunken mother’s breast. Suppose that infant to be a girl,—what a life of misery and degradation is before her? And if she keep her face turned in the direction of her mother’s training, and if she follow the impulse of that mother’s example to the end, her eternal ruin will be the work of her who received from God an awful, mysterious power for her eternal well-being.

Fathers and mothers then have the moral shaping of the world around us. The future of society is in their hands. Their children’s eternal happiness in great measure depends upon them. What a power to be confided to weak human beings! what a responsibility to be imposed on them! to what a dignity are they not raised!

Parents, have you conceived an adequate sense of the position you hold? Do you know that you are connecting links between God and all future generations? that your action towards those tender beings entrusted to you may fill either Heaven with saints or Hell with lost souls? Do you realize how intimately your own salvation is connected with a full conception of your sublime calling, and a conscientious discharge of its duties? There is nothing farther from my mind than the intention to exaggerate your responsibility; and yet, I am going to assert a conviction of mine that you will perhaps think to be unwarranted. It is, that I fear very few parents get the grace of dying a good death, who neglect during their lifetime the moral and religious education of their children. Nor do I speak solely of those who have had the terrible misfortune of knowingly bringing up their children in a course of vice. I speak generally of those fathers and mothers who have disedified their children by their bad, irreligious lives, and who have taken no trouble to counteract the scandal they have given, by any attempt at the moral and religious training of their family. Such a wilful, life-long dereliction of duty has been, as far as my experience goes, generally punished by a death that any one of Christian faith must contemplate with horror. No one can pronounce, of course, any assured opinion as to how God deals with such souls; but if the visible events and things of life be the shadows and the symbols of the invisible, then surely, there is at least great reason to dread that the invisible death of the soul is shadowed and symbolized in the unpreparedness and the unrepentance of the visible death of the body. God grant that it may not be so; but may God grant also that you will never expose yourself to the terrible danger of staking your salvation on a mere possibility.

The thought may arise here in the mind of some parent, that the common sense of mankind does not attach all this importance to the proper training of children; and as the common sense of mankind is more apt to be right than wrong, he thinks he will be safe in doing as his neighbours do, and paying no attention to these exaggerated notions.

Now there are two serious mistakes made by the person who entertains this thought. One is a mistake in principle, the other a mistake in fact. The former consists in supposing that the teaching of mankind—of the world, is or can be the guide of a Christian to the knowledge of his duty. It was said, a long time ago, by an inspired writer, speaking of the Word made flesh, that “the world knew Him not.” The same may be said of the world still, if we look on its actions as the expression of its belief. Therefore the common sense of mankind, by which some think they may be guided, is a teacher, without faith in Christ, without views beyond the present life, without any divine sanction whatsoever. We may accept the practice and maxims of the world, in our manner of bringing up our children, as well as in our estimate of the importance of bringing them up well; but if we do so, let us keep this truth in mind, that we have virtually denied our Christian faith; for we have taken the world that knows not Christ to be our instructor in our moral duties.

The mistake of fact to which I alluded above is the error of thinking, that the world from its own point of view is not a strict and severe, not to say cruel, disciplinarian of youth. It makes no account of religion, because practically it does not believe in it; but it begins almost from the cradle to teach its own principles to the young: “love money, and devote your whole life to making it; love ease, and comfort, and pleasure, and let no foolish scruple of conscience keep you from enjoying them; be afraid of these three things, and these only, in all your actions; namely, ridicule, want of respectability, and all opposition, wilful or unwilful, to the rules and usages of society; run down Christianity where you can do it conveniently, shake it off when it becomes the slightest incumbrance to you, and if you must put it on, don’t let it get near the skin, and especially the heart, and let it be trimmed according to the latest fashion; remember above all things that Catholicity is never fashionable.” These are some of the principles that the world begins to teach the child when it first shows its capacity to learn anything; and the world has, in ridicule, a sharp cutting rod to enforce its teaching,—a rod, I may say, that is wielded with impartiality over old and young alike; and is felt indeed more sorely by the old than by the young.

I might speak of the number and variety of the teachers and teaching influences in this world-wide training school; but I think I have said enough, to show that the common sense of mankind is no guide to a Christian parent in teaching what is his moral duty to his children, or how he is to perform it; and also, that if any lesson is to be drawn from the world’s training of the young, it is this; that Christians should at least be as anxious to make good Christians, as the world is to make thorough-going worldlings.

Fathers and mothers, then, who form a just estimate of the responsibility and dignity of their duties towards their children, will not allow themselves to be influenced by the principles of the world in their manner of educating them. But they must be prepared to meet with much opposition and obstruction. As I have said already, modern legislation has interfered unjustly and unwarrantably with the rights of parents. The slave of the world, the legislator of our day has no wish nearer to his heart, no work in which he engages with greater zeal, than to root Christianity out of the souls of the people, and out of all the institutions with which he can interfere. Chief among these is the school, and he has almost succeeded in expelling from it every form of Christianity. By this action, parents have been cruelly hampered in their control and training of their children; and they have also been placed in an awkward and perplexing dilemma. Are they to send their children to those godless state schools and universities, and endanger their faith and morality? or are they to forego for them the benefit of secular education, and so, practically exclude them from the learned professions, and the higher walks of life? It would be presumptuous in me to dare give any general solution of this difficulty; and I have therefore only to recommend those who find themselves placed in it to consult their respective Bishops either personally, or through their clergy; and to abide loyally by their decisions. The Hierarchy in every country throughout the world has had this question of secular education before it for a long time; it has taken counsel with the Holy See regarding it; and it has drawn up decrees which every good Catholic must respect and obey. Where, however, there are exceptional circumstances or extreme cases that do not seem to have been contemplated or included in those decrees, prudence absolutely requires that those concerned should not decide for themselves, but should have recourse to the legitimate ecclesiastical authority.

I think it will be seen from these few remarks, that Catholic parents have a special reason to be on the alert, in our day, against the terrible dangers that threaten their children from the infidel school-legislation to which the world has become subject. I shall have to return to this subject again; but before dismissing it for the present, I would urge on every Catholic the obligation he is under of using all his privileges of citizenship to help in changing those laws that have driven Jesus Christ out of the schools of Christians; that have tried to stop His raised Hand from giving the nuptial blessing to the marriage contract; and are doing their utmost to destroy the sanctity of our homes and of home life.

I trust that what I have now written will bring home to parents a true sense of their position towards their children, and of their responsibility to God for them. But lest the idea of this position and responsibility should discourage them by its magnitude, and by the consciousness of their own weakness, it may be useful to say something here on the helps and facilities provided for them to fulfil it. The good God never imposes a burden on anyone beyond his power to bear; and His wise, loving Providence has arranged, that parents especially should not be deprived of abundant spiritual strength to help them to bear their burden. This strength comes to them from three sources: from the Sacrament of marriage, from Confession and Holy Communion, and from Prayer. I do not think it necessary to do more than mention these helps at present; as I shall have to speak of the last two further on, and I have spoken already of the first. Besides these spiritual sources of strength, however, there are others which, although not spiritual, are very important and should not be overlooked. I shall mention only two, the first of which is the mutual love that exists between parents and children. Natural instinct inclines a parent to secure in every way possible the highest interests of his child; and when he knows that these consist chiefly in its spiritual training, and the formation of its Christian character, he refuses no effort or sacrifice, and he neglects no precaution necessary or conducive to the attainment of this object. And when he sees the visible result of his exertions, in the love and dutifulness, as well as in the innocence and bright promise, of the young soul given him to train, he is not only rejoiced at the thought of his past anxiety and care, but he feels stimulated to continue, and, if necessary, to increase them, in order to perfect the noble work he has begun.

But, perhaps, the assured hope of happiness in their old age from the loving tenderness of their children buoys up parents in the discharge of their arduous duties, more than any other human consideration. Fathers and mothers have their day-dreams of the future, like the rest of men; and they build up a visionary home for themselves in their helpless old age, where children and grandchildren will vie with each other in making the sunset of their lives bright and beautiful and happy. The son will come from his far-off home to visit them, and they will talk with him about his childhood and youth; the married daughter will come with her young family, and join them; their own youth will be renewed in the youth and freshness of all around them; and there will not be a cloud in the summer sky of that imagined time; every one there will be happy and they themselves the happiest of all. Such a picture as this has not always its fulfilment on this side of the grave; though it often has, for the good God seems often to permit the happiness of eternity to overflow into time, particularly near its close, for those parents who have discharged faithfully and conscientiously their duties to their children.

Poor, anxious, fluttering hearts of parents! wearing yourselves out in doing God’s work well, hope and pray, by all means, for rest; but do not set yourselves too intently on that which, at its best, is only a faint earthly shadow of the great Sabbath-rest of eternity. Stretch your longing a little farther,—beyond the veil,—beyond your children’s home, to the infinitely happier Home of your own Father in Heaven. Think of meeting there in the wide family-circle, of which the ever blessed Trinity is the centre, child and grandchild in a reunion that will know no separation. I do not say, indeed, that your day-dream of a bright future, even here below, when you will be able to work no longer, is unholy or forbidden; yet it should be tempered by resignation to the divine Will that, for your own higher good, may not permit it to be realized; and it should be secondary to that infinitely brighter vision that our Father Himself has revealed for our comfort: “Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and He will dwell with them. And they shall be His people: and God Himself with them shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away.”—(Apoc. xxi. 3, 4.)