Chapter X
The Schooling of the Children
Send your children to a good Catholic school, and to no other. Your children cannot receive a Christian education unless they are taught both theoretically and practically all that is necessary to enable them to save their immortal souls. You can perform this sacred duty only by imparting to them a thorough knowledge of their duties towards God, towards themselves, and towards their fellow-men, and at the same time by insuring their faithful discharge of these obligations. Besides all the ordinary prayers, your children are bound to learn the catechism thoroughly, and to observe the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church. Not many Catholic parents are fully competent to discharge this sacred obligation, and among the really competent only a few have the leisure and disposition to devote themselves to this most important task; hence the necessity of good Catholic schools for the requisite religious education and training of Catholic children.
Religion is a science,—a science very difficult to acquire, and still more difficult to put into practise. Long and constant application and exercise are required to learn the profane sciences or to master the various trades. Many years, and sometimes a whole life, must be devoted to them before one can become proficient in them. But of all sciences none is so difficult to acquire and practise as the science of religion. Religion is not only both a theoretical and practical science, but it is also supernatural. Its knowledge and practice are especially difficult on account of our fallen nature’s aversion to restraint and its propensity to evil. Experience shows that usually there is greater difficulty in teaching children to learn and practise their holy religion, than in imparting to them a knowledge of the profane sciences. From this we may infer that a longer time and greater pains are required to teach children the knowledge and practice of their religion than to teach them any other science.
The religious training of your children, as we have said, should begin from their very infancy, because from the time they have attained the use of their reason—which is about the age of seven years—they are bound to labor for their own salvation. But they are incompetent to do so unless they are already acquainted with the principal religious mysteries and obligations. It is therefore very sinful for you to defer their religious education until they are old enough to prepare for their first holy communion. They stand in need of a long, practical, and thorough course of religious instruction to enable them, after they have grown up, to pass unharmed through the numberless dangers of the world, which abounds in heretics, unbelievers, and godless people. It behooves you, then, to begin their religious training from their earliest infancy, when their minds and hearts are as impressible as wax. Let their first impressions be those of their faith and its practice. And as a child’s first impressions are usually indelible, religion and its duties will become like a second nature to your children, so that they will never forget its teachings or trample its sacred obligations under foot.
To accomplish this, you should, moreover, send your children to none but good Catholic schools, where the study of profane sciences goes hand in hand with the study and practice of our holy religion. Man is something more than mere intellect, for he has also a heart and a free-will. If the mind needs instruction, the heart and the will need it none the less, but rather the more. Profane learning, moreover, instructs the mind only partially, and the will and heart not at all! It belongs to religion to complete the instruction of the mind by religious truths, to enable the reason to guide the will in its actions. Hence religion is needed to perfect the instruction of the intellect and to train both the heart and the will. Profane learning, then, cannot prove really beneficial to your children if it is separated from religious training. The greater your children’s progress in secular science, the more they need a thorough knowledge of our holy religion. A sad experience testifies that when profane learning greatly exceeds religious knowledge, it is liable to lapse into unbelief and even into vice. You cannot, therefore, in conscience send your children to any but good Catholic schools, where such are to be had.
