Part 11 (1/2)
Guided by this principle, our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX, has declared that Catholics cannot ”_approve of a syste youth unconnected with the Catholic Faith and the power of the Church, and which regards the knowledge of s, and only, or at least primarily, the ends of earthly social life_”[H] Catholic parents cannot approve of an education which fits their children only for this life, and ignores that life in which the soul is to live forever As faith is the foundation of all our hopes for eternity, and as faith without good works is dead, we cannot choose for our children an education which would endanger their faith and morals, and consequently i of Pope Pius VII_
This is no novel doctrine, as so of the century, the illustrious Pius VII, in an Encyclical letter addressed to the Bishops of the Catholic world, July 10th, 1800, thus writes:--
”It is your duty to take care of the whole flock over which the Holy Ghost has placed you as Bishops, but in particular to watch over children and young ht to be the special object of your paternal love, of your vigilant solicitude, of your zeal, of all your care They who have tried to subvert society and families, to destroy authority, divine and hu thus the more easily to execute their infamous projects
They know that thepersons, like soft wax, to which one ive what form he pleases, are very susceptible of every sort of ie has now hardened them, those which they had early received, and reject others
Thence the well-known proverb taken fro to his way, even when he is old he will not depart from it'
Suffer not, then, venerable brethren, the children of this world to be ht Exareatest attention, to what manner of persons is confided the education of children, and of young es and seiven the you; of what sort are the teachers in the lyceureatest care, sound everything, let nothing escape your vigilant eye; keep off, repulse the ravening wolves that seek to devour these innocent laotten in; remove theiven to you by the Lord for the edification of your sheep”
_Rescripts of His Present Holiness Condeland_
Our Holy Father Pope Pius IX, consulting for the special wants of the Catholics of Ireland, has not ceased, allorious pontificate, to repeat similar instructions in his apostolic letters to the Irish Bishops Hence, by his rescripts of October 1847, and October 1848, he condees, on account of their ”grievous and intrinsic dangers to faith and morals”; and since then he has frequently repeated his sacred ad the bishops and the faithful people to beware of evil systems of public instruction; and to secure, by every s of Catholic education for the rising generation
_Resolutions of Irish Bishops in 1824 and 1826_
Nor have the Irish prelates been unmindful of their duty in this respect In 1824, that is to say, five years before Catholic ele for that recognition of the existence of their people as citizens, they presented to Parlia extract, which clearly shows their conviction of the necessity of religious education:
”That in the Roious instruction of youth are universally combined, and that no system of education which separates them can be acceptable to the ious instruction of youth in Catholic schools is always conveyed by means of catachetical instruction, daily prayer, and the reading of religious books, wherein the Gospel morality is explained and inculcated; that Ro of the Sacred Scriptures by children as an inadequate e whereby the Word of God is made liable to irreverence, youth exposed to , and thereby not unfrequently to receive in early life impressions which may afterwards prove injurious to their own best interests, as well as to those of the society which they are destined to forion different froious instruction as the Catholic Church prescribes for youth is excluded, or in which books and tracts not sanctioned by it are read or commented on, cannot be resorted to by the children of Roman Catholics; and that threats and rewards have been found equally unavailing as aCatholic parents to procure education for their children from such persons or in such schools; that any system of education incompatible with the discipline of the Catholic Church, or superintended exclusively by persons professing a religion different from that of the vast majority of the poor of Ireland, cannot possibly be acceptable to the latter, andoften distrust and discord as well as a want of that ood faith and perfect confidence which should prevail between those who receive benefits and those who dispense theain expressed the like sentiments in 1826
_Address of the National Synod of Thurles_
A National Synod ain the Prelates spoke words of instruction, of which recent sad events in France have furnished a new and most melancholy confirmation
”As rulers of the Church of Christ, chief pastors of His flock, religiously responsible to the Prince of Pastors for every soul coe, it forms, as is obvious, our first and paramount duty to attend to the pastures in which they feed--the doctrines hich they are nourished And surely if ever there was a period which called for the unsleeping vigilance, the prudent foresight, the intrepid and self-sacrificing zeal of our augustspectacle which the Christian world exhibits at the present day, the novel but formidable forms in which error presents itself, and the manifold evils and perils by which the Church is encompassed, must be evident to the le heresy or an eccentric fanaticism, the denial of soant error, but a coested syste every intellect, that corrupts and desolates the moral world Is not such the calamitous spectacle which the continent of Europe offers to us at this moment? Education, the source of all intellectual life, by which the mind of man is nurtured and disciplined, his principles determents fixed, his character formed, has been forcibly dissevered froion, and made the vehicle of that cold scepticism and heartless indifferentism which have seduced and corrupted youth, and by a necessary consequence shaken to its centre the whole fabric of social life Separated froan of that wisdo to St James, is 'chaste, peaceable, ood, full of , without dissimulation,' but rather of that wisdom which he describes as 'earthly, sensual, and devilish'--(James iii 15-17)
”It is, we feel assured, unnecessary to observe to you, that of allerror, education is the , as it does, the aliment by which the social body is sustained, which circulates through every vein, and reaches every member; and that if this aliment should prove to be corrupt or deleterious, it will not fail to carry moral disease and death to the entire systeations we are under, at the peril of our souls, of watching over the education of the people whoe
”Listen to the emphatic words in which the present illustrious Pontiff sets forth the dangers to which youth is exposed at the present time, and the duties which are placed upon the pastors of the people in this regard 'It is incumbent upon you,' he says, 'and upon ourselves, to labor with all diligence and energy, and with great firards schools, and the instruction and education of children and youths of both sexes For you well know that the ion and human society, with a most diabolical spirit, direct all their artifices to pervert the minds and hearts of youth fro untried; they shrink from no attempt to withdraw schools, and every institution destined for the education of youth, froilance of her holy pastors'--_Encycl Letter of Pius IX, eighth December, 1849_
”Such are the words of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, which show the responsibility under which we are placed, and point out our duty to protect from the insidious snares laid for their destruction the lambs of the fold--that most helpless but precious portion of the flock of Jesus Christ which the prophet represents as carried in His bosoain, in 1859, 1862, 1863, 1867, and 1869, the Irish Bishops renewed their condemnation of the Godless systee of truly Catholic education
_Unanihout the World on this Point_
The Bishops of Prussia, of Austria, of Belgium, of Holland, of Canada, and of the United States, in their pastorals, their synodical addresses, and in their other publications, condemn with one accord the mixed systeion is alone suitable for Catholic children Not toextract from the address of the Plenary Synod of the Church of the United States, held at Baltimore, in the year 1866 That Council was one of the most numerous asse of the General Council of the Vatican Its decrees were signed by seven Archbishops, thirty-seven Bishops, two procurators of absent Bishops, and two Abbots
”ADDRESS OF THE PLENARY SYNOD OF BALTIMORE, UNITED STATES