LETTER OF LEO XIII. TO THE PRELATES OF ENGLAND ON THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF RELIGION IN THE SCHOOLS.
To Our Venerable Brethren, Henry Edward, Cardinal Priest of the Holy Roman Church, of the Title of Sts. Andrew and Gregory on the Cœlian Hill, Archbishop of Westminster, and the other Bishops of England, Pope Leo XIII.
Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction—Your proved fidelity and singular devotion to this Apostolic See are admirably shown in the letter which we have lately received from you. Our pleasure in receiving it is indeed increased by the further knowledge which it gives us of your great vigilance and anxiety in a matter where no care can be too great; we mean the Christian education of your children, upon which you have lately taken counsel together, and have reported to us the decisions to which you came.
In this work of so great moment, venerable brethren, we rejoice much to see that you do not work alone; for we know how much is due to the whole body of your clergy. With the greatest charity, and with unconquered efforts, they have provided schools for their children; and with wonderful diligence and assiduity, they endeavor by their teaching to form them to a Christian life, and to instruct them in the elements of knowledge. Wherefore, with all the encouragement and praise that our voice can give, we bid your clergy to go on in their meritorious work, and to be assured of our special commendation and good-will, looking forward to a far greater reward from our Lord God, for whose sake they are laboring.
Not less worthy of commendation is the generosity of Catholics in this matter. We know how readily they supply what is needed for the maintenance of schools; not only those who are wealthy, but those, also, who are of slender means and poor; and it is beautiful to see how, often from the earnings of their poverty, they willingly contribute to the education of children.
In these days, and in the present condition of the world, when the tender age of childhood is threatened on every side by so many and such various dangers, hardly anything can be imagined more fitting than the union with literary instruction of sound teaching in faith and morals. For this reason, we have more than once said that we strongly approve of the voluntary schools, which, by the work and liberality of private individuals, have been established in France, in Belgium, in America, and in the Colonies of the British Empire. We desire their increase, as much as possible, and that they may flourish in the number of their scholars. We ourselves also, seeing the condition of things in this city, continue, with the greatest effort and at great cost to provide an abundance of such schools for the children of Rome. For it is in, and by, these schools that the Catholic faith, our greatest and best inheritance, is preserved whole and entire. In these schools the liberty of parents is respected; and, what is most needed, especially in the prevailing license of opinion and of action, it is by these schools that good citizens are brought up for the State; for there is no better citizen than the man who has believed and practiced the Christian faith from his childhood. The beginning, and, as it were, the seed of that human perfection which Jesus Christ gave to mankind, are to be found in the Christian education of the young: for the future condition of the State depends upon the early training of its children. The wisdom of our forefathers, and the very foundations of the State, are ruined by the destructive error of those who would have children brought up without religious education. You see, therefore, venerable brethren, with what earnest forethought parents must beware of intrusting their children to schools in which they cannot receive religious teaching.
In your country of Great Britain, we know that, besides yourselves, very many of your nation are not a little anxious about religious education. They do not in all things agree with us; nevertheless they see how important, for the sake both of society and of men individually, is the preservation of that Christian wisdom which your forefathers received, through St. Augustine, from our predecessor, Gregory the Great; which wisdom the violent tempests that came afterwards have not entirely scattered. There are, as we know, at this day, many of an excellent disposition of mind who are diligently striving to retain what they can of the ancient faith, and who bring forth many and great fruits of charity. As often as we think of this, so often are we deeply moved; for we love with a paternal charity that island which was not undeservedly called the Mother of Saints; and we see, in the disposition of mind of which we have spoken, the greatest hope, and, as it were, a pledge of the welfare and prosperity of the British people.
Go on, therefore, venerable brethren, in making the young your chief care; press onward in every way your episcopal work, and cultivate with alacrity and hopefulness whatever good seeds you find; for God, who is rich in mercy, will give the increase.
As a pledge of gifts from above, and in witness of our good-will, we lovingly grant in the Lord to you, and to the clergy and people committed to each one of you, the Apostolic Benediction.
Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 27th day of November, in the year 1885, in the eighth year of our Pontificate.
Leo PP. XIII.
Bishop Spalding on Stimulants.—I hate drink, because it destroys the good in life. I find in my own experience that I am more myself, while under total abstinence, than when I was a moderate drinker. Life is sweeter, fonder, freer to me as a total abstainer than as a moderate drinker. So I say, if you want to get the most out of your life, if you want to sympathize with your fellow-man, to feel the true force of your beginning, abstain from alcoholic stimulants.
Te Deum.
The course of the general election has surpassed the most sanguine expectations of the Irish leader. Our success has been such as might well take our breath away with joy. The Irish race at home and in the stranger's land have risen to the height of the great crisis with a unity and soldier-like discipline absolutely unparalleled in the world's history, and their magnificent enthusiasm has swept all before it. Three grand results may already be chalked up, and they involve triumphs that a few years ago would have been deemed the ideal of crazy dreamers. The Nominal Home Rulers are effaced to a man. The once proud Irish Whig party, who for a quarter of a century held undisputed sway over the Irish representation, is literally annihilated. If Mr. Dickson should be a solitary survivor, he will survive not as a living force in Irish politics, but as the one bleak and woe-begone specimen now extant of a race of politicians who once swarmed over four-fifths of the constituencies of this island. The third great achievement of the election campaign, and the mightiest of all, is that the Irish vote in England has been proved to demonstration to be able to trim and balance English parties to its liking, and consequently to make the Irish vote in Ireland the supreme power in the English legislature. It is impossible to over-estimate the magnitude of these results. The causes of joy are absolutely bewildering in number. A few years ago, the National voice in Ireland was heard only as a faint, distant murmur at Westminster. It could only rumble under ground in Ireland, and every outward symptom of Irish disaffection could be suppressed with the iron hand without causing one quiver of uneasiness at Westminster, much less shaking Ministries and revolutionizing parties. Even at home Nationalism was a shunned creed. It was not respectable. The few exponents it occasionally sent to Parliament were regarded as oddities. The mass of the Irish representation were as thoroughly English party-men as if they were returned from Yorkshire. To-day what an enchanted transformation scene!
A month since Mr. Parnell's party was but a fraction of the Irish representation. The Irish Whigs and Nominal Home Rulers combined outnumbered them, without counting the solid phalanx of Ulster Tories. Where are the three opposing factions to-day? The Nominal Home Rulers have died off without a groan. The Northern Whigs have committed suicide by one of the most infatuated strokes of folly ever recorded in political annals. The Tories have shrunk within the borders of one out of thirty-two counties in Ireland, with precarious outposts in three others; and they are beside themselves with exultation because they have managed to save Derry and Belfast themselves by a neck from the jaws of all-devouring Nationalism. Nor is the seizing possession of seven-eighths of the Irish representation the only or even the greatest fact of the day. The Nationalists have not only won, but over four-fifths of the country they have reduced their opponents to a laughing-stock in the tiny minorities in which the Loyal and Patriotic Union have obligingly exhibited them. The overwhelming character of the Nationalist victory would not have been a tithe so impressive had not our malignant enemies insisted upon coming out in the daylight in review order, and displaying their pigmy insignificance to a wondering world. A string of uncontested elections would have passed off monotonously unimaginatively. It would have been said the country was simply dumb and tame and terrorized. But the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union have guarded us against any mistake of that sort. They valiantly spent their fifty thousand pounds in challenging the verdict of the country, and the country is answering in thunder-tones that will reverberate to the most distant times. Uncontested elections in Dublin City, for example, would have attracted but little notice. It was known that the Nationalists were in overwhelming strength on the register; but the croakers of the Scotch Times and Express might still have exercised their imagination in bragging what wonders the loyalists might have performed, if they thought it worth while. But the Loyal and Patriotic Union heroically determined that national spirit in Dublin should not be allowed merely to smoulder for want of fuel. They determined to brand their faction with impotence in eternal black and white. They delivered their challenge with the insolence and malignity of their progenitors of the Penal Days, and the result was such a tornado of national feeling as never shook the Irish capital before; a tornado before which the pigmies who raised it are shivering in affright. Magnificent as are the results in Ireland, however, our countrymen in England have achieved the real marvels of the campaign. They have brought the towering Liberal majority tumbling like a house of cards. They have in fifty-five constituencies set up or knocked down English candidates like ninepins. With the one unhappy exception of Glasgow, where tenderness for a Scotch radical gave a seat to Mr. Mitchel-Henry, the superb discipline of the Irish electorate has extorted the homage as well as the consternation of English party managers. They have made Mr. Parnell as supreme between rival English parties as the Irish constituencies have effaced the Whig and Nominal factions who disputed his supremacy. Ten thousand times, well done, ye brave and faithful Irish exiles. On the day of Ireland's liberation you will deserve to rank high in the glorious roll of her deliverers.
United Ireland, Dublin.
Eighty-Six to Eighteen.—This is the way the Irish representation now stands, eighty-six men in favor of making Ireland a nation, eighteen wanting to keep her a province, and a province on which they can selfishly batten. The elections in every way have borne out the forecast of the Irish leaders, who calculated eighty-five as the minimum strength of the National party. Mr. Gladstone will now be gratified to learn that in response to his late Midlothian addresses, this nation has spoken out in a manner which cannot be falsified or gainsaid, demanding the restoration of its stolen Parliament. The loyalists, with all the power of England at their back, and money galore at their command, can point to only one whole county out of the thirty-two which has remained solid for the Union. Antrim alone sends up a solid Tory representation, and with it the only vestige that is left of the "Imperial Province" is some fragments of Down, Derry and Armagh—in all of which the Nationalists also have won a seat. On the other hand, in four Northern counties—Monaghan, Cavan, Fermanagh and Donegal, the loyalists have not carried a single division, and won only one out of four in Tyrone. How much more "unity" do the English want? The excuse hitherto has been that Home Rule could not be granted because Ireland was itself divided on the subject; but even that wretched pretence is now forever at an end, for almost since the dawn of history no such practical unanimity was ever shown by any nation.
Rapidity of Time's Flight.
Swiftly glide the years of our lives. They follow each other like the waves of the ocean. Memory calls up the persons we once knew—the scenes in which we were once actors. They appear before the mind like the phantoms of a night vision. Behold the boy rejoicing in the gayety of his soul. The wheels of Time cannot move too rapidly for him. The light of hope dances in his eyes; the smile of expectation plays with his lips. He looks forward to long years of joy to come; his spirit burns within him when he hears of great men and mighty deeds; he longs to mount the hill of ambition, to tread the path of honor, to hear the shouts of applause. Look at him again. He is now in the meridian of life; care has stamped its wrinkles upon his brow; disappointment has dimmed the lustre of his eye; sorrow has thrown its gloom upon his countenance. He looks backward upon the waking dreams of his youth, and sighs for their futility. Each revolving year seems to diminish something from his little stock of happiness, and discovers that the season of youth, when the pulse of anticipation beats high, is the only season of enjoyment. Who is he of aged locks? His form is bent and totters, his footsteps move but rapidly toward the tomb. He looks back upon the past; his days appear to have been few; the magnificence of the great is to him vanity; the hilarity of youth, folly; he considers how soon the gloom of death must overshadow the one and disappoint the other. The world presents little to attract and nothing to delight him. A few more years of infirmity, inanity and pain must consign him to idiocy or the grave. Yet this was the gay, the generous, the high-souled boy who beheld the ascending path of life strewn with flowers without a thorn. Such is human life; but such cannot be the ultimate destinies of man.
The best education in the world is that got by struggling for a living.—Wendell Phillips.