Protestants! when upon life’s way you are tempted to admire the smiling lips and unstained faces of the pope’s nuns, please think of those charming lakes which I saw on the prairies of Illinois, and remember the innumerable reptiles and toads which swarm at the bottom of those deceitful waters.
When, by the light of divine truth, Protestants see behind these perfect mockeries by which the nun conceals with so much care the hideous misery which devours her heart, they will understand the folly of having permitted themselves to be so easily deceived by appearances. Then they will bitterly weep for having sacrificed to that modern Paganism the future welfare of their children, of their families and of their country!
“But,” says one, “the education is so cheap in the nunnery.” I answer, “The education in convents, were it twice cheaper than it is now, would still cost twice more than it is worth. It is in this circumstance that we can repeat and apply the old proverb, ‘Cheap things are always too highly paid for.’”
In the first place, the intellectual education in the nunnery is completely null. The great object of the pope and the nuns is to captivate and destroy the intelligence.
The moral education is also of no account; for what kind of morality can a young girl receive from a nun who believes that she can live as she pleases as long as she likes it—that nothing evil can come of her, neither in this life nor in the next, provided only she is devout to the Virgin Mary?
Let Protestants read the “Glories of Mary,” by St. Liguori, a book which is in the hands of every nun and every priest, and they will understand what kind of morality is practiced and taught inside the walls of the Church of Rome. Yes, let them read the history of that lady who was so well represented at home by the Holy Virgin that her husband did not perceive that she had been absent, and they will have some idea of what their children may learn in a convent.
Chapter XII.
ROME AND EDUCATION—WHY DOES THE CHURCH OF ROME HATE THE COMMON SCHOOLS OF THE UNITED STATES, AND WANTS TO DESTROY THEM? WHY DOES SHE OBJECT TO THE READING OF THE BIBLE IN THE SCHOOL?
The word EDUCATION is a beautiful word. It comes from the Latin educare, which means to raise up, to take from the lowest degrees to the highest spheres of knowledge. The object of education is, then, to feed, expand, raise, enlighten and strengthen the intelligence.
We hear the Roman Catholic priests making use of that beautiful word education as often, if not oftener, than the Protestant. But that word “education” has a very different meaning among the followers of the pope than among the disciples of the Gospel. And that difference, which the Protestants ignore, is the cause of the strange blunders they make every time they try to legislate on that question, here, as well as in England or in Canada.