CHILDREN AND THE RELIGIOUS STATE.
Q. At what age may children enter the religious state?
A. The Council of Trent teaches that young persons are permitted to take their vows in the religious state at the age of sixteen, after making at least one year's novitiate.
The mind and the spirit of the Church show that youth is the best time to make this agreeable sacrifice to God; and even the Holy Ghost Himself testifies to the same: "It is good for a man when he hath borne the yoke from his youth."
Q. Do not a larger percentage persevere when subjects enter the religious state late in life?
A. No; the superiors of several of the largest and best organized communities testify that a larger percentage persevere of those who enter young.
The young are more easily formed to religious discipline. When persons are twenty years of age, or older, their minds and characters are less pliable; it is harder to unbend and remould them: "A young man, according to his way, even when he is old, lie will not depart from it."
Q. Is it, then, a mistaken principle to try the vocations of young persons by permitting them to acquire experience in the ways of the world before entering the religious state?
A. Yes; because "he that loveth danger shall perish in it." As reasonably might you place enticing liquors before a man struggling against intemperance.
When these youth are left to the mercy of so many enticing and dangerous influences, with their passions growing within them, and an enchanting world smiling upon them; when others around them are "marrying and giving in marriage;" when all are speaking of the world and thinking of the world, they will naturally be influenced by the moral atmosphere in which they live.
Facts confirm this doctrine; for if, through their own fault, or through the fault of their parents, those having vocations to the religious state remain in the outer world until the end of their "teens" a large percentage of them lose their vocations and stay in the world.
Persons having thus lost their vocations usually live worse lives than other Christians, on account of the abuse of grace.
Q. What is to be done when subjects cannot enter religion at an early age?
A. In given instances, when children are unable to pursue a religious vocation at an early age, the greatest precaution should be taken, both by themselves and by their parents and confessors, to keep alive those higher and holier inspirations which the Holy Ghost diffuses more liberally at the age of First Communion, and for about two or three years afterwards.