This, O Catholics! is what the money you are making so rapidly ought, in generous part, to be devoted to. So you will think, at a day fast coming, when your bodies will be buried sumptuously, your souls forgotten by the living, and the estates you have hoarded with so much industry shall have become, perhaps, the objects of disgraceful law-suits among your heirs.
Dear Catholics, let us cast off our lethargy; let us be unitedly active in this matter; let us discard the flimsy arguments of "liberal" Catholics who would discourage the enterprise, regarding every such as our most dangerous foe. Let us make our voice heard and our actions felt, and bring up our children in a manner creditable to ourselves, an honor and consolation to their parents, a blessing to society, worthy members of the Church of God, and candidates for the kingdom of heaven.
FOOTNOTES:
[H] "Hant propositionem auctoritate Nostra Apostolica reprobamus, proscribimus atque damnamus eamque ab omnibus Catholicæ Ecclesiæ filiis veluti reprobatam, proscriptam atque damnatam omnino haberi volumus et mandamus."—Syllabus, Prop. xlviii.
CHAPTER XIV.
ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS.
There are some who assert that "there is no sectarian teaching in the Public Schools, and consequently a Catholic may send his children to them without exposing them to any danger." Now even supposing there really were no sectarian teaching in the common schools, even then a Catholic parent cannot send his children to such a school without exposing them to the greatest danger. Those who approve of the Public Schools because nothing sectarian is taught there, act like a certain husbandman who wished to transplant a fine young tree to a certain part of his garden. On examining the new place, however, he found that the ground was filled with poisonous ingredients, which would greatly endanger the life of the tree. He therefore transplanted the tree to a sandy hill, where there were, indeed, no poisonous ingredients, but where there was also no nourishment for the tree. Now will any one assert that the young tree was not in danger of perishing in this new place? And will any one assert that the faith and soul of a child are not in danger of being ruined in those godless common schools? Even if Protestantism is not taught there, infidelity is taught and practised there, and infidelity is even worse than Protestantism.
But is it really true that Protestantism is not taught in many of our Public Schools? This is unfortunately far from being the case. Napoleon I. introduced the Public School system into France, in order, as he honestly declared, "to possess the means of controlling political and moral opinions." Puritans and Freemasons, in this country, have clearly the same end in view in upholding the present system of Public Schools.