The Catholic Publication Society will soon publish a new edition of Father Young’s Office of Vespers, greatly enlarged and improved.
The volume of Sermons of the Paulist Fathers for 1870 will be ready for delivery on the 25th of November.
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XIV., No. 82.—JANUARY, 1872.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
WHO IS TO EDUCATE OUR CHILDREN?
Every day that passes over our heads and witnesses the rapid increase of the population of the country adds to the interest which attaches to the reciprocal rights and duties existing between the state and the citizen, as far as the question of the proper education of our children is concerned. It has become a matter of the most vital importance, superior to mere party consideration in the success of this or that faction of politicians; for in the proper appreciation of its magnitude and in its judicious and permanent settlement may be said to lie not only the future welfare of this republic, but the supremacy of Christianity itself on this broad continent. The history of the church from its very foundation is full of instances of the decay of religion and morality in one country simultaneously with their growth or revival in another. It was thus that the faith, grown weak in the farther East, found so many earnest professors in Italy, and when Gaul and the Spanish peninsula succumbed to their pagan conquerors, the light of the Gospel was transferred to the islands of Britain and Ireland, and brightened into an effulgence which, in a few centuries, penetrated the darkest recesses of the then semi-barbarized continent. In Europe to-day, the church, assailed on one side by Cæsarism and on the other by the secret societies, can hardly hold her own, notwithstanding the justice of her cause and the zeal and learning of her champions; and it would seem to be one of the mysterious designs of Providence that the theatre of her triumphs and conquests is, for a time at least, to be transferred to the fresher and more vigorous New World. The astonishing growth of Catholicity in America in our own day is an evidence of this, but our present victories will be barren of any good results if we neglect the proper education of our children, who, as we gradually pass away, are destined to take our places for good or evil.
The time has come when the question, Who is to educate our children?