NO. VI.
PRIVATE DUTIES—CONTINUED.
The life of that class which in fashionable parlance is called “society” in the capitals and great towns of Europe, and especially in Paris, the capital of the beau monde, is the most opposite to the ideal of the Christian life that can exist without being essentially criminal. The same remark applies, of course, to the imitation of it among ourselves. We have implied that it is not essentially criminal. Not that it is possible to doubt the vast amount of moral evil existing in its bosom, but that this evil is not in the very nature of the mode of life intended, in such a way that all those who are engaged in it must necessarily live in sin. The nature or essence of this mode of life consists in making the pursuit of social and other pleasures, in themselves innocent and lawful, a regular and habitual occupation, instead of an occasional relaxation. It is possible to do this, without grievously neglecting those duties which are of positive obligation in one’s state of life, and without neglecting the precepts of religion. It is, nevertheless, difficult to do it for a long time. It is a dangerous kind of life to lead. And precisely because it is dangerous, the church is indulgent to those who are involved in it, allows them to receive the sacraments with the greatest liberality, and encourages them to approach these sources of grace frequently, in order that they may be preserved from sin. Some, especially women under the authority of parents or husbands who are worldly minded and imperious, are involved in such a life against their own inclination, others are kept in it by their own levity and weakness of character and the force of habit and fashion. The former ought to receive the sacraments as frequently as possible, in order that they may triumph over the obstacles in the way of attaining that degree of perfection to which they aspire. The latter ought to do the same, in order that they may live in the state of grace and save their souls. This is a doctrine which gives scandal to rigorists and Pharisees, and frequently the persons who are inwardly the most corrupt are the most rigoristic in their opinions. But the Catholic Church, which has cast out the Jansenistic leaven as a detestable and deadly poison, cares not for Pharisaic scandal, and does care for the soul of the imperfect and the sinner, whom she acknowledges for her children.
Indulgent as the church is to those who are weak and imperfect Christians, or who even fall often into sin, provided they are always trying to rise out of it again, she never ceases to hold up her ideal of the Christian life in all its perfection before her children, and to admonish and persuade them by the most powerful motives to copy it in their actions. All those who really aim at being good Christians are uneasy in a worldly life, and generally withdraw from it, to a great extent, when they become sobered by age and experience. Those who are fervent have a great dislike for it, and have always done their utmost to emancipate themselves from its servitude and frivolity. It is a dangerous kind of life, and one which becomes wearisome and insipid after a time even to those who have no taste for anything better. To pass all the months which are spent in town, with the exception of a few weeks in Lent, in a round of balls, parties, visits, and theatre-going, and to dawdle away the summer in the inanities and ennui of a fashionable watering-place, is to make existence as flat and unprofitable as it can well be—to exhaust its flavor as well as waste its substance. The satire of Thackeray is only simple truth, and it is enough to direct to the page of the novelist for a full illustration of the moral we wish to point, without referring the jaded votaries of fashion to any more tedious species of literature. It is necessary to distinguish among the fashions and pleasures of the world those which are positively immoral from those which are innocent in themselves, and only noxious when they are inordinate and excessive. It is a matter of strict obligation to shun the former altogether. Immodest dances and fashions of dress, licentious plays, excess in eating and drinking, are sinful in themselves, and lead to the grossest sins. It is a simple matter of fact that society among the higher classes, in the nations of Christendom, has been for a long time, and still is, deeply affected by the moral corruption into which the pursuit of pleasure as the occupation of life always tends to resolve itself. Paris, the modern Babylon, has led the way, and the world has followed Paris. This corruption is the chief cause of the miseries with which society has been scourged and is now threatened. From the court of Louis XV. the first step was to the Place de Grève, the second to the burning Tuileries. Petroleum, which will one day burn up the world, is the oil which bubbles up in the bosom of a corrupt Christian aristocracy, the product of the wickedness of the higher classes in Christian society, who have turned away from a true Catholic life to the life of pagans, or a life for this world only. A beau monde, indeed, it is! It is against such a beau monde as this, with its whole complex of heresy and immorality, infidelity and licentiousness, intellectual pride and low materialism, outward splendor and inward contempt of all dignity or authority, superficial gaiety and real, haggard misery, all closely affianced and affiliated together, that Pius IX. has been perpetually fulminating his condemnation. But we may go further back and higher up than Pius IX. to St. Peter himself, and find the same denunciation of heresy, revolt, and luxury, as allied vices, expressed in much severer language than that of his successor. In his second Encyclical Epistle, the Prince of the Apostles writes as follows:
“The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation; but to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented. And especially those who walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise governments, audacious, pleasing themselves, they fear not to bring in sects, blaspheming, ... as irrational beasts, naturally tending to the snare, and to destruction, blaspheming those things which they know not, they shall perish in their corruption, receiving the reward of injustice, counting pleasure the delights of a day, stains and blemishes, flowing in delicacies, rioting in their feasts with you, having eyes full of adultery, and of never-ceasing sin: alluring unstable souls, having their heart exercised with covetousness, sons of malediction; ... these are fountains without water, and clouds tossed with whirlwinds, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved. For, speaking swelling words of vanity, they allure in desires of the flesh of riotousness those who had escaped a little from them who converse in error: promising them liberty, when they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave. For, if having fled from the pollution of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, being again entangled in them, they are overcome; their latter state is become unto them worse than the former.”[109]
We may see this exemplified in Rome at the present moment, in Victor Emanuel, Hyacinthe, Gavazzi, the Jews Arbib and Jacob Dina, the venders of infidel and licentious prints, sectarian preachers, chiefs of the Garibaldian faction, and courtesans, all knotted together like a pyramid of rattlesnakes, to hiss against the Holy Father, the representative on earth of Christ and God. And this is the modern world, as opposed to the true Christian society, the church. It is an apostasy worse than heathenism; “for it had been better not to have known the way of justice, than, after having known it, to have turned back from that holy commandment.” This apostasy shows itself more glaringly in the Rome of Victor Emanuel and his buzzurri than elsewhere, but it is the same throughout the modern world. And in this world Catholics must live, and live either superior to it, or its slaves. If they are contaminated by it, their moral corruption leads them directly to the loss of faith as well as the loss of grace. The infidelity into which numbers of the higher classes on the Continent of Europe have fallen during the past century is notorious. We have had some of these degenerate Catholics among ourselves, retaining the name of Catholic as a kind of national and family heirloom, but denying and mocking at all the mysteries of faith, resisting and thwarting the bishops and priests who founded our American churches, and generally crying out for a priest in their last moments, while their relatives are chiefly anxious for the pomp of a requiem, a solemn funeral procession, and a monument in consecrated ground. Love of the world has made others, who have had a better education in their youth, become apathetic and alienated from their fellow-Catholics and the church, as they have grown rich. And some have openly apostatized, in order to profess a more genteel religion. The inordinate love of wealth, pleasure, and honor, brings the will into collision with the practical, moral law of the church, and thus implants an aversion to the Catholic religion and the spirit of revolt against it. These dispositions prepare the way for the revolt of the will, and through the will of the mind, against the doctrine and authority of the church, and eventually for a total abjuration of allegiance to God. The sinner is always called in the ancient Scriptures a fool, because he prefers this world to the next, creatures to the Creator; and “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” The only consistent alternative is, therefore, the total abjuration of folly, complete subjection to the law of wisdom, and the regulation of the whole life in conformity to its dictates. The fashions and customs of the world, when they are contrary to Catholic principles, must be wholly renounced and despised. Nay, more. When they are absurd, ridiculous, contrary to reason and good sense, one who has a proper respect for himself and a just independence of character ought to neglect and disregard them, unless doing so involves a greater inconvenience than that caused by conformity. Those who profess to be governed by the law of Christ ought to regulate their table, their household order, their dress, their social customs, their pleasures and amusements, and all the minor morals of life, by a Christian standard, and not by the standard of a corrupt world. To be ashamed and afraid to do this is disgraceful cowardice. It is for Christians to subdue the world and compel it to conform, at least outwardly, to their standard; not to submit to its galling and degrading servitude. If this cannot be done, let them cut the world, in so far as their relative duties and necessary obligations towards it will permit, and form their own separate society; as they have frequently been forced to do since Christianity was founded. It is necessary to keep the law of Christ, it is necessary to be wholly conformed in mind and conduct to the doctrine and spirit of the church, it is necessary to merit the kingdom of heaven; but it is not necessary to be fashionable or to please the world. Moreover, to be truly honorable, it is necessary that one should esteem his Catholic profession as his greatest glory, and not tarnish it by sentiments or conduct unworthy of a Christian. Most of those Catholics in this country who are now living in ease and affluence are descended from ancestors who sacrificed everything and suffered untold hardships for their faith; and what do they deserve if they dishonor the blood of the martyrs by becoming the slaves of the wicked power which persecuted them?
We desire now to apply all that we have said in a special manner to the education of children—the most important of all the private duties of heads of families. What we have to say on this head applies in general to all parents in comparatively easy circumstances, but in some particulars to those only who are wealthy in the strict sense of the term. The weighty obligation rests on all Catholic parents of bringing up their children in the faith and in virtue, in view of the great end of life, which is to glorify God here and to enjoy him hereafter in heaven. This is a difficult task in itself, especially so in the present age and in this country, and in some respects more difficult for those who are rich than for any others, excepting, perhaps, the very poor. The children of the rich in this country are generally brought up in great self-indulgence, excessive liberty, and according to a precocious method. They are prepared for a kind of life which requires great wealth, and, at the same time, their prospects of possessing it with permanent security are very precarious. We might adduce many considerations going to show that it is almost to be regarded as a calamity rather than an advantage to be born of rich parents in this country. If we had accurate statistics, they would, in our opinion, show that very few of the children and descendants of wealthy families have remained in affluent or even easy circumstances. The majority of those who are rich are children of parents who were poor, or, at least, dependent on their own exertions for a living. A great number of the children who have been brought up with the expectation of inheriting a fortune have become poor, and far too many have gone altogether to ruin. The sons of the rich are exposed to the danger of being ruined by the vices into which they easily fall, and by the indolent and inefficient character they too frequently form, together with the reverses of fortune which are not fatal to energetic men, yet are ordinarily fatal to those whose habits are effeminate. Their daughters are exposed to the same reverses of fortune, to the miseries resulting from unhappy marriages, and to the consequences which follow from personal habits of extravagance and self-indulgence. Most of these miseries flow from a bad education, and those which proceed from no such cause and are among the inevitable evils of this earthly life, are made unbearable and desperate by the effects of a bad education.
So far as temporal well-being is concerned, parents ought to aim at preparing their children to take care of themselves after they are grown up. All boys, no matter how rich their fathers may be, ought to be prepared for some profession or business in which they can make their own fortune, or, at least, a living, and they should be compelled to take care of themselves when they become men, without any more help from their fathers than is sufficient to place them in the way of doing so. This is the only way to perpetuate wealth in families, for, if children are trained up to live in leisure on the fortunes which they are to inherit, the largest fortunes will soon be lost by division and subdivision, even if they are not scattered by dissipation or mismanagement. Daughters should be educated in such a way that they can be their own housekeepers, or even earn their living by their education and accomplishments, if the reverses of their parents or the disasters of married life bring them into straits and difficulties.
This result can only be secured by keeping children in the state and under the discipline of childhood so long as they are children in age. Obedience, industry, self-denial, simplicity of dress and diet, moderation in amusements, and a strictly and purely Catholic education—such are the only means of preparing children either for a condition of wealth or for one of poverty. Our American children who are reared in the families of the rich are generally brought out of the nursery and the school-room too young: they are too highly fed, too much indulged, have too many amusements, and are blasé before they are fully grown. Is it judicious for Christian mothers to dress their little daughters like ballet-dancers for their children’s parties? To send their sons with billets of excuse from their lessons to school after taking them overnight to the opera or theatre? What can be expected of children who are allowed to sleep late, to eat daintily and excessively, to read all kinds of trash, to dress extravagantly, spend money, go about with liberty, and indulge in pleasures which keep them up late at night? Such a life has a worse effect than merely to make the character effeminate. It directly fosters the most morbid and destructive propensities of the weak and fragile human nature, and leads to vice and death. We do not speak of those cases where parents lead their children to ruin by the direct influence of impious or immoral conversation, or an example which is flagrantly bad. There are some such who would seem to set to work with an express purpose of corrupting and ruining their children. But our present purpose is with those who may be supposed to read our articles attentively and seriously, and who cannot, therefore, be suspected of anything worse than weakness, or error of judgment. It is against this weak following of the common fashion, the common maxims, the common current of the world, that we warn those parents who wish to be good Christians and to bring up their children well.
The highest and ultimate end of education is the attainment of the chief good to which the soul is destined, and to which it has received the right in baptism. The principal obligation of Catholic parents is, therefore, the education of their children in the principles and practices of the faith and law of the church. And this leads us to speak of the obligation of the rich, the educated, and all the influential laymen of the Catholic Church in this country, to bestir themselves in the work of Catholic education. Schools and colleges, purely and thoroughly Catholic, and fully sufficient to give all the requisite kinds and degrees of instruction which are needed by our youth, must be multiplied and sustained. It is a fixed and settled doctrine of the church that education is by divine right under the care and jurisdiction of the hierarchy. Those who teach the contrary are unsound in doctrine, and good Catholics are bound in conscience to give no heed to their opinions on this point. It is, moreover, a point also settled by the highest authority in the church, viz., that of the bishops of those countries where mixed education is a subject of practical moment, and of the Holy See, that mixed education is dangerous. This is the judgment of the bishops of Germany, Ireland, England, and the United States. As an instance, we cite the language of the Irish bishops in a resolution passed unanimously at Maynooth, August 18, 1869, in which they say:
“They reiterate their condemnation of the mixed system of education, whether primary, intermediate, or university, as grievously and intrinsically dangerous to the faith and morals of Catholic youth; and they declare that to Catholics only, and under the supreme control of the church in all things appertaining to faith and morals, can the teaching of Catholics be safely entrusted.”