Catholic Church -- Education -- United States; Education -- United States
It seems to me that we cannot insist too much upon the vital importance
of the Catholic school. A priest's time is never better employed than
when three or four hours of it are daily spent in school--and that so
regularly, that his presence in the school is looked for alike by
teachers, children, and parents--and when he then occupies another
portion of his day in looking after the defaulters, and in talking with
parents over the school duties, and the future prospects of their
children. Thus the parents feel that in sending their children to be
educated there, they are not turning them over to a number of paid
teachers, nor even to Brothers and Sisters, but to the clergy
themselves, for their education. This personal interest and solicitude
of the priest reacts upon the parents as well as upon the children.
A pastor, then, wishing to secure the salvation of the best part of the
flock of Jesus Christ, must do all in his power to establish good
Catholic schools, and oblige parents to send their children to them, and
not to Public Schools--to the grave of Catholicity. It is _then_, also,
and not till then, that we shall see more young people called to the
priesthood, and to such religious orders as devote themselves especially
to the education of youth. In Europe, the bishops and priests, together
with the laity, fight for the liberty of educating the children
according to Catholic principles and customs. In this country, our
religious liberty is as great as it possibly can be. Now not to profit
by this liberty, is for the shepherds of the flock of Jesus Christ to
incur the greatest guilt; it is to be like that ungodly Bishop of
Burgos, who, on being told by Las Casas that seven thousand children had
perished in three months, said: "Look you, what a queer fool! what is
this to me, and what is that to the King?" To which Las Casas replied:
"Is it nothing to your Lordship that all these souls should perish? Oh,
great and eternal God! And to whom, then, is it of any concern?"--(Life
of Las Casas, by Arthur Helps.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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