The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 13, April to September, 1871
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
The church herself, even if she had full control of the education
of all the children in the land, with ample funds at her command,
could not secure anything better, if, as the state, she educated
for a secular end alone. The virtues needed for the protection of
the state and the advancement of the public or common good, are and
can be secured only by educating or training the children and youth
of a nation not for this life as an end, but for the life to come.
Hence our Lord says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice,
and all these things shall be added unto you." The church does not
educate for the secular order as an end, but for God and heaven; and
it is precisely in educating for God and heaven that she secures
those very virtues on which the welfare and security of the secular
order depend, and without which civil society tends inevitably to
dissolution, and is sustained, if sustained at all, only by armed
force, as we have seen in more than one European nation which has
taken education into its own hand, and subordinated it to secular
ends. The education needed by secular society can be obtained only
from the spiritual society, which educates not for this world, but
for the world to come. The virtues needed to secure this life are
obtained only by seeking and promoting the virtues which fit us for
eternal life.
This follows necessarily from the fact that man is created with a
spiritual nature and for an immortal destiny. If he existed for this
life only, if he were, as some sciolists pretend, merely a monkey or
a gorilla developed, or were like the beasts that perish, this indeed
would not and could not follow, and the reconciliation of the nature
and destiny of man with uniform human experience would be impossible.
We should be obliged, in order to secure the peace and good order
of society, as some unbelieving statesmen do not blush to avow, to
educate in view of a falsehood, and take care to keep up the delusion
that man has a religious nature and destiny, or look to what is false
and delusive for the virtues which can alone save us from anarchy and
utter barbarism. Yet what would serve the delusion or the falsehood,
if man differs not by nature from the dog or the pig? But if man
has really a spiritual nature and an immortal destiny, then it must
necessarily follow that his real good can in no respect be obtained
but in being educated and trained to live for a spiritual life, for
an immortal destiny. Should not man be educated according to his
spiritual nature and destiny, not as a pig or a monkey? If so, in his
education should not the secular be subordinated to the spiritual,
and the temporal to the eternal? We know well, experience proves it,
that even the secular virtues are not secured when sought as the end
of education and of life, but only in educating and living for that
which is not secular, and in securing the virtues which have the
promise of the life of the world to come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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