The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-08-30
WHY CHOOSE THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL

heart and the mind, morality and the
moral sense are left to shift for
themselves, to say nothing OF the
pitiful state of the soul which refuses
allegiance to its God.
An Experiment That Failed.
The fact related by the French phi
losopher, Sintennis, is worth recalling.
This atheist determined to prove to
the French Academy that man does
not necessarily possess a knowledge
of God. To this end he obtained a
child, a mere infant, and had him
reared in the country surrounded by
everything that could delight child
The idea of God. however, was never
allowed to enter his mind; no books,
pictures, statues, servants, ever init
mated the existence of greater Be-
ing. One morning when this child had
grown to youth the philosopher was
taking an early stroll through his
estate. He beheld the boy making
stealthily for the shore Of small lake
which was on the estate Curious and
anxious, Sintennis followed him. What
was his horror to see the child kneel
on the sand and, with countenance
turned towards the rising sun, pray to
the great Creator of all things! Dazed
at the sight, Sintennis upon inquiry
learned that the boy had never heard
of God, but that his heart and the
sun and all things about him told him
that there must be some Being who
had created them.
If conscience thus acQuaints us with
the knowledge of the existence of a
God, is it not downright cruelty to
the child to deprive him of an eppor-
tunity to learn all that he should
know about that God? Intellect and
intellectual attainments will not of
themselves promote morality. The
cultured mind is not by any manner
or means necessarily moral. We
know that the contrary is often more
true. Danish religion from the heart,
and morality becomes but synonym
for propriety and convention. Danish
religion from the school, and the child
will be deprived of his greatest form
of development His conscience will
assume an elasticity that Nature never
meant to give it; his judgment of
good and bad will often be determined
by mere physical causes, or by the
idea of "good or bad FORM"
Catholic Education.
The Catholic School and the Cath
olic College are the only place for the
education Of the Catholic youth or our
country. The child of the faith pos
sesses every right, human and divine,
to Catholic education. His heritage
demands that he be trained along
those lines that tend to give full play
to his faculties of soul, not only to
promote high thinking and upright liv-
ing, but also to render to his Maker
that homage which every rational soul
owes to its God. To deprive the Cath
olic child of a Christian education is
to injure him perhaps irreparably. To
allow the germ of the knowledge of
God which exists in his mind to be
smothered amid the thorns and the
blight of ignorance of religion, is to
practically murder his soul. A musi-
clan does not study his art in school
intended for mechanics; priest does
not acquire his theology on the deck
of an ocean liner; but Catholic child
very often is obliged to imbibe his
knowledge of God and religion in an
atmosphere which never breathes the
name of God; paradox in terms and
in reality.
The puerile reasons alleged, that
the child learns his religion in church,
from the parents, and his Sunday
catechism, are but the feeble admis-
sions of weakness on the part Of a
parent who knows his duty-by adj
mitting this much-but who prefers to
sacrifice the real good of his child on
the altar OF lucre, ignorance, or human
respect Such a parent is the modern
embodiment of the ancient Moloch,
offering human life at the shrine Of
immortality, bigotry and eternal perdi-
ton.