The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-10-25
THE NECESSITY OF RELIGION IN
EDUCATION.

The divine spouse of Christ, writes
Right Reverend T. F. Lillis, is never
unmindful of her mission of impress
ing upon man that he is a creature
composed of body and soul, and that
his aim is to know God, to love and
serve Him in this world and be happy
with Him forever in the next. The
good Christian looks at life not from
a purely natural, but from a super
natural point of view. His life be-
longs to God. To Him he is respon-
sible for every thought, word or &C
ton. He was created for heaven. Sin
is the only obstacle in his way. But
the church, instituted by Christ,
guides and directs him. She helps him
must do and what he must avoid. The
church continually tells him that
there is a God, that His authority is
supreme, that His commands must be
obeyed, that He will reward the faith
full observer of His laws and punish
the transgressor.
The practical imparting of these
great truths cannot be omitted in the
formation of character. Religion is a
necessity and must be our guide. Re-
ligion must be the dominant feature,
the very atmosphere in which man is
to be brought up. If not, education
will be one-sided and will not make
the kind of men and women that are
essential for the moral well-being of
the family and of society.
An education which recognizes only
intellectual and physical culture is de-
f~ectiTe, is altogether insufficient. Mere
training of mans natural powers may
make him bright and clever, but not
good. True education reaches the i'm
pulses and motives of heart and mind.
Education, in order to be sound and
produce beneficial results, must de-
velop what is best in man, and make
him not only clever, but good. A one
sided education will develop a one
sided life, and such a life will surely
topple over, and so will every social
system that is built up of such lives.
Take away religion from the people
and morality will soon follow; moral
ity gone, even their physical condition
will ere long degenerate into the cor
ruption that breeds decrepitude, while
their intellectual attainments would
only serve as a light to guide them to
deeper depths of vice and ruin" (Pas-
toral Letter, III. Plen. G. Balt.) Moral
virtues, like other habits, can only be
acquired by training, by instruction
and exercise. Religion, the basis of
morality, can never be ignored in the
formation of character. The ideal
school, therefore, must be such that
religion enters as the motive and
guide of what is to be done and what
is to be avoided. The ~far-seeing and
sincere Catholic wants his children
to begin to be what they ought to be
in later life, faithful in their duty to
God and their fellow-men, honorable
and pure men and women so indis-
pensabIe to the welfare of the nation.
Nothing could express the senti-
ments of the church on this momen-
tous question more clearly and un
mistakably than the concerted utter
ance of all the bishops of the United
States, congregated in the III. Plen-
airy Council of Baltimore, as shown
by the following words: "In regard
to the laity we exhort and command
that they be so instructed by the
bishop and the priests that they learn
to regard the parochial school as an
essential part of the parish, without
which the future existence of the
parish will be endangered. They are,
therefore, to be made to understand
clearly and thoroughly that the school
is not by any means a mere devotion
al institution of the priests own
adoption for the purpose of manifest
ing his great zeal, or of spending his
time pleasantly and usefully, but that
it is a burden and a duty imposed
upon the priest by the church, to be
religiously performed by him, but not
without the cooperation of the laity
Not less zeal and wisdom should be
employed to destroy that false notion
in the minds of many of the faithful
that the parochial school exists only
for those members of the parish who
use it for their own children, but il
should be shown to them by plain