Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1914-02-14

DidCkeh OuT NAME diuOub ClNlilEeu
nations by piling up the wreckage of
millions Of homes.
These conditions Of immortality
and unrest are symptoms of a dread
disease. The disease Is godlessness.
And our people, whether unwittingly
or not, instead of checking this dis
ease are actually engaged in its pro-
pagation. Through a system of god
less schools the boys and girls of our
nation are given every encourage
ment to become goddess. We spend
more money on education than any
other two countries of the world;
we teach law, art and science, pol
tics and economies, agriculture and
mechanics, sociology and civil gov
eminent, language, mathematics,
commercialism, trade; we have
system of teaching that Is the won
der of the world, but nowhere in
that system is IL taught that there
Is a God or a spiritual existence or
a human soul. And out of this
institution, at the rate of twenty
million a generation, are coming the
future men and women of our ma
ton! Christ weeping over the City
Ol JtTuSdleM WAS HOJ IlOTG
prophetic of her ruin than this
swarm of infidel fledglings is of our
nations downfall.
To breast this sweeping tide of
unbelief there is one old rugged
breaker, the Catholic church. She
lifts her strength against the rising
waves and they break and shatter
around her. The mother of sci
ence, the patroness of art, the queen
Of learning, the deposit of divine
truth, the Catholic church is the
only security for the happiness of
man or the welfare of society In
her system of education rests the
only hope for true manhood or true
progress. She appeals to the
mothers and fathers of the nation
not to suffer the spiritual training
of their children to be neglected,
and she warns them that no happi-
ness can come to the parents or to
the children of parents who turn
deaf ear to this appeal. Her own
people she commands, in a voice of
infallible wisdom and certainty, not
to neglect this duty under pain of
mortal sin. She requires no sacri-
flee in this: that is, no sacrifice of
things worth while. She offers to
her children an education that even
in material things needs nothing to
be added from the secular world.
True, her education has not the
modern frills and foibles that ac-
company secular school life; it has
no Greek-letter societies with their
saturnalia: it teaches no champagne
etiquette or banal conventionality;
it sends forth no apostles of new
thought" no ministers of new re-
ligions, no fakirs aiming to dissect
or to measure or to photograph the
soul; 1t encourages no doubt as to
the divinity of Christ, the truth of
the Bible or whether man Is a |
monkey or chimpanzee; 1t teaches
everything that is for Gods sake,
mans sake or its own sake worth
learning, but danger mark Is
drawn around learning for the
DEVILS sake, which 1t holds out a
warning not to cross. II teaches that
be of God, its first recollection of
prayer; that as the flower of its
little mind unfolds II should be sur
rounded by the atmosphere of the
Catholic school; that as the bloom of
youth advances it should be supplied
with Catholic literature, Catholic
art and Catholic companions. II re-
minds us that harbored within the
child are many hostile forces that
test the fortitude of parents, and il
evil forces from without be allied
to these, such as bad home influ-
ence, evil associations, unwholesome
education, few parents will have the
courage or the strength to face and
overcome them.
Catholic education does not begin
and end with the school room; it
begins before the child is born and
1t never ends. Nor is ii all con-
tanned in the little catechism; 1t is
in everything that touches the life of
humanity, from its dullest needs to
its brightest hopes, from it's lowest
instinct to it's highest aspiration. The
sum and substance of Catholic edu-
cation is the training of children to
associate all things in their growing
lives with thought of God and
heaven. To do this is the holy duty
of all who have been crowned with
the crown of parenthood. There is
no duty of man more holy, none
more imperious or lasting, none that
calls for more effort or more
prayer, than the duty of the parent
to teach the child to know God and |
to strive for heaven. | am not SER
monizing. Truth is as fitting to be
uttered here as elsewhere Nor am
pleading for religious vocations. |
am pleading for something that will |
give to us Catholics a character of |
our own, character that will set |
us apart, like the early Christians,
as an example for unbelievers. Such |
a character is proper to us Our holy |
faith, with its sublime mysteries, its |
sanctifying sacraments, its inspiring |
liturgy, its grand symbolism, not to |
speak of its divine mission and its |
infallible authority, is wonderful |
institution with a magnificent or
ganization and a marvellous his |
tory; IL infinitely surpasses any
other institution in the world. Why |
does not the conduct of our people |
reflect more Of this singular great |
ness than II does? A chief reason is |
that either In the school or out of |
the school the spirit of Catholicity |
has been allowed to anguish and |
the spirit OF godlessness, where II |
has not crept into our lives has been |
suffered to surround them. We
need to build uD a new atmosDhere |