The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1915-07-03

of reason, to impending punishments
of human law, to frowns of public
opinion, to policies of worldly ex-
pediency. Pathetic 1t is to listen to
the devices proposed as substitutes
for religion in the teaching of morals.
! The imperious need of morals none
there are who doubt: none, who doubt
that the season of formation in morals
is childhood and youth. The cry of
! public opinion is that in some way
morals be taught in the schools of the
land and panacea after panacea is
read out to instructors and to pupils.
The vainest illusion the panacea is
at best whispering of words that for
a moment, perhaps, temper tempta-
tation in specially favored circum-
stances of soul and of surroundings,
unable, however, to raise ripple over
the angry pillows of sin and of peril
of sin in which are immersed the
masses of our common humanity God
and Christ are the masters, the
guardians of morals: dare not, ia
theirs and mothers. choose for your
| little ones schools that vow their
name to silence and oblivion.
The SecuIarized School Cause of Wide
spreading Effacement Of Religion
From America. =
Were | to argue further as to the
effect of the secularized school upon
religion, | should invite you to remark
it's too visible results in the country
at large outside the Catholic Church.
Time was, not so long ago, when the.
masses of Americans held firmly to-
one form or to another of Christian
faith, when to stay away from re-
| ligious service on Sunday was to in
woke upon oneself serious public
criticism. To-day, among the masses,
only tattered and shattered shreds of
Christianity subsist when it is at all
anything more than memory, or a
mere wave of so-called human brother
hood or social uplift. To-day, Prot
estant temples gather into their pews
on Sunday the handfulls of wor-
shippers, and the thinning of the
ranks grows yearly apace. The fatal
day seems near when outside the
Catholic Church Christ and His Cos
pei shall be accepted as nought else
than ordinary natural incidents on the
pages of humanity's history. To the
effacement of the supernatural there
hn af.
cause, it can not be denied, is that
religion is barred from the school,
and that, consequently, childhood and
youth grow up in ignorance of
God and of their duties to Him.
Thoughtful Professionals, for whom the
word of God has still meaning, for
whom God and Christ remain the vital
factor of salvation in time and in
eternity, deplore the secularism of the
school-room and are of one mind with
Catholics as to its dire results. Wit
ness the oft-repeated clamorings, in
/ themselves well-intentioned, however
pathetic to their futility, to have a
I rev words 81 prayeT recited in the
school-room, together with reading
of the Bible or of some peculiarly
chosen extracts from it. Unfor-
tunately even that small pittance of
religion is violation of the neutrality
of the school-room, and meets with
popular repulse. That pittance is OPP
posed on the one hand by such as will
allow no religion to themselves or to
their children, and on the other by
such as see in it, because of it's little
ness, an utterly insufficient training
in religion, harmful and forbidden
mutilation of the faith once delivered
to the saints. Witness, too, the con-
of some few of the Protestat churches,
who do as Catholics do, building up
their own schools where the fullness
of what they believe is given out in
daily lessons without obstruction from
law or custom. The secularized
school-room has it's logical advocates
and defenders: they are those whose
religion is agnosticism or materialism,
the avowed foes of God and of Christ.
Other advocates there are, those who
still retain memories of the Christian
faith of their fathers and mothers
who, however, are so weak in their
adhesion to those memories, as to be
unmindful of the perils to which they
expose the faith of their children, or
are unwilling to make sacrifices on it's
behalf. Others still we know of, from
whom in time better things may be
expected. They are those-and to-day
they are not very few-who, though
earnest in their religious belief, and
sincere in their efforts to transmit it
unimpaired to their children, have not
been brought to understand the deadly
effects of the unreligious school-room
Further experiences of those effects,
soon to be unmistakable, will, let us
hope, open their minds to the error
of their present manner of thought
/ One Course Open to the Catholic
church--to Establish Her
!. Own Schools.
Impossible to the Catholic Church
3 to lend approval or countenance tc
r the secularized school, or by inactier
: on her part to authorize Catholics tt
t confide to it the education of theil