The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1916-01-29
INDIscRIMINATE READING.

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Among the sins of omission for
which many Catholic parents will one
day be held to. strict account is their
neglect to exercise careful supervision
over the reading of their children.
The utter carelessness displayed on
this point by considerable number
of fathers and mothers who in other
respects give evidence of possessing
ordinary good sense, would be in
credible were it not so evident and
so common. Although the statement
sounds absurd enough, it would really
seem that some parents consider read
ing in itself-the reading of any
thing a positive virtue in son or
daughter.
A father who will very sensibly for
bid his child's playing with the edged
tools of the carpenter shop, will look
on with perfect unconcern, if not with
fatuous approval, at the same child's
careless handling of the razor-like
mental tools of the materialist, the
sceptic, the agnostic, or the anything
arian. A mother was very properly
insists upon her daughters avoiding
the company of girls whose manners
are over-free, will TRANQUILITY observe
that same daughter pouring over the
sugar-coated nastiness of some wom-
an-novelist whose subtle influence will
surely destroy forever the fair bloom
of maidenly innocence and modesty.
There is no exaggeration in saying
that one might just as reasonably al
low child full freedom to expert
ment at his pleasure in chemists
laboratory, or to taste at will of all
the phials in a drug store, as to con-
sent to his indiscriminate reading of
the books, papers or magazines which
in our day appeal to his curiosity, and
are altogether too often, unfortunate
| ly, within his reach. 1t is all very
well to affect good4natured contempt
of the so-called prudery which ex-
clude certain volumes and certain
journals from the public libraries of
Boston and other New England cities;
but the lamentable fact is that the
twentieth century attitude toward lit
lerature, whether of the permanent or
the ephemeral kind, is an attitude, not
of exaggerated propriety, but of re-
Iprehensible license. Young people Of
the present day are permitted to de-
YOUR anything and everything on the
bill of fare provided by false philos-
lophers, agnostic essayists, erotic
InoVelists, salacious rnagazinists and
yellow journalists.
i Even the best of our daily papers
contain, occasionally, detailed reports
of crimes, of scandals, or of divorces,
the reading of which constitutes a
genuine danger for the average man
or woman, to say nothing of the i'm
i questionable boy or girl. Yet how
often do parents see to it that such
reports are removed from the reach
of their children? The popular cheap
magazines, with their frequent spicy"
fiction and indecent illustrations, are
subscribed for with avidity by many
a Catholic who finds Catholic maya
zines and papers dry and uninterest-
ing.
1t is no wonder that the pastoral
letters Of Bishops so often call atten-
ton to the necessity of guarding the
young from the pernicious literature
of the day. The printed thought is
Iassimilated by the mind much as is
our material food by the body; and
where the youthful mind is allowed
to take in SO much intellectual pabu-
lum that is not only negatively in
nutritious but positively unwholesome
and poisonous, it is not surprising that
Faith is sometimes shipwrecked and
morality often undermined
A circumstance that aggravates the
lsinfulness of Catholic neglect in this
matter is that, nowadays at least
there is no dearth of Catholic books
in any department of popular litera-
lture history, biography, essays. poet
i ry or fction--whethe for the young,
or the mature. It is very certainly
the duty of parents to substitute such
works for the dangerous and. often
enough fatal volumes and magazines
and journals that are too frequently
found in the hands of their children.
Ignoring that duty will not lessen
their responsibility; and it is, beyond
all question, heavy one.
Are Maria.
j e4