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I.
Primary End of the Family
In accordance
with the words spoken by God to our first parents, "Increase and
multiply and fill the earth," the primary purpose of the family is the
propagation of the human race. Now without religion, this purpose will
be only imperfectly attained. All history witnesses to the fact that
there can be no enduring morality without religion, and the history of
the family is no exception to the rule. The suffering and labor, the
difficulty and disappointment, the grief and vexation incident to the
bearing and rearing of children demand so much patience, love, and
self-sacrifice, that no one not imbued with a religious sense of duty
and buoyed up by the hope of an eternal reward, will be willing to
endure them. Hence where these religious motives are wanting, the
primary end of the family will be either wholly or partly neglected,
and matrimony degraded to the low level of a selfish partnership or a
sinful pastime.
Perverting Marriage
We need not have
recourse to pagan lands, where infants are deliberately exposed to die,
for proof that such is the inevitable result of the absence of religion
in the family. The absence or scarcity of children in many families of
our own land is sad and sufficient evidence. Nay, even in Christian
families, where religion no longer exerts the sway it should, are found
those immoral practices that pervert the sublime aim of the family. One
might, and in charity one would be bound to, ascribe the absence or
scarcity of children in such families to other causes, if wives and
mothers did not openly advocate artificial restriction of families on
the theory that it is better to have one or two children and bring them
up well than to have a larger number and be unable to take proper care
of them. That theory in itself, of course, is unassailable so long as
no law of God is violated by having only one or two children, and so
long as the expression "proper care" is rightly understood. But just
the way this theory is understood and put into practice by most of its
advocates shows into what errors man falls when he is not restrained by
the salutary curb of religion.
Educating for Heaven
What is meant by
bringing up a child well? From the standpoint of religion, as far as
essentials are concerned, it means to bring up a child in such a manner
that it will be enabled to attain the end for which God created
it--eternal happiness in Heaven. Such an education even the poorest
parents will be able to provide for their children, no matter how many
they have; and their own happiness in Heaven will be increased by every
child that they have added to the number of the elect. There is always
a possibility of a child going wrong despite the best parental care;
but the probability of its going wrong from neglect because of the
large number of children is far less than the probability that it will
be spoiled if it is one of a limited few. The very action of the
parents in thwarting nature by limiting their offspring will militate
against the proper religious training of their children; for it is not
likely that parents who themselves disobey the law of God in so grave a
matter will be at great pains to rear God-fearing sons and daughters.
"Proper Care" Relative
But even from a
material point of view, the assumption is false that parents cannot
take proper care of many children. "Proper care" is to be understood
relatively, not absolutely; for while parents are bound to provide for
the material as well as the spiritual needs of their children, the
extent of that provision must vary with the parents' resources. If the
best possible training and the best possible care were required for
every child, few persons would be allowed to marry at all; since few,
if any, could be found whose circumstances could not be improved on.
Pope Pius XI on the Rearing of Children
"We are deeply touched by the sufferings of those parents who, in
extreme want, experience great difficulty in rearing their children.
However, they should take care lest the calamitous state of their
external affairs should be the occasion for a much more calamitous
error. No difficulty can arise that justifies the putting aside of the
law of God which forbids all acts intrinsically evil. There is no
possible circumstance in which husband and wife cannot, strengthened by
the grace of God, fulfill faithfully their duties and preserve in
wedlock their chastity unspotted." --Encyclical on Christian Marriage.
Periodic Continence
If really
serious financial straits or imperative considerations of health should
discountenance the addition of another child to the family at a given
time, truly Christian parents will know how to meet the situation by
mutually agreeing to practice continence over a certain period. So
much, with a good will and God's grace, they will always be able to do.
But no combination of untoward circumstances can ever justify the
misuse of the sacred rights of marriage. (See quotation above.) I
realize most keenly that faithful adherence to the law of God will
sometimes require great sacrifices of God-fearing parents. But every
state of life, as it confers certain rights and privileges, also
demands its peculiar sacrifices; and God will always grant sufficient
grace to enable one to make them. If God enables those husbands and
wives to keep His holy law who are deprived of the legitimate pleasures
of wedlock by the premature death or the life-long illness of their
spouses, He will certainly do the same for those whom poverty or other
trying conditions place in a similar predicament. With St. Paul, every
Christian can say in time of trial: "I can do all things in Him that
strengtheneth me."
An Extreme Case
The following
example, which is about as extreme a case as one might imagine, shows
how God strengthens and consoles those sorely tried consorts who place
their trust in Him. I condense the story narrated by the chief actor
himself--an English Catholic journalist named W. Gerald Young--in a
letter to the London Universe. "Some years ago I stood with a woman at
the altar where God united us in the bonds of holy Matrimony. She was
all that man could wish for, and, with her, life was a succession of
sunny days. More than once did God give her that wonderful blessing of
radiant motherhood, and we were intensely happy. Today, however, black
clouds of sorrow have overwhelmed us, and we are no longer together.
"Once a week I make a pilgrimage into the beautiful hill country of
Surrey, where there is an institution known by the name of a mental
hospital. Here it is that my dear one spends her days,-- long, weary
days, because she is mad. Here is my shrine. Frail and pallid, she lies
on a bed, dead to the world of intelligence. Her once beautiful face is
now disfigured; her old-time smile superseded by a scowl. When I kiss
her dear lips, there is no warm response from the woman who loved me so
dearly; and yet she still holds the keys of my heart. "My journey back
to London is a weary one; for how can we call it home when the wife and
mother is absent? Little voices will ask when Mama is coming back, and
Daddy cannot tell them. On my way back, I visit a little church wherein
the Blessed Sacrament is always exposed for adoration. In this haven of
rest where all is quiet and peaceful, I lift up my weary heart to God
and tell Him my troubles, and I come out a happier man, because I have
unburdened my soul to my Maker and He has given me new courage to fight
this weary battle of life. Some day God may see fit to answer my
petition. In the meantime I can only hope and pray." But whether God
grants this brave man's prayer here on earth or not, oh, how
magnificently will He reward his fidelity in eternity!
A Selfish Life
Now if a man can
be faithful to the law of God in such trying circumstances, how much
easier should it be for those whose happy homes are still unbroken and
who need only practice Christian self-restraint? The whole argument
against large families only shows the absence of the salutary
restraints of religion. At bottom it is not the desire to give their
children a more excellent training but the desire to lead a more
selfish and comfortable life that clamors for the unnatural limitation
of the family. No one is more desirous of having well-trained children
than deeply religious parents; but such parents, regarding their office
in the light of Faith, are bent mainly on rearing their children for
Heaven; and they understand that, even should they be able to provide
them but scantily with the goods of this world, by training them for
Heaven the main thing is achieved and their principal duty performed.
They realize, too, that the success of all their efforts in behalf of
their children depends mainly on Heaven's blessing, and that if they
merit that blessing by their upright lives, He who feeds the birds of
the air and clothes the lilies of the field will also provide for their
children.
Consolations of Parenthood
Happy the
parents who still retain this religious outlook on life; whose religion
is their guide, their support, and their consolation amid the arduous
duties of their state of life! They know that they are the chosen
instruments of Divine Providence for peopling the abode of the blessed.
They know that in assuming the office of parenthood, they cooperate
with God himself in bringing into existence beings destined to praise
and enjoy him forever in Heaven. They know that every child they
receive is a gift of God; since, do what they will, they can have no
child that God does not give them. But above the solace of all this
knowledge, is the supernatural aid which the true religion affords
them. They have the actual graces of the sacrament of Matrimony, of
frequent Communion, and of daily prayer to strengthen them, and the
example of their suffering Savior to console them. Yes, with religion
in their homes, they can resist the evil example of those godless
couples who seek only their own gratification. And though eugenic
wise-acres scoff, and even misguided friends smile in derision at their
old-fashioned families, they will never thwart Heaven's designs
concerning their families, but look upon every child as a new token of
Heaven's trust and Heaven's love.
The Parents' Pride
It is remarkable
how often God rewards parents of large families by making the children
that came last become the chief joy and pride of their life. The Little
Flower of Jesus was the last of nine children; St. Ignatius of Loyola,
the thirteenth and St. Catherine of Siena, the twenty-fourth or
twenty-fifth. Many parents owe the honor of having a son raised to the
priesthood to the fact that they had large families. Had my own parents
been willing to have five children but no more, they would never have
had a priest in the family. But because they were blessed with eight
children, they had the happiness of seeing the sixth and seventh
celebrate their first Mass on the same day; and though they have gone
to their reward, they are no doubt happy to know that two sons of their
eighth child are studying for the priesthood. A few years ago, I
received a letter from a young mother of two children, in which she
related how certain worldly-wise women try to induce mothers to limit
the number of their children. On the occasion of a social call, a lady
acquaintance of hers had remarked: "It is not a woman of refinement
nowadays that has more than two children." To which the young mother
replied: "In that case I hope to belong to the common herd, as I intend
to take all that the good Lord wants to give me." In replying to her
letter, I commended her for her truly Catholic stand, and then added:
"I thank God that my own good mother did not have such a false idea of
refinement; for if she had, I should have had no chance at all, as I
was her seventh child." And the very first time I related this
incident, namely, to a group of Franciscan Fathers at St. Elizabeth's
Friary, Denver, Colo., each one of the five priests present declared
that he, too, was his mother's seventh child!
II.
Final Aim of Marriage
Necessary as
religion is in the home for the attainment of the primary aim of
marriage and the family--the propagation of the human race, it is
equally necessary for the attainment of the family's final aim--the
education of children for Heaven. Above all else it is the soul of the
child for which parents will have to render a strict account on the day
of judgment; and it is the religious and moral training of their
children, therefore, that constitutes their paramount duty to their
offspring. When Catholic parents stand before their Divine Judge, they
will not be asked whether they did their utmost to enable their
children to prosper in this world--to wear the laurels of its honors,
to reap the fruits of its riches, and to quaff the wine of its sensual
pleasures. No; the question they will have to answer is, whether they
did their duty in enabling their children not only to save their
immortal souls, but also to reach that degree of holiness to which God
destined them and to embrace that state of life in which God wished
them to serve Him.
Before the Dawn of Reason
To acquit
themselves of this sacred duty, parents must needs foster religion in
their home. If religion is to be planted deep in the heart of the
child,--so deep that it will defy all later attempts of the world, the
flesh and the devil, to root it out, it will not do to defer the
child's religious education until it starts to school. Its religious
education must be begun not only at the first dawn of reason, but long
before the dawn of reason-- in very infancy, so that a truly religious
mind will be developed and become a veritable second nature. It follows
necessarily, then, that religion must exert the dominant influence in
the place where the child's first years are spent; namely, in the home.
Religion should surround the child as snugly as its infant clothing.
The child should imbibe religion at its mother's breast. It should be
rocked to sleep to the tune of religion, and its first lisping accents
should have a religious character. Only if religion rules the home,
will the child get the impression right at the start that religion is
the most important thing in life. If there is little or no religion in
the home, the child will naturally be led to suppose that wealth and
position, secular knowledge and training, or even worldly comforts and
pleasures are the things most worth while; and that religion, instead
of being a vital force in life, is merely a polite concession that man
feels he must occasionally make to God, his Creator; and hence that it
is, like a badge or his best clothes,- -to be displayed only in church
and on special occasions.
Religion a Spiritual Food
Few parents who
send their children to a Catholic school will deny the necessity of
religion in the school. They know that even if a school should be
entirely non-sectarian and in no way opposed to religion, the mere
absence of religion would itself be a great evil; for, if education
means the training and instructing of a child for the performance of
the duties of life, it must needs embrace religious training and
instruction, since the practice of religion is the first and foremost
of life's duties. Now what is true of the absence of religion in the
school, is equally true of its absence in the home. The supernatural
graces which the child received in Baptism, sanctifying grace and the
infused virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, are awaiting nourishment
and warmth in order to blossom forth and yield fruit; and to deny the
child the religious food and atmosphere it craves is to stunt if not to
thwart its spiritual growth. To say that no harm is done the child so
long as it is taught nothing positively bad or irreligious, is just as
false as to say that it will not harm a child to deprive it of food so
long as you do not give it poison. Yet great as is the need of religion
in the home for the proper molding of the infant mind and heart, how
frequently is the hungry little soul of the child practically starved
until it begins to attend a Catholic school! How often, too, is it not
taught things that are positively bad either by word or by example! How
often are not things said or done or permitted in the presence of
children and justified or excused with the remark that "they don't know
what it means," or "it won't do them any harm"! It may do them
incalculable harm. It is just this seed sown in the innocent child's
memory and imagination, from which later on evil will spring; and then
the astonished parents wonder where the child learnt it. Small children
are the most impressionable beings in the world, and the impressions
which they receive are the ones that sink deepest and that will leave
their traces all through life.
Shifting the Burden
One reason why
the child's religious education is often neglected at home, is the
tendency on the part of parents to disemburden themselves of the duty
of educating their children by committing that task entirely to others.
The Catholic parochial school is unquestionably a splendid as well as a
necessary institution; but it must be remembered that the education of
children is in the first place the duty of the parents, and that the
purpose of the school is only to co-operate with the parents, and in
particular to take up the work at that point where the parents are no
longer able to accomplish it satisfactorily themselves. That point, I
am inclined to think, is ordinarily not reached before the child
completes its sixth year, since there are few parents who are unable,
from lack of either time or knowledge, to teach their children all they
need to know on entering the first grade. There is, however, a growing
custom of anticipating that point by entrusting the child to others
when it is only five, or even only three or four years old; and the
cause of the custom is the existence of the kindergarten.
The Holy
Father on the Decline of Family Education
"We wish to call your attention in a special manner to the present-day
lamentable decline in family education. The offices and professions of
a transitory and earthly life, which are certainly of far less
importance, are prepared for by long and careful study; whereas for the
fundamental duty and obligation of educating their children, many
parents have little or no preparation, immersed as they are in temporal
cares. "The declining influence of domestic environment is further
weakened by another tendency prevalent almost everywhere to-day, which,
under one pretext or another, for economic reasons, or for reasons of
industry, trade or politics, causes children to be more and more
frequently sent away from home even in their tenderest years." --Pius
XI in "Christian Education of Youth."
Kindergarten vs. Home Training
There are those
that favor the kindergarten; and it is easy to understand that, like
the day nursery, it is a most welcome institution to mothers who are
obliged to work away from home for the support of their families. While
the use of the kindergarten in such a case is certainly above
criticism, the same cannot be said in regard to its use by those
parents who avail themselves of it merely to have the children off
their hands. And, even where there is no lack of parental love and
care, there is likelihood that parents will send their children to the
kindergarten simply because others do so; or from the mistaken notion
that they are supposed to do so. Now, without wishing to dogmatize in
the matter, I want to tell such parents that, in my opinion, the
kindergarten training is not superior to home training; and that
nothing is learned in the kindergarten that cannot be learned equally
well at home. It is quite true that the school mistress who specializes
in her work may be intellectually better equipped than many mothers for
the education of very young children; but it is none the less true that
the mother is by nature the child's first and chief educator; that the
mother is nature's own specialist just in the task of educating the
child before it reaches the age of reason; and that, as regards
religious training, it is every mother's bounden duty to acquire so
much knowledge as will enable her to teach her children that
rudimentary religious knowledge that they should have before they
complete their sixth year. (See quotation above.)
A Work of Love
Yet it is not so
much duty, young mothers, that I would emphasize, as love, to induce
you to make the early education of your children your own personal
task. Soon enough, yes all too soon the time will come when your
darlings will pass from the sacred sanctuary of your home to spend the
greater part of their waking hours elsewhere. Should your mother's love
not be anxious to have them under your watchful eye as long as
possible? During those first half dozen years, when the child's heart
can be molded like soft clay, should you not desire to fashion it to
the highest ideals with your own loving hands? Should you not wish to
be able to say that those essential prayers, which you expect your
children to recite daily through life, were first learned and lisped at
their mother's knee? Should you not aim to bind them to their home by
the strongest ties of interest as well as of affection? If so, then the
surest way is to make the home the fountain at which they first drink
the waters of wisdom; to make the home the attractive center of all
their earthly hopes and joys and the holy shrine round which will
caressingly cling the fondest of all the happy memories of childhood.
Harmony between School and Home
But even when
parents have done all in their power for the religious education of
their children before the latter begin to attend school, let them not
imagine that their task is accomplished. When they finally commit them
to the charge of others, at the proper age, they do not thereby divest
themselves of all responsibility, but must co-operate with the teachers
by their interest, their discipline, and their moral support. (See Holy
Father's quotation below.) Here again appears the necessity of religion
in the home. If the child learns at school that it is in this world to
serve God and to save its immortal soul, and that the things of earth
are to be used merely as means to that end, that lesson must have an
echo in the home. What the school emphasizes as the most important
thing in life must likewise be regarded as such in the home. It will
not do for the child to find a disagreement between the religious
truths it learns at school and the views it hears expressed and
defended at home. The irreconcilable opposition between the maxims of
Christ and the maxims of this world will come home to the child soon
enough; and if the former are to take root in its heart as they should,
the seed sown in religious instruction in school must be nurtured by
religion in the home.
A Puzzling Contradiction
It is true, the
child will come in touch with irreligion sooner or later outside the
circle of the home and school; but that is not likely to affect it so
easily, since it has been taught to look upon the world as hostile to
its own best interests. It will be quite different if irreligion is met
with in the home. A child implicitly trusts its parents. It believes
that they have its welfare at heart; and it will be confronted with a
puzzling contradiction if its parents by word, deed, or omission
countenance or counsel anything that it was taught at school to regard
as wrong. Just because of its confidence in its parents, the child is
more likely to follow the example of the home than the precept it
learned at school. Example is always more powerful than precept; and it
is of the highest importance, therefore, that the religious instruction
of the school be seconded by the example of sterling Christian conduct
in the home. Only when home and school work hand in hand, mutually
supporting, complementing, and encouraging each other, may we hope that
our children will receive the kind of education that will enable them
to bring forth the fruits of a truly Christian life.
Pius XI on
the Status of the School
"Since, however, the younger generations must be trained in the arts
and sciences for the advantage and prosperity of civil society, and
since the family of itself is unequal to this task, it was necessary to
create that social institution, the school. But let it be borne in mind
that this institution owes its existence to the initiative of the
family and of the Church, long before it was undertaken by the State.
Hence, considered in its historical origin, the school is by its very
nature and institution subsidiary and complementary to the family and
the Church. It follows logically and necessarily that it must not be in
opposition to, but in positive accord with those other two elements,
and form with them a perfect moral union, constituting one sanctuary of
education, as it were, with the family and the Church. Otherwise it is
doomed to fail of its purpose and to become instead an agent of
destruction." --Encyclical on "Christian Education of Youth."
Non-Catholic Schools Forbidden
The very fact
that the school is supposed to continue the education of the home and
that both must be pervaded by the same Christian spirit, shows the
obligation that Catholic parents are under of placing their children
only in a Catholic school. In his encyclical on the Christian Education
of Youth, Pope Pius XI emphasizes this duty in unmistakable terms
"There is no need," he writes, "to repeat what Our predecessors have
declared on this point, especially Pius IX and Leo XIII.... We renew
and confirm their declarations, as well as the sacred Canons, in which
the frequenting of non-Catholic schools, whether neutral or mixed,
those namely which are open to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is
forbidden for Catholic children, and can be at most tolerated, on the
approval of the Ordinary alone, under determined circumstances of place
and time, and with special precautions. "Neither can Catholics admit
that other type of mixed school...in which the students are provided
with separate religious instruction, but receive other lessons in
common with non-Catholic pupils from non-Catholic teachers. For the
mere fact that a school gives some religious instructions (often
extremely stinted) does not bring it into accord with the rights of the
Church and of the Christian family, or make it a fit place for Catholic
students.
Religion Must Pervade All Schools
"To be that, it
is necessary that all the teaching and the whole organization of the
school, its teachers, syllabus, and textbooks in every branch be
regulated by the Christian spirit, under the direction and maternal
supervision of the Church; so that religion may be in very truth the
foundation and crown of the youth's entire training; and this in every
grade of school, not only the elementary, but the intermediate and the
higher institutions of learning as well. To use the words of Leo XIII:
'It is necessary not only that religious instruction be given to the
young at certain fixed times, but also that every other subject taught
be permeated with Christian piety. If this is wanting, if this sacred
atmosphere does not pervade and warm the hearts of masters and scholars
alike, little good can be expected from any kind of learning, and
considerable harm will often be the consequence.'"
Exceptional Cases
It is true,
indeed, that Catholics who have had the very best religious schooling
and come from the finest Catholic families sometimes fail nevertheless
to turn out well; but that is certainly not because of, but despite,
their religious education. Such cases, too, are relatively rare; and I
think that on investigation it would be found that most of them were
thrown too suddenly upon the world, or passed at too early an age
beyond the sustaining and restraining influence of Christian
surroundings. The great majority of men stand in need of the support
and encouragement of a good example throughout their entire life; and
as they cannot find this encouragement amid the hustle and bustle of
the world, they must find it in their homes. It is not enough, then,
that the child have the advantage of an early religious home training.
The steadying influence of religion in the home must continue all
through life.
The Grown-up Children
This phase of
our subject, the necessity of religion in the home also for the
children that have graduated from school and for the grown-up members
of the family, ought perhaps to be emphasized most, because it is so
commonly disregarded. It is with religion as with all other things that
influence our lives: it must be fostered if its influence is to last;
and once the child is beyond the school age, there is great danger that
it will gradually limit its religious practice to the hour in church on
Sundays, if a truly Christian home life does not continue the
beneficial religious influence previously exerted by the Catholic
school. The home is really the only place, besides the church, that can
be made to conform to one's daily religious needs; and it is here,
therefore, that one must provide what cannot be had abroad. If abroad,
amid the enforced companionship of unbelieving fellow-workmen, it is
not always possible to avoid hearing one's religion set at naught and
ridiculed, in the home one can insist that it be held in honor and
esteemed the most vital thing on earth. If abroad the open practice of
any act of religion would ordinarily be viewed with silent wonder or
unconcealed contempt, in the home the act of folding the hands or
kneeling to pray must be regarded as natural as eating and drinking. If
abroad one is often powerless to prevent irreligion and immorality from
having access to the press, bill-boards, art galleries and places of
amusement, one can at least refuse admission to them when they knock on
the door of our Christian homes. Give me truly Christian homes, homes
in which Christianity is not merely tolerated but revered and fostered,
and homes that are homes and not only sleeping quarters, and I will
give you a race of Christian men and women who will cling to their
Faith despite the insidious machinations of a corrupt and irreligious
world.
III.
Religion Prevents Divorce
It remains yet
to touch briefly on a third reason why religion is indispensable in the
home; the fact, namely, that without religion in the home the very
existence of the family is in danger; for religion is the only sure
safeguard of the indissolubility of marriage, the only bulwark against
the breaking up of the family by divorce. Where there is no religion,
no supernatural motive to sustain and comfort them and no belief in the
inviolability of the marriage vow, it is but natural that when
difficulties that demand mutual forbearance arise, as they inevitably
will, the husband or wife will have recourse to divorce. God Himself
knows that it is by no means always an easy matter for husband and wife
to bear with each other's shortcomings; that unaided human nature
cannot perseveringly fulfill all the duties of wedded life; and for
that very reason He supernaturalized Christian marriage, making it a
sacrament that confers all the special graces needed to enable the
married pair to perform their duties faithfully until death. It is
mainly owing to the denial of the sacramental character of Matrimony,
that marriage is entered into so lightly outside the Catholic Church,
and that so little is made of the wide-spread evil of severing the
marital union. While we may rejoice that divorce is not prevalent among
Catholics, we must nevertheless admit to our shame that divorced
Catholics are not altogether unknown, and that not infrequently the
strained relations between husband and wife and the breakdown of
parental authority fall little short of the evils of actual divorce. It
is not enough, therefore, that the religious character and the
indissolubility of the matrimonial union be acknowledged. Religion must
sanctify not only the beginning but the entire course of wedded and
family life. What a world of difference it would make in our lives, if
among the requisites for an ideal home, the first place were assigned
to religion! We say, "What is home without a mother?" and it is true
that the absence of a good mother makes a gap that cannot be adequately
filled. Yet how far, how unspeakably far, short of the ideal mother
does she fall who does not foster religion in the home!
Religion a Gracious Queen
Why then are
there so many homes, even Christian homes, where religion is notably
lacking? Is it perhaps because religion is regarded as a tyrant ruling
with an iron hand? Undoubtedly this view is responsible for the
attitude of many who style themselves Christians. But no view could be
farther from the truth. A real tyrant in the home, a tyrant whom many
serve with slavish care, is the insatiable desire for ease, pleasure,
or social standing, which forces families to live beyond their means in
order to equal their neighbors in sumptuousness of board and luxury of
equipment; while religion, whose sway would be that of a tender mother
and gentle queen, is shown scant courtesy or even barred admission.
Welcome religion to your homes, therefore, fathers and mothers, sons
and daughters, all ye who would be the possessors of truly happy homes.
Welcome religion with open arms and gladsome hearts. Grossly do they
err who look upon her as a tyrant. Religion is a queen, a most gracious
queen, whose sway is as gentle as it is salutary. Yield yourselves to
her loving influence so that the smile of her approval will ever beam
upon you. Let her rule your going out and your coming in! Let her
occupy the place of honor at your table! Let her sit with you in your
study! Let her kindly eye restrain you in time of joy! Let her tender
hand wipe away your tears in time of sorrow! Let her minister to you in
time of illness and distress! Then, having received your last breath,
she will conduct you at the last from the threshold of your earthly
home to the eternal home of your Heavenly Father.
What A Great Enemy Of
The Church Said About The Family
Before his
conversion, a great infidel made the following admission to the eminent
apostle of the Sacred Heart, Father Mateo Crawley-Boevey, SS.CC.:
"We have only
one object in view-- to dechristianize the family. We are willing to
let Catholics have their churches and chapels and cathedrals. We are
satisfied to have the family. If we gain the family, our victory over
the Church is assured."
Continue:
Introduction
Chapter I: Necessity of Religion in the Home
Chapter II: Prayer in the Home
Chapter III: Catholic
Atmosphere in the Home
Chapter IV: Good Reading in
the Home
Chapter V: Harmony in the Home
Chapter VI: Necessity of Home
Life
Conclusion
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