233

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CATHOLIC PRIEST ON THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM 296

CHAPTER XIV.

ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 340

CHAPTER XV.

ZEAL OF THE PRIEST FOR THE CATHOLIC EDUCATION OF
OUR CHILDREN 373

PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

American fellow-citizens--America is my home! I have no other country.
After my God and my religion, my country is the dearest object of my
life! I love my country as dearly as any one else can. It is this love
that makes my heart bleed when I call to mind the actual state of
society in our country, and the principles that prevail everywhere. It
is indeed but too true that we live in a most anti-Christian age;
principles are disregarded, and iniquity is held in veneration. We see
nothing but confusion in religion, in government, in the family circle.
Sects spring up and swarm like locusts, destroying not only revealed
religion, but rejecting even the law of nature. Fraud, theft, and
robbery are practised almost as a common trade. The press justifies
rebellion, secret societies, and plots for the overthrow of established
governments. The civil law, by granting divorce, has broken the family
tie. Children are allowed to grow up in ignorance of true religious
principles, and thereby become regardless of their parents. The number
of apostates from Christianity is on the increase, at least in the
rising generation. Current literature is penetrated with the spirit of
licentiousness, from the pretentious quarterly to the arrogant and
flippant daily newspaper, and the weekly and monthly publications are
mostly heathen or maudlin. They express and inculcate, on the one hand,
stoical, cold, and polished pride of mere intellect, or on the other,
empty and wretched sentimentality. Some employ the skill of the engraver
to caricature the institutions and offices of the Christian religion,
and others to exhibit the grossest forms of vice, and the most
distressing scenes of crime and suffering. The illustrated press has
become to us what the amphitheatre was to the Romans when men were
slain, women were outraged, and Christians given to the lions to please
a degenerate populace. The number of the most unnatural crimes is beyond
computation. A wide-spread and deep-seated dishonesty and corruption
has, like some poisonous virus, inoculated the great body of our publi