nce primary schools are established chiefly to give the people a
religious education, and to lead them to piety and Christian morality,
they have justly attracted to themselves, in a greater degree than other
educational institutions, all the care, solicitude, and vigilance of the
Church. The design of withdrawing primary schools from the control of
the Church, and the exertions made to carry this design into effect, are
therefore inspired by a spirit of hostility towards her, and by the
desire of extinguishing among the people the divine light of our holy
faith. The Church, which has founded these schools, has ever regarded
them with the greatest care and interest, and looked upon them as the
chief object of her ecclesiastical authority and government; and
whatsoever removed them from her, inflicted serious injury both on her
and on the schools. Those who pretend that the Church ought to abdicate
or suspend her control and her salutary action upon the primary
schools, in reality ask her to disobey the commands of her Divine
Author, and to be false to the charge she has received from God, of
guiding all men to salvation; and in whatever country this pernicious
design of removing the schools from the ecclesiastical authority should
be entertained and carried into execution, and the young thereby exposed
to the danger of losing their faith, there the Church would be in duty
bound not only to use her best efforts, and to employ every means to
secure for them the necessary Christian education and instruction, but,
moreover, would feel herself obliged to warn all the faithful, and to
declare that no one can in conscience frequent such schools, as being
adverse to the Catholic Church."

I exclaim with the great St. Augustine: "Securus judicat orbis
terrarum." The Bishops of the universal world, united to the Vicar of
Christ, speak with authority; their judgment cannot be gainsaid. Peter
has spoken through Pius; the question is settled; would that the error,
too, were at an end!

_Testimonies of Enemies of the Catholic Church._

However, it is not from the Bishops alone that we learn the dangers of
bad education. Our opponents, too, the enemies of our holy religion,
deem no other means more efficacious for alienating our children from
our mother, the Catholic Church.

One of the greatest enemies of the Catholic faith in the first half of
the last century, Primate Boulter, who took a chief part in founding the
notorious "