by
Thomas A. Droleskey
Please click on the link above if you want a more palatable version of naturalism's view of education, provided by the fictional Father Charles "Chuck" O'Malley in Going My Way, than that given by the Marxist-trained statist and pro-abort--and friend of Marxist dictators throughout Latin America and in Red China--Barack Hussein Obama at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia.
Obama's exercise in naturalistic brainwashing, which was watched, we must presume, in many classrooms of formerly Catholic schools now in the control of of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, was yet another assault on the part of the Federal "miseducation" apparatus, in conjunction with the fiercely anti-Catholic National Education Association (N.E.A., which I have called the "Non Education Association" for many years now), to break down whatever resistance students in the
concentration camps known as public schools might have to the ideological programming they are subjected to on an incessant basis, with only a few exceptions here and there, from at least Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade and beyond in college and professional school.
As a skilled "community organizer" (translated: "educated" bully) according to the paradigm of the late Marxist Saul Alinsky, Obama is attempting to drive a "wedge" between parents of the "conservative" bent of naturalism and their children by inserting himself as the genial example of what a person can achieve as a result of the trusting in the educational programs that have been designed to rob them of true history, true science and, most importantly of all, a true understand of who they are in light of Who has created them, Who has redeemed them, and Who intends to sanctify by means of the supernatural helps found solely in the Catholic Church.
Obviously, the whole basis of American "public education" has been Protestant and Judeo-Masonic from its very inception. Protestant versions of the Bible, which are not inspired by God the Holy Ghost and are not therefore to be considered as any source of instruction about God and His Divine Revelation, were used in public schools until they were thrown out by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Abington School District v. Schempp (not to be confused with the late Shemp Howard) on June 17, 1963. The lodge brothers of Freemasonry exploited the divisions within Protestantism to urge "religious toleration" (read: religious indifferentism) as the foundation for "public education," opening the way for the triumph of various naturalistic ideologies and the methodologies, starting with the late John Dewey's pragmatism, which teaches that one must be concerned with end results rather than an overarching philosophy or belief system to explain life. What matters to a pragmatist is the is conforming of one's naturalistic, materialistic goals in this life with the reality of the situation that one faces.
Pragmatism, shoving aside the residual influences of Protestantism while at the same time building on some of its basic premises, opened the way for the introduction and ultimate institutionalization of a wide variety of naturalistic ideologies and philosophies all designed to erode belief in the supernatural and to emphasize, much along the lines of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the infinite "perfectibility" of man by means of his own efforts (the heresy of Pelagianism) and by means of his social structures. Evolutionism, feminism, socialism, environmentalism, moral relativism and its close relative, legal positivism, and a whole assortment of other ideologies were introduced as a means to conduct massive social engineering experimentations upon children, who were encouraged in the 1970s and thereafter to keep "journals" on their parents' conversations as ostensible "writing projects" when the goal was to monitor, much as was done the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and is done today in Communist nations such as Red China, the thoughts of those who were deemed to "threats" to the social engineers' and ideologues' desire to spread their false concepts in the name of "diversity" and "toleration."
Unable to control or, in many instances, to "motivate" students who are steeped in the lies of naturalism, especially materialism and hedonism, social workers and psychoanalysts and psychologists and psychiatrists were hired by many school districts to recommend medication, especially Ritalin, and to mandate books that heroize those who are serial violators of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. These efforts to program children medically and psychologically have been combined, of course, with the efforts of the late Mary Calderone, a longtime member of Planned Parenthood and the founder of a committee (S.I.E.C.U.S.), and those who have followed her to "educate" children by means of explicit classroom instruction in the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, thereby breaking down the natural psychological resistance of children to information that is age-inappropriate for them and to teach them that it is neither possible nor desirable for them to attempt to resist "natural" desires.
All of these nefarious, inter-related forces that poison the minds of those children unfortunate enough to have parents who believe that the civil state has the principal role to play in the education of their children have combined to create an electorate composed largely of zombies with short attention spans and with almost no understanding of human nature or of human history as they are steeped one materialistic pursuit after another, obvious to and/or contemptuous of First and Last Things. The lie of evolutionism, whose basic premises are accepted, of course, by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (see Listen to the Voice of God), have convinced a large percentage of those who have "graduated" from American public schools into believing that they are descended from apes, which is why they act so barbarically as apes--and why they are prone to follow other apes in the political arena who promise them easy solutions to problems that have their remote cause in Original Sin and their proximate causes in our own Actual Sins and thus can be ameliorated only by the daily reform of one's life in cooperation with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.
Although Barack Hussein Obama is in a bit of trouble politically early into his first term (Bill Clinton was in similar trouble at around this time in his first term in 1993 as he tried to push for a Federal government take-over of the health-care industry), it must be remembered that Obama won the general election for the Presidency of the United States of America last year with the support of sixty-nine percent of first-time voters, sixty-six percent of voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, and fifty-two percent of those between the ages of thirty and forty-four. Most of these voters were "educated' by means of public schools, although it should be noted once again that the conciliar schools have done their own part to disseminate naturalism under the guise of "diversity" and "tolerance" and the "consistent ethic of life." Joseph Ratzinger's Caritas in Veritate, July 7, 2009, is a virtual manifesto for socialism with an allegedly "Catholic" gloss (see
Give Me Two Bayers, Please). This makes it all the more difficult for any believing Catholic, including one who is as of yet attached to the counterfeit church of conciliarism, to explain to a dissenting Catholic that statism is wrong. How can it be wrong when statist programs are endorsed by the false "pontiff" and by the lion's share of his conciliar "bishops"?
Remember, the multitudes of Catholics in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who kept voting for the late Edward Moore Kennedy in life despite his support for two of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance were deformed by the naturalistic lies they learned in public schools and/or schools under the control of the conciliar officials. It is vital to the likes of Barack Hussein Obama and their Catholic enablers and fellow travelers to use the classroom as the means to propagandize in behalf of government control of education in violation of the Natural Law right of parents to be the principal educators of their children in order to propagandize in behalf of a statism that intends to make us even more enslaved to the modern civil state, founded upon one naturalistic lie after another, that we are at the present time.
Although Obama's speech yesterday, the text of which was released over the weekend to quell the furor of conservative naturalists about its content (transcript of the speech of Barack Hussein Obama, Hugo Chavez's best friend in Washington, D.C., at Wakefield High School), emphasized common naturalistic themes of self-help and responsibility that could have been given by a Republican naturalistic, it did include two key paragraphs that will be used as the foundation to justify more and more ideological brainwashing, especially as it relates to the propagandizing in behalf of the "lavender" agenda in the name of ending "discrimination:"
You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical-thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that -- if you quit on school -- you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country. (Transcript of the speech of Barack Hussein Obama.)
Caesar Obamus's remarks at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, yesterday mirror the dangers posed by "public education" as described so accurately at the time and prophetically for our own days by Pope Leo XIII in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884:
Wherefore we see that men are publicly tempted by the many allurements of pleasure; that there are journals and pamphlets with neither moderation nor shame; that stage-plays are remarkable for license; that designs for works of art are shamelessly sought in the laws of a so-called verism; that the contrivances of a soft and delicate life are most carefully devised; and that all the blandishments of pleasure are diligently sought out by which virtue may be lulled to sleep. Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring. . . .
With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavors to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.
There is nothing really new in Barack Hussein Obama's "education" policies, which are simply a continuation of former President George Walker Bush's massive expansion of Federal involvement in the unjust enterprise known as "public education. What Obama does bring "to the table," however, is an aggressive team of Marxists and positivists and utilitarians and feminists and activists in the propagation of perversion eager to use the opportunity presented to them to use the "genial" President's remarks into the opportunity to "encourage" children to follow Obama's political agenda. The website of the United States Department of Education has become nothing other than a propaganda arm of the Obama White House, mixing together the old propagandizing efforts of the Nazis and the Soviets and presenting them with the technologies now available. See for yourself:
The U.S. Department of Education invites students of all ages, teachers, and administrators to participate in this historic moment by watching the president's address, which is available above and on the White House Web site (http://www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/). We also encourage educators to use this moment to help students get focused and inspired to begin the new academic year. The Department of Education offers educators a menu of classroom activities—created by its teachers-in-residence, the Teaching Ambassador Fellows—to help engage students in the address and stimulate classroom discussions about the importance of education.
To learn more, please see the following:
To further encourage student engagement, the U.S. Department of Education is launching the "I Am What I Learn" video contest. On September 8, we will invite students to respond to the president's challenge by creating videos, up to two minutes in length, describing the steps they will take to improve their education and the role education will play in fulfilling their dreams.
We invite all students age 13 and older to create and upload their videos to YouTube by October 8. Submissions can be in the form of video blogs, public service announcements (PSAs), music videos, or documentaries. Students are encouraged to have fun and be creative with this project! The general public will then vote on their favorites to determine the top 20 finalists. These 20 videos will be reviewed by a panel of judges including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The panel will choose three winners, each of whom will receive a $1,000 cash prize.
Starting this Friday, you can visit www.ed.gov/iamwhatilearn to find out more. (Obama Makes Historic Speech to America's Students)
Can anyone say
Stalag America?
Insects, such as the former "Green Czar" Van Jones, who live under the rocks at the White House and in the Executive Office of the President in the Old Executive Office Building on Seventeenth Street in Washington, District of Columbia. They are to be found in every nook and cranny of the Obama administration, especially in the United States Department of Education. (Wasn't President Ronald Wilson Reagan supposed to get rid of the Department of Education that was created under the administration of man who himself had promised to eliminate Federal bureaucracies but wound up creating two new Cabinet departments, the ready-appear by the name of James Earl Carter, Jr.? As Gilbert Keith Chesterton noted,
"The job of the progressives is to go on making mistakes. The job of the conservatives is to prevent those mistakes from being corrected.")
An antidote to this ideological madness can be found in Pope Pius XI's encyclical letter on Christian Education, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929. A few short excerpts will reveal that it is the Catholic Church alone that can educate man here below in light of his eternal destiny, namely, the beholding of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity.
Writing about the erroneous belief concerning the alleged power of "education" to improve the lot of man, Pope Pius XI noted:
This perfection they seek to acquire by means of education. But many of them with, it would seem, too great insistence on the etymological meaning of the word, pretend to draw education out of human nature itself and evolve it by its own unaided powers. Such easily fall into error, because, instead of fixing their gaze on God, first principle and last end of the whole universe, they fall back upon themselves, becoming attached exclusively to passing things of earth; and thus their restlessness will never cease till they direct their attention and their efforts to God, the goal of all perfection, according to the profound saying of Saint Augustine: "Thou didst create us, O Lord, for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it rest in Thee."
One of the chief pillars of Freemasonry (and of all aspects of Modernity) is precisely that man can solve all of his problems by the use of his "unaided" powers. That is, man does not need belief in the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord entrusted solely to the Catholic Church. He does not need belief in, access to, and cooperation with sanctifying grace to submit to the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith and to live fruitfully thereby. This was on full display in Caesar Obamus's address of yesterday, Tuesday, September 8, 2009, te Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
True education, wrote Pope Pius XI, must revolve around Our Lord as He has revealed Himself through His true Church.
It is therefore as important to make no mistake in education, as it is to make no mistake in the pursuit of the last end, with which the whole work of education is intimately and necessarily connected. In fact, since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man's last end, and that in the present order of Providence, since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His Only Begotten Son, who alone is "the way, the truth and the life," there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education.
(As a note of reference, it is important to bear in mind that the Popes of the Catholic Church, as opposed to the pontiffs of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, used the word "Christian" to refer to the Catholic Faith. The reason for this is simple: although Protestants say that they are Christians, they do not truly know Our Lord since they reject His true Church and dissent from multiple articles He has revealed and deposited in His true Church. They do not represent Christianity at all. Only the Catholic Church represents Christianity. She alone has the right to use the appellation of "Christian.")
Pope Pius XI, the great exponent of the Social Reign of Christ the King, noted in Divini Illius Magistri that the fate of nations depended upon the education of youth in the truths of the Catholic Faith:
From this we see the supreme importance of Christian education, not merely for each individual, but for families and for the whole of human society, whose perfection comes from the perfection of the elements that compose it. From these same principles, the excellence, we may well call it the unsurpassed excellence, of the work of Christian education becomes manifest and clear; for after all it aims at securing the Supreme Good, that is, God, for the souls of those who are being educated, and the maximum of well-being possible here below for human society. And this it does as efficaciously as man is capable of doing it, namely by cooperating with God in the perfecting of individuals and of society, in as much as education makes upon the soul the first, the most powerful and lasting impression for life according to the well-known saying of the Wise Man, "A young man according to his way, even when he is old, he will not depart from it." With good reason therefore did St. John Chrysostom say, "What greater work is there than training the mind and forming the habits of the young?"
Man must always keep his mind his First Cause and Last End in all of his activities, whether he is acting individually or collectively with others in the pursuit of the common good of his nation. The state of a nation depends upon the state of souls, and the state of souls depends upon the extent to which individual citizens keep themselves in states of Sanctifying Grace and adhere completely to the Deposit of Faith, including the Church's immutable Social Doctrine on the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, which does not worship at the altar of the false, mythological god of American "civil liberty." We do not "improve" ourselves of the world on our own powers. We cooperate with the graces won for us on the wood of the Holy Cross by the Divine Redeemer and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of her Most Blessed Mother.
The Church, therefore, must be free to pursue the entirety of the mission, including that of education, entrusted to her by her Divine Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, without any interference from the state. Parents, who form the domestic cell of the Church in their families, must be free to do so in the bosom of their homes.
Pope Pius XI noted this in Divini Illius Magistri:
Hence it is that in this proper object of her mission, that is, "in faith and morals, God Himself has made the Church sharer in the divine magisterium and, by a special privilege, granted her immunity from error; hence she is the mistress of men, supreme and absolutely sure, and she has inherent in herself an inviolable right to freedom in teaching.' By necessary consequence the Church is independent of any sort of earthly power as well in the origin as in the exercise of her mission as educator, not merely in regard to her proper end and object, but also in regard to the means necessary and suitable to attain that end. Hence with regard to every other kind of human learning and instruction, which is the common patrimony of individuals and society, the Church has an independent right to make use of it, and above all to decide what may help or harm Christian education. And this must be so, because the Church as a perfect society has an independent right to the means conducive to its end, and because every form of instruction, no less than every human action, has a necessary connection with man's last end, and therefore cannot be withdrawn from the dictates of the divine law, of which the Church is guardian, interpreter and infallible mistress.
This truth is clearly set forth by Pius X of saintly memory:
"Whatever a Christian does even in the order of things of earth, he may not overlook the supernatural; indeed he must, according to the teaching of Christian wisdom, direct all things towards the supreme good as to his last end; all his actions, besides, in so far as good or evil in the order of morality, that is, in keeping or not with natural and divine law, fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church."
Only a fool would contend that Pope Saint Pius X was wrong, that there is ever a moment when something we do in the "order of the things of the earth" can overlook the supernatural. Those "conservatives" who believe that they can devise plans to combat liberalism and statism and socialism without seeking to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King are indeed fools, plain and simple. They tilt at windmills and roll boulders up hills in the fashion of
Sisyphus as they refuse, for whatever reason, usually involving a dogmatic adherence to a political philosophy that they contend pridefully contains the ability to "resolve" social problems, to state these simple truths: all things must be restored in Christ the King, both individually and collectively, and that Catholicism is the sole foundation of personal and social order.
After delineating the rights of the Church and the family with respect to education--and discussing instances when a state ordered according to Catholic teaching might have to intervene to protect a child whose religious instruction was being ignored by his parents, Pope Pius XI wrote in Divini Illius Magistri about the simple fact that the welfare of the state itself depends entirely upon its submission to the truths of the Catholic Faith:
Whoever refuses to admit these principles, and hence to apply them to education, must necessarily deny that Christ has founded His Church for the eternal salvation of mankind, and maintain instead that civil society and the State are not subject to God and to His law, natural and divine. Such a doctrine is manifestly impious, contrary to right reason, and, especially in this matter of education, extremely harmful to the proper training of youth, and disastrous as well for civil society as for the well-being of all mankind. On the other hand from the application of these principles, there inevitably result immense advantages for the right formation of citizens. This is abundantly proved by the history of every age. Tertullian in his Apologeticus could throw down a challenge to the enemies of the Church in the early days of Christianity, just as St. Augustine did in his; and we today can repeat with him:
"Let those who declare the teaching of Christ to be opposed to the welfare of the State, furnish us with an army of soldiers such as Christ says soldiers ought to be; let them give us subjects, husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, kings, judges, taxpayers and tax gatherers who live up to the teachings of Christ; and then let them dare assert that Christian doctrine is harmful to the State. Rather let them not hesitate one moment to acclaim that doctrine, rightly observed, the greatest safeguard of the State."
While treating of education, it is not out of place to show here how an ecclesiastical writer, who flourished in more recent times, during the Renaissance, the holy and learned Cardinal Silvio Antoniano, to whom the cause of Christian education is greatly indebted, has set forth most clearly this well established point of Catholic doctrine. He had been a disciple of that wonderful educator of youth, St. Philip Neri; he was teacher and Latin secretary to St. Charles Borromeo, and it was at the latter's suggestion and under his inspiration that he wrote his splendid treatise on The Christian Education of Youth. In it he argues as follows:
"The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity."
In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the best citizens are well-informed and well-formed Catholics who are trying to save their immortal souls as Catholics in cooperation with the graces won for them by the shedding of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood and which flow forth from the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, who has the absolute right to be honored as the Queen of all nations. It is that simple. Catholic truth reflects the simplicity of God Himself.
Penetratingly, Pope Pius XI eviscerated the theories that underlain the work of Horace Mann in the Nineteenth Century and were being promoted in his own day by the likes of the pragmatist John Dewey, the naturalism that underlies the George W. Bush and Edward Moore Kennedy "No Child Left Behind" Act and the policies of Barack Hussein Obama and his Marxist minions:
Hence every form of pedagogic naturalism which in any way excludes or weakens supernatural Christian formation in the teaching of youth, is false. Every method of education founded, wholly or in part, on the denial or forgetfulness of original sin and of grace, and relying on the sole powers of human nature, is unsound. Such, generally speaking, are those modern systems bearing various names which appeal to a pretended self-government and unrestrained freedom on the part of the child, and which diminish or even suppress the teacher's authority and action, attributing to the child an exclusive primacy of initiative, and an activity independent of any higher law, natural or divine, in the work of his education.
If any of these terms are used, less properly, to denote the necessity of a gradually more active cooperation on the part of the pupil in his own education; if the intention is to banish from education despotism and violence, which, by the way, just punishment is not, this would be correct, but in no way new. It would mean only what has been taught and reduced to practice by the Church in traditional Christian education, in imitation of the method employed by God Himself towards His creatures, of whom He demands active cooperation according to the nature of each; for His Wisdom "reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly."
But alas! it is clear from the obvious meaning of the words and from experience, that what is intended by not a few, is the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the divine law. So today we see, strange sight indeed, educators and philosophers who spend their lives in searching for a universal moral code of education, as if there existed no decalogue, no gospel law, no law even of nature stamped by God on the heart of man, promulgated by right reason, and codified in positive revelation by God Himself in the ten commandments. These innovators are wont to refer contemptuously to Christian education as "heteronomous," "passive","obsolete," because founded upon the authority of God and His holy law.
Such men are miserably deluded in their claim to emancipate, as they say, the child, while in reality they are making him the slave of his own blind pride and of his disorderly affections, which, as a logical consequence of this false system, come to be justified as legitimate demands of a so-called autonomous nature.
Ah, what did I say about slavery a while back? Anyone who does not place himself under the sweet yoke of the Divine Redeemer through the Catholic Church is a slave to many people and things, including his own blind pride. Any country which does not place itself under the sweet yoke of the Divine Redeemer's Social Kingship is a slave to the devil and becomes an oppressor of its people. Who desires "pedagogic naturalism?" Who desires "the withdrawal of education from every sort of dependence on the divine law?" Not Our Lord, ladies and gentlemen. It is the adversary himself who desires these things. It is he who has been in control of American popular culture from its very inception. The devil reigns as king if Our Lord does not do so through His true Church. It is that simple. Anyone care to dissent from this plain truth?
Pope Pius XI completely and utterly rejected the whole notion of public schooling, allowing for rare exceptions in certain cases given the actual realities facing Catholics in places like the United States of America. As a matter of principle, however, Pope Pius XI minced no words: public schooling is a menace to souls and harmful to nations because it does not proceed from man's First Cause nor lead man back to his Last End:
From this it follows that the so-called "neutral" or "lay" school, from which religion is excluded, is contrary to the fundamental principles of education. Such a school moreover cannot exist in practice; it is bound to become irreligious. There is no need to repeat what Our Predecessors have declared on this point, especially Pius IX and Leo XIII, at times when laicism was beginning in a special manner to infest the public school. 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, (least of all the so-called "école unique," obligatory on all), 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 instruction (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. To be this, it is necessary that all the teaching and the whole organization of the school, and its teachers, syllabus and text-books 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."
Do I mean to condemn Catholics who teach or serve as administrators in public schools? No. Do I mean to expose my readers to papal condemnations of these schools as illegitimate and thus harmful to the souls of their students and to the good of their nations? Yes.
Moreover, I mean to remind my readers once again that there is no secular, naturalistic, non-denominational or religiously indifferentist way to "resolve" problems associated with public schooling. Just as the abuses witnessed by so many Catholics in the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service are the result of the Novus Ordo's s warfare against the Catholic Faith, so is it the case that the problems in public schooling, much like the problems with "judicial activism," are the result of the Protestant Revolt and of Judeo-Masonry. There is no expedient solution to problems that have been created by diabolically-inspired attacks against Our Lord and His Holy Church.
Those of us who are parents, no matter how old (in my case) or young we may be, have the obligation to avoid all contact with public schooling entirely. We have the obligation also to avoid all contact with schools run by the institutions of the counterfeit church of conciliarism (diocesan or religious) given the influence of Modernism and the concomitant conciliarist ethos spawned in its sorry wake.
Pope Pius XI summarized the essence of Catholic education. These words must shape the efforts of each one of us to teach our children unto their eternal welfare:
The proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is, to form Christ Himself in those regenerated by Baptism, according to the emphatic expression of the Apostle: "My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you."For the true Christian must live a supernatural life in Christ: "Christ who is your life," and display it in all his actions: "That the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh."
For precisely this reason, Christian education takes in the whole aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellectual and moral, individual, domestic and social, not with a view of reducing it in any way, but in order to elevate, regulate and perfect it, in accordance with the example and teaching of Christ.
Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the current term, the true and finished man of character. For, it is not every kind of consistency and firmness of conduct based on subjective principles that makes true character, but only constancy in following the eternal principles of justice, as is admitted even by the pagan poet when he praises as one and the same "the man who is just and firm of purpose." And on the other hand, there cannot be full justice except in giving to God what is due to God, as the true Christian does.
Pay no attention to the man at the TelePrompTer who spoke yesterday in Arlington, Virginia. Pay no attention to his naturalistic critics from the false opposite of the naturalistic "right." You might as well listen to Father Chuck O'Malley for your educational "advice" in order to be swingin' on a star. Father O'Malley is at least entertaining. The naturalists in real life are frightening.
Well, let me qualify that last remark. The naturalists in real life are indeed frightening figures. They are also pitiable figures as they walk blindly through life believing in their nonexistent ability "solve" various problems and to "improve" an educational system that is in the grip of the devil from beginning to end. We must pray for their conversion to the true Faith in order for them to see, truly see, with the supernatural eyes of the soul that everything we do and say and think must be in conformity with the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication.
It really is Christ or chaos in the world. Behold the American "education" system if you don't believe me.
As always, we must be earnest about making reparation for our sins and those of the whole world as we offer up our prayers and sufferings and sacrifices to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. We have much for which to make reparation, do we not? We must take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself to us to be conscious of how we can live more humbly as we bear each cross that comes our way with patience, joy and much gratitude.
Our Lady has great plans in store for us if only we surrender ourselves to her more and more by means of the True Devotion taught by Saint Louis de Montfort.
Each Rosary that we pray--and we should pray as many each day as our states-in-life permit--helps to plant seeds for the conversion of souls as we console the Good God and help to make reparation for our own sins that have sown so much disorder in the Church Militant on earth and in the world.
Each Rosary we pray will help us to receive Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ with greater fervor in Holy Communion.
Each Rosary we pray will help us to have more ardor for the interior life and to want to spend more and more time before in mental prayer before Our Lord's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Each Rosary that we pray will help us to love the Cross, which provides us with an endless education unto eternity, with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Each Rosary we pray will help us to defend with valor and without fear of human respect the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.
Each Rosary we pray will help us to realize and to accept once and for all that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order.
Isn't it time to say a Rosary now? Perhaps the one that we pray right now, yes, this very moment, will be the one that plays a small role in ushering in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as a result of the faithful fulfillment of her Fatima Message.
What are we waiting for?
Vivat Christus Rex!
Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us. .
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Saint Peter Claver, S.J., pray for us.
Saint Gorgonius, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
