der religion good for home and the Church, but not for the
practical business of real life. A life is not dwarfed, but ennobled,
by being lived in the presence of God.

"The avowed enemies of Christianity in some European countries are
banishing religion from the schools (they have done it since) in order
to eliminate it gradually from among the people. In this they are
logical. Take away religion from the school, and you take it away from
the people. Take it away from the people, and morality will soon
follow; morality gone, even their physical condition will ere long
degenerate into corruption which breeds decrepitude, while their
intellectual attainments would only serve as a light to guide them to
deeper depths of vice and ruin. A civilization without religion would
be a civilization of 'the struggle for existence, and the survival of
the fittest,' in which cunning and strength would become the
substitutes for principle, virtue, conscience and duty."

One of the things the Catholic Church fears least in this country is
Protestantism. She considers it harmless, moribund, in the throes of
disintegration. It never has, cannot and never will thrive long where
it has to depend on something other than wealth and political power. It
has unchurched millions, is still unchurching at a tremendous rate, and
will end by unchurching itself. The godless school has done its work
for Protestantism, and done it well. Its dearest enemy could not wish
for better results.

Popular education comes more and more to mean popularized irreligion.
The future struggles of the Church will be with Agnosticism and
Infidelity--the product of the godless public school. And without
pretending to be prophets or sons of prophets, we Catholics can foresee
the day when godless education, after making bad Christians, will make
bad citizens. And because no civilization worthy of the name has ever
subsisted, or can subsist, without religion, the maintenance of this
system of popular and free government will devolve on the product of
Christian education, and its perpetuity will depend upon the
generations turned out of the religious school.

The most substantial protest the Catholic Church offers against godless
education is the system of her parochial schools; and this alone is
sufficient to give an idea of the importance of this question. From
headquarters comes the order to erect Catholic schools in every parish
in this land as soon as the thing can