be no
one to blame but itself if it fails, and that such security it will not
find outside the Catholic school. It is for just such work that the
school is equipped, that is the only reason for its existence, and we
are not by any means prepared to confess that our system is a failure
in that feature which is its essential one.

That every Catholic child has an inherent right to such a training, it
is not for one moment permitted to doubt; there is nothing outside the
very bread that keeps its body and soul together to which it has a
better right. Intellectual training is a very secondary matter when the
immortal soul is concerned. And if the child has this right, there is a
corresponding duty in the parent to provide it with such; and since
that right is inalienable, that duty is of the gravest. Hence it
follows that parents who neglect the opportunity they enjoy of
providing their offspring with a sound religious and moral training in
youth, and expose them, unprepared, to the attacks, covert and open, of
modern indifferentism, while pursuing secular studies, display a woeful
ignorance of their obligations and responsibilities.

This natural right of the child to a religious education, and the
authority of the Church which speaks in no uncertain accents on the
subject go to make a general law that imposes a moral obligation upon
parents to send their children to Catholic schools. Parents who fail in
this simply do wrong, and in many cases cannot be excused from mortal
offending. And it requires, according to the general opinion, a very
serious reason to justify non-compliance with this law.

Exaggeration, of course, never serves any purpose; but when we consider
the personal rights of children to have their spiritual life well
nurtured, and the general evils against which this system of education
has been judged necessary to make the Church secure, it will be easily
seen that there is little fear of over-estimating the importance of the
question and the gravity of the obligations under which parents are
placed.

Moreover, disregard for this general law on the part of parents
involves contempt of authority, which contempt, by reason of its being
public, cannot escape the malice of scandal. Even when the early
religious education of the child is safeguarded by excellent home
training and example and no evil effects of purely secular education
are to be feared, the fact of open resistance to the direction of
Church