so many and such
various dangers, hardly anything can be imagined more fitting than the
union with literary instruction of sound teaching in faith and morals.
For this reason, we have more than once said that we strongly approve of
the voluntary schools, which, by the work and liberality of private
individuals, have been established in France, in Belgium, in America,
and in the Colonies of the British Empire. We desire their increase, as
much as possible, and that they may flourish in the number of their
scholars. We ourselves also, seeing the condition of things in this
city, continue, with the greatest effort and at great cost to provide an
abundance of such schools for the children of Rome. For it is in, and
by, these schools that the Catholic faith, our greatest and best
inheritance, is preserved whole and entire. In these schools the liberty
of parents is respected; and, what is most needed, especially in the
prevailing license of opinion and of action, it is by these schools that
good citizens are brought up for the State; for there is no better
citizen than the man who has believed and practiced the Christian faith
from his childhood. The beginning, and, as it were, the seed of that
human perfection which Jesus Christ gave to mankind, are to be found in
the Christian education of the young: for the future condition of the
State depends upon the early training of its children. The wisdom of our
forefathers, and the very foundations of the State, are ruined by the
destructive error of those who would have children brought up without
religious education. You see, therefore, venerable brethren, with what
earnest forethought parents must beware of intrusting their children to
schools in which they cannot receive religious teaching.

In your country of Great Britain, we know that, besides yourselves, very
many of your nation are not a little anxious about religious education.
They do not in all things agree with us; nevertheless they see how
important, for the sake both of society and of men individually, is the
preservation of that Christian wisdom which your forefathers received,
through St. Augustine, from our predecessor, Gregory the Great; which
wisdom the violent tempests that came afterwards have not entirely
scattered. There are, as we know, at this day, many of an excellent
disposition of mind who are diligently striving to retain what they can
of the ancient faith, and who bring forth many and great fruits of