eat
sacrifices. The first, the most pressing, is that of supporting a good
Catholic education. In neglecting Catholic education, we lose that which
money cannot buy. Can we conceive of a parent, a Catholic parent, so
cruel, so depraved, and so God-forsaken as to sacrifice his child, both
body and soul, and devote him to eternal destruction, through eagerness
to spare the paltry pence that a proper education might cost? It seems
quite certain that if we wait for just appropriations from the State
before we shoulder the burden ourselves, wait for it to compel us to
accept of Catholic education, we shall find ourselves in a very unfit
condition to appreciate the favor; and from present indications, this
generation, at least, is likely to pass away before such interest will
be manifested in our behalf.

Now we must be persuaded that if we allow one generation to be brought
up in unbelief, and the course of tradition to be once interrupted, the
following generations will fall into a darkness and ignorance worse
than that of Paganism; living here without a God, and quitting this
world without any consoling hope of a blessed immortality.

So it proved, not long ago, with an unhappy wretch, the child of parents
that had forgotten the law of their God, and sent her to one of the
Public Schools in a town on the North River. She played the harlot, when
she grew old enough, and then sought to add to this the crime of a
horrible _murder_--the murder of the child that was of her own flesh and
blood. In procuring its murder, she lost her own life. In the den of the
monster-abortionist, and finding herself dying, one of the vile
attendants now declares that she shrieked and begged for a Catholic
priest. The Jew into whose murderous gripe she had put herself, found
some means to quiet her cry, and she died without seeing a priest. God
will keep His word! He has said, "Because _thou_ hast forgotten the law
of thy God, I will _forget thy children_!"

I do not say that Catholic parents are obliged, under the pain of mortal
sin, to have _any_ secular education given to their children. But I do
say that they _are forbidden_, by the law of the Catholic Church, to
send their children to _any_ schools where the Catholic religion is not
_practised and taught_.

If neglect to comply with the law of God and of His Church, neglect to
receive the sacraments at certain times, and under certain
circumstances, is a mortal sin, is it much less a sin