, the voice of sad experience, the voice of
Catholic bishops, and especially the voice of the Holy Father, is raised
against, and condemns, the Public School system as a huge humbug,
injuring, not promoting, personal virtue and good citizenship, and as
being most pernicious to Catholic faith, and life, and all good morals.
A pastor, therefore, cannot maintain the contrary opinion without
incurring great guilt before God and the Church. He cannot allow parents
to send their children to such schools of infidelity and immorality. He
cannot give them absolution, and say, "Innocens sum!" For he must know
and understand that parents are bound before the Almighty to raise their
children good Catholics, to plant in their hearts the seed of godliness
and parental obedience; this was their promise at the baptismal font.
They are bound in conscience to redeem this promise; but they cannot do
this, so long as their children go to the Public Schools; for it must be
conceded that children attending these godless Public Schools are in
_proximate occasion of sin_, and this occasion is in esse for them. This
being so, parents cannot receive absolution unless they remove from
their children this occasion of sin. "I do not see," says the Archbishop
of Cincinnati--and many other bishops say the same--"I do not see how
parents can be absolved, if they are not disposed to support Catholic
schools, and send their children thereto."

"Duty compels us"--says the Bishop of Vincennes, Ind., in his Pastoral
Letter of 1872--"duty compels us to instruct the pastors of our churches
to refuse absolution to parents who, having the facilities and means of
educating their children in a Christian manner, do, from worldly
motives, expose them to the danger of losing their faith. This measure,
however, being very rigorous, we intend that it shall be recurred to in
extreme cases only, and when all means of persuasion have been
exhausted."

As for teachers, there are everywhere many young ladies who have
received a splendid education, and who would feel but too happy to
become teachers for our children, and bring them up in such a manner as
to fit them for business in this life, and for heaven hereafter.

But why so many objections? It was in the following manner that two
bishops silenced all such objections, and made Catholic schools spring
up all over their dioceses in a short time: they told their priests
"that, were they not to have schools within a cer