The Education of Catholic Girls | Page 5

"It is wrong" ought to be enough, and
the less children talk of mortal sin the better--to talk of it, to discuss
with them whether this or that is a mortal sin, accustoms them to the
idea. When they know well the conditions which make a sin grave
without illustrations by example which are likely to obscure the subject
rather than clear it up, when their ideas of right and duty and obligation
are clear, when "I ought" has a real meaning for them, we shall have a
stronger type of character than that which is formed on detailed

considerations of different degrees of guilt.
On the other hand it is possible to confuse and torment children by
stories of the exquisite delicacy of the consciences of the saints, as St.
Aloysius, setting before them a standard that is beyond their
comprehension or their degree of grace, and making them miserable
because they cannot conform to it.
It is a great safeguard against sin to realize that duty must be done, at
any cost, and that Christianity means self-denial and taking up the
cross.
4. Eight thoughts of the four last things. True thoughts of death are not
hard for children to grasp, to their unspoiled faith it is a simple and
joyful thing to go to God. Later on the dreary pageantry and the averted
face of the world from that which is indeed its doom obscure the
Christian idea, and the mind slips back to pagan grief, as if there were
no life to come.
Eight thoughts of judgment are not so hard to give if the teaching is
sincere and simple, free from exaggerations and phantoms of dread,
and on the other hand clear from an incredulous protest against God's
holding man responsible for his acts.
But to give right thoughts of hell and heaven taxes the best resources of
those who wish to lay foundations well, for they are to be foundations
for life, and the two lessons belong together, corner-stones of the
building, to stand in view as long as it shall stand and never to be
forgotten.
The two lessons belong together as the final destiny of man, fixed by
his own act, this or that. And they have to be taught with all the force
and gravity and dignity which befits the subject, and in such a way that
after years will find nothing to smile at and nothing to unlearn. They
have to be taught as the mind of the present time can best apprehend
them, not according to the portraiture of mediaeval pictures, but in a
language perhaps not more true and adequate in itself but less
boisterous and more comprehensible to our self-conscious and

introspective moods. Father Faber's treatment of these last things, hell
and heaven, would furnish matter for instruction not beyond the
understanding of those in their last years at school, and of a kind which
if understood must leave a mark upon the mind for life. [1 See
Appendix I.]
5. Eight views of Jesus Christ and His mother. For Catholic children
this relationship is not a thing far off, but the faith which teaches them
of God Incarnate bids them also understand that He is their own "God
who gives joy to their youth"--and that His mother is also theirs. There
are many incomprehensible things in which children are taught to
affirm their belief, and the acts of faith in which they recite these truths
are far beyond their understanding. But they can and do understand if
we take pains to teach them that they are loved by Our Lord each one
alone, intimately and personally, and asked to love in return. "Suffer
the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not," is not for
them a distant echo of what was heard long ago in the Holy Land, it is
no story, but a living reality of to day. They are themselves the children
who are invited to come to Him, better off indeed than those first called,
since they are not now rebuked or kept off by the Apostles but brought
to the front and given the first places, invited by order of His Vicar
from their earliest years to receive the Bread of Heaven, and giving
delight to His representatives on earth by accepting the invitation.
It is the reality as contrasted with the story that is the prerogative of the
Catholic child. Jesus and Mary are real, and are its own closest kin, all
but visible, at moments intensely felt as present. They are there in joy
and in trouble, when every one else fails in understanding or looks
displeased there is this refuge, there is this love which always forgives,
and sets things right, and to whom nothing is unimportant or