30. Added to all this, God and Jesus Christ, as well as His
doctrines, were banished from the school. As a sad but inevitable consequence,
the school became not only secular and non-religious but openly atheistical and anti-religious. In such circumstances it
was easy to persuade poor ignorant children that neither God nor religion are of any importance as far as their daily lives
are concerned. God's name, moreover, was scarcely ever mentioned in such
schools unless it were perchance to blaspheme Him or
to ridicule His Church. Thus, the school forcibly deprived of the right to
teach anything about God or His law could not but fail in its efforts to really
educate, that is, to lead children to the practice of virtue, for the school
lacked the fundamental principles which underlie the possession of a knowledge
of God and the means necessary to strengthen the will in its efforts toward
good and in its avoidance of sin. Gone, too, was all possibility of ever laying
a solid groundwork for peace, order, and prosperity, either in the family or in
social relations. Thus the principles based on the spiritualistic philosophy of
Christianity having been obscured or destroyed in the minds of many, a
triumphant materialism served to prepare mankind for the propaganda of anarchy
and of social hatred which was let loose on such a great scale.
|