The Catholic school does not lay claim to superiority over another on purely secular lines, although in many cases its superiority is a very patent fact; it repudiates and denies charges to the effect that it is inferior, although this may be found in some cases to be true.  It contends that it is equal to, as good as, any other; and there is no evidence why this should not be so.  But it does pretend to give a more thorough education in the true sense of the word, if education really means a bringing out of that which is best in our nature.

Neither do we hold that such a training as our schools provide will assure the faith and salvation of the children confided to our care.  Neither church, nor religion, nor prayer, nor grace, nor God Himself will do this alone.  The child’s fidelity to God and its ultimate reward depends on that child’s efforts and will, which nothing can supply.  But what we do guarantee is that the child will be furnished with what is necessary to keep the faith and save its soul, that there will be no one to blame but itself if it fails, and that such security it will not find outside the Catholic school.  It is for just such work that the school is equipped, that is the only reason for its existence, and we are not by any means prepared to confess that our system is a failure in that feature which is its essential one.

That every Catholic child has an inherent right to such a training, it is not for one moment permitted to doubt; there is nothing outside the very bread that keeps its body and soul together to which it has a better right.  Intellectual training is a very secondary matter when the immortal soul is concerned.  And if the child has this right, there is a corresponding duty in the parent to provide it with such; and since that right is inalienable, that duty is of the gravest.  Hence it follows that parents who neglect the opportunity they enjoy of providing their offspring with a sound religious and moral training in youth, and expose them, unprepared, to the attacks, covert and open, of modern indifferentism, while pursuing secular studies, display a woeful ignorance of their obligations and responsibilities.

This natural right of the child to a religious education, and the authority of the Church which speaks in no uncertain accents on the subject go to make a general law that imposes a moral obligation upon parents to send their children to Catholic schools.  Parents who fail in this simply do wrong, and in many cases cannot be excused from mortal offending.  And it requires, according to the general opinion, a very serious reason to justify non-compliance with this law.

Exaggeration, of course, never serves any purpose; but when we consider the personal rights of children to have their spiritual life well nurtured, and the general evils against which this system of education has been judged necessary to make the Church secure, it will be easily seen that there is little fear of over-estimating the importance of the question and the gravity of the obligations under which parents are placed.