But, on the other hand, if one considers the innocent, the young and inexperienced, who are not a few; and likewise the morbidly curious of sensual tendencies, who are many, this matter must appear as a high explosive, capable of doing any amount of damage, if not handled with the utmost care and caution.

Much, therefore, must be left unsaid, or half-said; suggestion and insinuation must be trusted to go far enough, in order that, while the knowing understand, the ignorant may be secure in the bliss of their ignorance and be not prematurely informed.

They, for whom such language is insufficient, know where to go for fuller information.  Parents are the natural teachers; the boy’s father and the girl’s mother know what to say, how and when to say it; or at least should know.  And if parents were only more careful, in their own way, to acquaint their children with certain facts when the time comes for it, much evil would be avoided, both moral and physical.

But there are secrets too sacred even for parents’ ears, that are confided only to God, through His appointed minister.  Catholics know this man is the confessor, and the place for such information and counsel, the holy tribunal of penance.  These two channels of knowledge are safe; the same cannot be said of others.

As a preliminary, we would remark that sins, of the sort here in question as well as all kinds of sin, are not limited to deeds.  Exterior acts consummate the malice of evil, but they do not constitute such malice; evil is generated in the heart.  One who desires to do wrong offends God as effectively as another who does the wrong in deed.  Not only that, but he who makes evil the food of his mind and ponders complacently on the seductive beauty of vice is no less guilty than he who goes beyond theory into practice.  This is something we frequently forget, or would fain forget, the greed of passion blinding us more or less voluntarily to the real moral value of our acts.

As a consequence of this self-illusion many a one finds himself far beyond his depth in the sea of immorality before he fully realizes his position.  It is small beginnings that lead to lasting results; it is by repeated acts that habits are formed; and evil grows on us faster than most of us are willing to acknowledge.  All manner of good and evil originates in thought; and that is where the little monster of uncleanness must be strangled before it is full-grown, if we would be free from its unspeakable thralldom.

Again, this is a matter the malice and evil of which very, very rarely, if ever, escapes us.  He who commits a sin of impurity and says he did not know it was wrong, lies deliberately, or else he is not in his right frame of mind.  The Maker has left in our souls enough of natural virtue and grace to enable us to distinguish right and wrong, clean and unclean; even the child with no definite knowledge of the matter, meeting it for the first time, instinctively blushes and recoils from the moral hideousness of its aspect.  Conscience here speaks in no uncertain accents; he alone does not hear who does not wish to hear.