When we say this and when we look at the way the common man here on earth in the world understands education, we see that we are already in two worlds with almost an infinite abyss between them, because modern man has forgotten his end. They don't believe. The modern man does not want to accept that there is a God, a Creator, and starting there he cannot accept that he is made for God. He cannot accept that God is his end; that God is the supreme good; that the first law which governs all our actions–and whatever we do here on earth–is to be finally united with God.

You know that our Lord gave one law which is the summary of all laws. There is one commandment which is the sum of all the commandments. And it is this commandment which obliges us to love God with all our strength, with all our soul, all our spirit, and all our heart; that is, whatever capacity of action we have, we have to direct and use this to love God, to seek to be more deeply united with God. Because at the end, for what have we been created? To be with God. And that's why, very simply said, every morning when you rise you are advised to make this morning prayer where you offer to God your whole day, all your actions, because in such a way you are going to direct all your deeds, all your thoughts, all your aspirations, desires, to God, even if–and it is perfectly understandable that during the day you will not think every minute, every second about God–but having put by your morning offering everything in that direction, so long as you don't commit an act which goes against this intention, whatever you do is done indeed for God.

Once again, look at modern man. Look how these words which I have just given to you look strange; we are in another world. And so if and when we speak of education, we must never forget this very first principle: the end of the human being. Where is the perfection of the human being? It is in God. All education, then, must work for this end.

Pius XI asked himself who is to give this education. He has a very deep and interesting reflection, telling us that education will never be something private; it will always be something social, which means it will involve the whole social community. We will never be able to educate ourselves by ourselves. We need somebody else, we need our parents, we need teachers, and as the matters of education are so broad, there is hardly one family which is able by itself to give this whole education. Even if and when we speak of home schooling, you see very well that the parents who are doing home schooling, if they don't dig in their own knowledge what they will give to the children, they will look in books which have been written by others. They will maybe receive instructions from others. It is a social work. It's a work that involves the whole human society.

The Church Takes Precedence

We have three persons who have to deal with education, and the first is the Church. Why? Because with baptism we are children of the Church; the Church is our mother. The Church has received this mission from God Himself, from our Lord: "Teach ye all nations." This order to teach, of course, involves not only giving knowledge, but giving all education. In the words of Pius XI: "The extent of the Church's mission in the field of education is such as to embrace every nation without exception." We would have the tendency to say fine, we have an understanding that the Catholic Church would request the right to educate Catholic children, and in the various nations where we have Catholics we would understand that the Church would say "Here, I have my rights." Pius XI goes much, much further. I repeat:

Of course, we understand her first care is for the Catholics, but the real care of the Church in the field of education is extended to the whole of mankind, to all nations. Take a Buddhist country, take a Communist country: the Church will say "I have a strict right to teach you because I have been sent by your Creator, God, our Lord."

Education Starts in the Crib

Briefly, in this encyclical, Pius XI describes the titles, rights, and also the work which has been realized by the Church in education. Then he considers the family. Children come into the world, according to God's law and God's disposition, in a family. And in this place they will receive the first elements of education. It is more than prudent, and the Church insists a lot on this point: education does not start when you are seven; it starts in the crib. And the very, very first years determine much in all your life. Thus, parents have a very, very strict and serious duty to take care of this duty of education from the very first days of the children's life. When you are seven years old, your main tendencies are already there, and it will be a life-long struggle to kick out all the deviations which you will have acquired in your very first years. These bad inclinations, the fruit of original sin, will have already sunk their roots in these very first years. What an error in Catholic parents who just think that their little boys and girls, their very little babies, are so kind and nice and sweet. That is a part of it, of course, but there is also original sin.

This right [of the Church over education]: why does the Pope speak of this? Because in the modern world there has been a very important inclination, especially since the [French] Revolution, to emphasize the role of the State. In the modern world, too many things are entrusted to the State, the State which is taking the place of other bodies which have been more or less destroyed. And so we speak of the Welfare State: that means the State is playing the role of God, and the role of Divine Providence. It is true that the State has a certain role to play in education. Because human beings will be part of human society, it is perfectly understandable that the rulers of human society will have something to say about education, but the role will be much more the role of controlling whether this education is happening correctly rather than giving this education by itself. We see, however, that if this has been done, especially since liberalism or, we may say, Masonry–and we see it even more clearly in the socialistic and communistic countries–it's because these ideologies know that if they want to last they must go to the youth, and the best way to control the youth, to instill in fresh hearts their ideologies and their errors, is to take them from the very first years of school. Since then, you have this great danger of a great influence of the State over many levels and domains of education. Once again, it is not denied that the State has a role to play, but it must stay in its place.

After having spoken of who must give the education, we go to the subject of education, and here, we may say, is the most important place where we want to make our comments. The Pope deals with some very dangerous errors in modern education which very seriously and dangerously may have as a result that souls, instead of going to heaven, will go to hell. Education plays a part which happens at the beginning of life. In this beginning of life, education is going to form our soul in such a way that we will receive all that we need in order to lead our life, in order to get to perfection, and finally, as I said, to God. It is like the ramp of a rocket: if, at the very start, the ramp for the rocket is aiming correctly to the end, you have a great chance that the rocket will hit its target. But if you place the ramp completely wrong, pointing way to the side, there is a very great chance that the rocket will miss its target. And it's the same in education. Little errors in the beginning will be very disastrous in the end.

The point I would like to emphasize here is that there are two major errors in the modern world, in modern education, and these errors may be found also in our schools if we don't pay attention to it, because it belongs to human nature that we forget that we come into the world with original sin.

Original Sin Must Be Kept In Mind

Forgetfulness of original sin is the first error. What does original sin mean? It does not only mean that we come into the world in a state that is not a very happy state; we come into the world like somebody who is in debt. We start with a minus. God's plan was such that Adam and Eve, living in the state of grace, would have communicated to their children, not only human life, but also supernatural life. God's first plan was that, coming into the world we would have been immediately in the state of grace, friends of God, having God's life in us. But there was the first trial of our first parents, and they failed. They lost this tremendous good of sanctifying grace, not only for themselves, but rather like parents who lose their fortune for the children. If parents lose by accident or by any kind of happening the goods they have–the house or their fortune–it is very understandable that, if it is lost, it is lost also for the children.

So Adam, as the father of all mankind, and Eve lost the fortune of sanctifying grace for the whole human race in such a way that even if then, in generations, you will have people in the state of grace, their children nevertheless come into the world with the debt of Adam and Eve. That is what we call original sin.

Now, this sin has caused in us a tremendous devastation: four wounds. Even baptism, which gives us back the state of grace, does not heal the wounds. So even with baptism we remain wounded, and this absolute truth, looking at Christian education, is totally forgotten in the modern world, even amongst us at times. We ourselves easily forget that we are wounded.

There are four wounds, each one touching different areas of human activity: the first, we call ignorance, which affects our reason. When we say ignorance, it does not only mean that we don't know things when we start. It means rather that since this original sin, it is hard to get to the truth. We easily fall into error; we have an inclination which pushes us off the tracks of the truth, and consequently we must pay attention. When we want to learn something, we constantly must look at the reality and confront what we say, what we think, with the reality to be certain that we stay in the truth. (And you know, there is one object where we are especially in error: it is when we judge ourselves. Look how easily we are capable, more or less correctly, of judging others. But when it comes to ourselves, we would like to be much better than what we are, and so we cheat ourselves many, many times. So if you want to really know what you are, just listen to what the others say about you. Their judgment is much more accurate than ours.)

There is another aspect which you may have experienced, when you see how these defects, these wounds, work: it is how easily we learn and keep in our memory the silly things and the stupid things. These we have no problem retaining. But the things which are more important are also more difficult to keep. I remember an experience by a young mother who had to go with her children to another country and another language, and what she saw horrified her, because she saw that the first words her children learned from playing with other children in this other country and other language were bad words. That's the fruit of this wound of ignorance. It is hard; we must make some effort to learn. It does not mean that we cannot learn, no; but it requires some effort.

The second wound touches the will, and we call it malice. Malice comes from the Latin malum, evil. God has made the will for the good. In itself, our will wants the good, but since original sin, this tendency is no longer directed toward the real good. We once again, many times, cheat ourselves, and we color evil things, labeling them good. You want an example? Look at the little children in the supermarket, two or three years old. They will see some sweets, and with their little hand they will try to grab them: they don't care about justice, about to whom it belongs; they just want it to be theirs. This is a typical example of malice.

And I may say, the advertising industry knows this very, very well. Once again, just go into the supermarket, and you will see that there are tremendous studies done in order to sell better. They will even choose the right music for that. We may say, by experience, they use this wound of the will; they misuse it.

And if you want to know, dear children, modern music does exactly the same. The artists who started rock music knew all these things. They made studies, and they used their knowledge in order to make music with words and habits and tendencies which would demolish the Christian soul. That is what is behind modern music. It is impressive to see and to read what the first artists said about their music. I speak of the Beatles and all the others. They used these wounds, and instead of healing them, they make them worse.

There are two other wounds which touch the sensitive faculties. The first two touch the spiritual faculties: the intelligence and the will; the other two touch the affective element which we call the passions. Life is hard; some goods are hard to get. That means that we must put a lot of energy to get them. We need strength. And this strength of our affections has also been wounded by the wound of weakness. We are lazy; we don't want to make too many efforts; we want to get everything the easy way. This is a consequence of original sin. And for the things easy to get, there we also have a wound, which we call concupiscence, which makes us forget everything else: we just want that. Here we have a very interesting expression in human life, which is, "Love makes you blind." When you love somebody, you want to forget everything that would go against this love. You will forget every bad aspect; you will, so to say, condone, forgive, all things which in other cases would tell you: "Be prudent!" We see that many times amongst those who want to marry. You see the parents who say, "Watch out, don't do that." But those who love each other don't want to care, because this affection, this concupiscence, blinds.

The Problem of "Freedom"

Now all these [wounds], which are determining for human life, have been forgotten in modern education, which emphasizes freedom. Man is free, which is true, so let us exercise this freedom without putting any kind of constraint. Man has reason, man can have good initiatives, so let him have initiatives. And all this will be put into practice in modern education to the point where the teacher has almost nothing to say any more, even in what the children will learn! You have schools where you have a committee of the students in the classroom who will tell the professor what they want to learn. This is totally upside down. It demolishes the soul.

The consequences are tremendous: First, once again, when we look at heaven, if we let all these defects in us, if we give them freedom, of course, we are going to kill our soul. We are going to jump into sin, so we are going to miss heaven. But even here on earth, it will not work. Look at this modern world: the modern world is turning into hell on earth, with unbelievable violence, crime, and everybody cheating the others. There's no truth any more; nobody cares for the truth; they lie everywhere in such a way that you almost have to doubt whatever is told you, even the television, even the news. We are living in a whole world of lies, because the fundamental values are just not cared for. And then when you speak of virtue, the consequence is that virtue will only be a façade. That means that, in front of the others, you still must give a certain appearance so that the others will appreciate you, but it is only a make-up; the real man is totally different, so it is total hypocrisy. This modern world in which we live is such a world.

Clearly, modern society ends up in violence and in tyranny. It pretends to be freedom–that's the big word you hear: freedom. Man is free, let him be free. But those who say so forget that freedom, which is the principle of liberalism–total freedom in the world–has caused socialism and communism. All the atrocities in these ideologies have their start in liberalism, in freedom. The highest tyranny you find in these communistic countries, yes, but the root comes from freedom, a wrongly understood human freedom. They have made of freedom the highest good, which it is not.

When we say freedom, you all understand, it is the right to choose, and the capacity to choose, to determine ourselves, to do something. We can choose an end and then choose the means. And the Catholic Church is going to tell us: Watch out! There are things we are not free to choose. God has made us, and He has made us men, girls, boys. We are not free to choose whether we are boy or girl. We are not free to choose on which date we have our birthday; it is above us. And so we do not have the right to choose what is a human being. We have no right to choose what is human perfection. God has put in us this desire to be good. All of you have this desire to become better. It is God's love for us which has put in us this desire to become better.

[When we reach for something that is bad], we know that it is silly because we have a conscience. This conscience tells us, "Listen, what you are doing now is not right." We may just at the moment understand that now I am doing something against God's commandment, but it is very deep, you know. Even those who don't know that Jesus exists, who don't know about the true religion, have this conscience. They know what is good and what is bad, because it is written by God in the heart. God wants everybody to acquire greater perfection through action. So we are not free to choose that.

Freedom must be exercised in the choice of the means towards this end. That is, we have the right to choose how we are going to lead our life to get to that end. We want to go to heaven. Some will reflect and say, "So I want to become a religious to get to heaven." Others will say, "No, I will be a father," "I will be a mother, I will have children." Others will say, "No, I will be a priest." These are different ways, different choices where we have freedom, but not about the end.

Here is another example where we cannot choose: I can choose not to eat. I can make that choice, but it will not last very long, because my body is made in such a way that to go on, I need to put something in it: I need to eat. You see, sometimes the idea which the modern world wants to give about freedom is something like the freedom of the car: If you have a car, you can move it in such a way that you can drive more or less everywhere. Now, if you say, "I have a free car, and I want to prove that I have a free car so I will drive off the road." But there is a tree there. "Now I am going to prove that I'm free by going straight into the tree." It would be a tremendous demonstration of your freedom, of course. But what about the car? The car will be broken, and you would not drive any farther with that car, and with the freedom of the car.

It is the same thing we do with ourselves: whenever we hit one of God's commandments, we demolish our car. Sometimes we only lose a wheel. But if it is a serious sin, we just break down the car. You see with these simple examples that this modern understanding of freedom which tells you that you can do whatever you want, is wrong. There must be an education of the will, of freedom.

The Reality of Grace

There is another topic which Pius XI in his encyclical speaks about, another great danger, and that is to forget the world of grace. When we say grace, we mean the life of God in us. This life is also called supernatural; it is above nature. Since it is above, we cannot touch it. We cannot feel it, yet we like to be able to touch things, yet we are not able to see, measure, or feel this life of God in us. Sometimes when we go to Communion, we may have some feelings, we may feel good, but sometimes we have no such feelings and we nevertheless receive our Lord. All these things are above nature, and that is the problem. Because it is above, we may forget its reality. In education, the consequence of forgetting this point is very clear: it means to miss the end. An education that forgets that our end is heaven cannot be the true education. It will be a failure.

I would like to end this little talk with a great concern. Looking at the youth, looking year after year at how the youth develop, we see that there is more and more a specific disease which is spreading around, which is a defect of the will. To console you, a cardinal in the 1850's already spoke about this problem, so it is not a new problem. But this problem is increasing. We are more and more debilitated in the will. The intelligence, that is, the understanding, is working more or less; that is, we still can learn something without too great difficulty. It is true that when we look at teaching throughout the years, we see that our parents or even our grandparents in fewer years learned much more than we do now. But once again, that is not yet a big problem. The big problem is in the will and in the affections. We are weak.

There are two aspects in the will, that is, when we do something, especially the hard things, not the easy things. When something is easily done, like eating sweets, it is not too difficult; you have no problem in eating sweets. When it comes to making an effort, if the effort is short, it still works. We call it in Latin the aggredi: that is, when we attack a work, we start a work. We can do that still with great energy. That is not the problem. The problem we see comes when it requires a long-term effort; in Latin: sustinere, to support. For example, to endure or to bear a long sickness, or when we have to support or to bear with something we don't like–it can be a defect–or once again, we have to make an effort for a long time. Here, there is absolutely no doubt that the young are weaker and weaker. And when I say so, I say it is not the fault of the young.

It is a very serious and major concern for me. Why? Because there is a law, and I may say a fundamental law, when we speak about the education of the will. We cannot get anything in life without effort. That is true everywhere. When you need something valuable, when you want to get something valuable, you must make efforts. If you want to learn something, you have to make an effort. If you want to climb a mountain, you have to put forth effort. If you want to be good in any field, be it music, art, learning, or sports, you have to make some efforts. If you don't make these efforts, you will not progress. This is an absolutely genuine law of psychology, because the virtues grow in us when we do more intense acts, and this means effort. And once again, the modern world hates effort. And that's a big problem.

The Solution Is Sacrifice

Now, there is another word for effort which Christians use, and the name is sacrifice–the spirit of sacrifice. In fact, that is the answer. If we want our will to be strong, if we want to be able to persevere, we need to practice this spirit of sacrifice. Now, the spirit of sacrifice just means the Christian spirit: our Lord Jesus Christ. The Church represents Him everywhere on the cross. And you remember our Lord said to the apostles, "If somebody wants to be my disciple, let him take up his cross every day." He renounces himself. If we want to be Christians and disciples of Christ, that's the law. And since we are in a very deep crisis of the Church, one of the deepest keys of the crisis of the Church is that they have dropped that key: the spirit of sacrifice. Instead of it, they have gone to the world.

Our Lord described that. He said that there are two ways: one is broad, very wide, very easy, and many people go therein, and this way leads straight to hell. The way that leads to heaven is a narrow, hard, stony way. Our Lord goes so far as to say, "And few find it." That means you must look for it, you must make some efforts to go there. And the whole world around us is constantly inviting us to take the easy way. Since it is the easy way, of course it's easier. So the temptation to go this way is enormous and you see the result. Just look at the state of the Church. And there is great danger for you if you go this way.

Once again, reflecting on this, I see only one solution: it is a tremendous effort, starting in the crib, starting with the Christian parents and continuing at school, everywhere, throughout the whole of life, a tremendous effort to bring back what we call this spirit of sacrifice. I speak of this Christian spirit, and we must pay attention here; it cannot be artificial, artificial meaning, "Okay, so let's do it, let's make a sacrifice. One sacrifice a day, that's nice, very kind." It is not sufficient. It is not enough to make only one act here or there; it is a whole attitude of the soul, which constantly will be in the state of renouncing its own desires in order to choose God. When I say so, it's my greatest fear that I generate a lot of fear in you because you see the cross as something impossible to bear, a very difficult way. It is not true. Look at our parents, our grandparents or our great grandparents: their lives were much harder than ours, but they took it. Life was fine, and they were happy.

It's a deep choice which we have to make here, and it is very important because we touch here a universal principle. If we don't want to go this way, we will remain constantly in danger of losing heaven. We have to pray to our Lord that He give us this spirit of sacrifice. This does not mean that we are going to renounce any kind of human happiness or human joys. You see, the good Lord gives us contradictions every day; we have things to bear. Sometimes it's the weather: too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy, everything. We encounter a lot of things which don't please us, and we just accept them because there is no other way. But that's not yet the spirit of sacrifice.

Now if, when it is rainy, instead of complaining and saying "Why is it raining?" or, if it is a little bit too hot, "Why is it so hot? it's too hot," and so on, just accept it with a very nice glance at our Lord, and say, "Thank You. You know what I need, and I accept it. I may not like it; but I accept it for the love of You." You can make out of these things which you have to bear anyway a real sacrifice, and you sanctify yourself, and you enter into this spirit which is the Christian spirit. It is not difficult. The difficulty is to make it present everywhere, all the time. But if we want to survive this present, dramatic crisis in the world and in the Church, I do not see any other means than embracing the daily cross that God gives us–not flying away, not escaping, not cheating ourselves. Just accept it with a great heart. You can.

Once again, I think this is a major point of education, which has to be treated with great care. It is a definite fight for survival, for Tradition, and for the Catholic Church period. So, on this Feast of St. Thomas, let us once again count on his intercession, on the intercession of all the saints, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that they may revive, or quicken this real Christian spirit. We have to put everything in order again, since we have to fight the disorders of original sin, to bring the soul back to the right order, which happens little by little with grace. We have to do this in all levels of our life. That's our struggle here; and if we accept this struggle, we will obtain the recompense which is promised, which is the end of our life and of education: heaven, for ever and ever. Amen.

1. Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri (Dec. 31, 1929). Available from Angelus Press. Price: $4.25. [Page references after quotations refer to this reprint edition.]