Note 246 — Chapter XV

If the suggestion to restore the teaching of the Latin prayers and the plain song of the Church in our parochial schools be deemed preposterous on the ground of its difficulty, we would simply beg objectors to try the experiment before passing judgment. A very short experience will prove that with ordinary perseverance nothing is easier than to make a class of boys recite fluently and chant correctly from note the Psalms of Vespers or Compline, or the Credo, Gloria, and other portions of the Mass; and we may add, that nothing seems more acceptable to the scholars themselves. What was possible in an age when the whole instruction must have been given orally, cannot have any insuperable difficulties about it in days when every child may be provided with a printed book. Possibly in a congregation thus trained there might be fewer complaints than there now are on the score of children behaving badly in church: for when children understand and take part in what is going on around them, they do not behave amiss. More valid objections can be conceived as arising from the difficulty of sparing the time when so many other subjects have to be taught. But what is more essential to teach Catholics than their Catholic prayers? and what branch of secular learning will prove a substitute for sound, genuine, and intelligent Catholic Faith?