Note 947 — Chapter XVII · The Moral Scope.

Far worse misrepresentations of Catholic devotions are due to gross ignorance of Catholic teaching. Thus we find in so learned a work as Schmid’s Geschichte der Erziehung (vol. III, part I, page 91) the assertion that “the Society of Jesus, according to the idea of its founder, sees the end and object of all religious exercises in the adoration of Mary.” Every Catholic child of seven years could have told the Leipsic Professor who wrote this calumny, that Catholics do not adore, but venerate Mary and the Saints; nor do Catholics see in the veneration of Mary and the Saints the end and object of all religious exercises.