Note 90 — Chapter V · RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AND THE CHILD.

Among the greatest causes of difficulty with a child, let us note the following: the father is apt to be a free-thinker, the mother a Catholic. It hears every day at Church that those who do not practise their religious duties will go to hell: the child therefore reasons that if its father dies it will never see him again, unless it goes to hell with him, and then it will never see its mother again. A full and complete belief in annihilation would be less painful and less annoying than this belief in eternal damnation. Add that in this respect many Protestant clergymen, in especial in England and in the United States, are not less intolerant than Catholic priests.