When it is given over to voluntary study (beyond the diocesan requirements which are a stimulus and not a blight) it catches, not like wild fire, but like blessed fire, even among young children, and is woven imperceptibly into the texture of life.
Lastly, what may be asked of Catholic children when they grow up and have to take upon themselves the responsibility of keeping their own faith alive, and the practice of their religion in an atmosphere which may often be one of cold faith and slack observance?
Neither their spiritual guides, nor those who have educated them, nor their own parents, can take this responsibility out of their hands.

St.Francis of Sales calls science the 8th Sacrament for a priest, urging the clergy to give themselves earnestly to study, and he says that great troubles have come upon us because the sacred ark of knowledge was found in other hands than those of the Levites.

Leo XIII wrote in one of his great encyclicals that "Every minister of holy religion must bring to the struggle the full energy of his mind and all his power of endurance." What about the laity?
We cannot leave all the battle to the clergy; they cannot defend and instruct and carry us into the kingdom of heaven in spite of ourselves; their labours call for response and correspondence.

What about those who are now leaving childhood behind and will be in the front ranks of the coming generation?
Their influence will make or unmake the religion of their homes, and what they will be for the whole of their life will depend very much upon how they take their first independent stand.
It is much that they should be well grounded in those elements of doctrine which they can learn in their school-days.

It is much more if they carry out with them a living interest in the subject and care to watch the current of the Church's thought in the encyclicals that are addressed to the faithful, the pastorals of Bishops, the works of Catholic writers which, are more and more within the reach of all, in the great events of the Church's life, and in the talk of those who are able to speak from first-hand knowledge and experience.