Discipline and obedience.

If these are to be means of training they must be living and not dead powers, and they must lead up to gradual self-government, not to sudden emancipation.

Obedience must be first of all to persons, prompt and unquestioning, then to laws, a "reasonable service," then to the wider law which each one must enforce from within--the law of love which is the law of liberty of the kingdom of God.
These are the means which in her own way, and through various channels of authority, the Church makes use of, and the Church is the great Mother who educates us all.

She takes us into her confidence, as we make ourselves worthy of it, and shows us out of her treasures things new and old.

She sets the better things always before us, prays for us, prays with us, teaches us to pray, and so "lifts up our minds to heavenly desires." She watches over us with un anxious, but untiring vigilance, setting her Bishops and pastors to keep watch over the flock, collectively and individually, "with that most perfect care" that St.Francis of Sales describes as "that which approaches the nearest to the care God has of us, which is a care full of tranquillity and quietness, and which, in its highest activity, has still no emotion, and being only one, yet condescends to make itself all to all things." Criticism and correction, discipline and obedience--these things are administered by the Church our Mother, gently but without weakness, so careful is she in her warnings, so slow in her punishments, so unswervingly true to what is of principle, and asking so persuasively not for the sullen obedience of slaves, but for the free and loving submission of sons and daughters..