No ecclesiastical publication is more important: all Catholic children are to learn this by heart, for the phrases they recite will be firmly fixed in their memories.

Bossuet's catechism is good enough, but it may be improved,--there is nothing that time, reflection, emulation, and administrative zeal cannot render perfect! Bossuet teaches children "to respect all superiors, pastors, kings, magistrates, and the rest." "But these generalities," says Portalis,[51108] "no longer suffice.

They do not give the proper tendency to the subject's submission.

The object is to center the popular conscience on the person of Your Majesty." Accordingly, let us be precise, make appointments and secure support.
The imperial catechism, a great deal more explicit than the royal catechism, adds significant development to the old one, along with extra motives: "We specially owe to our Emperor, Napoleon the First, love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military service, and tributes ordained for the preservation of the empire and his throne...

For God has raised him up for us in times of peril that he might restore public worship and the holy religion of our fathers and be its protector." Every boy and girl in each parish recite this to the vicar or cure after vespers in their tiny voices as a commandment of God and of the Church, as a supplementary article of the creed.