Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/608

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588
JESUIT EDUCATION

justify certain Protestant tenets and to antagonize Catholic doctrines. The Revised Version has done away with some of these objectionable translations, but not with all that justly offend Catholics. Hence the very version used in the public schools is "sectarian." Besides, the Catholic acknowledges books as canonical which are rejected in the Protestant Bibles as apocryphal, and this is another reason why the Catholic cannot approve the reading of the Protestant Bible. – Secondly, the Catholic Church is opposed to giving the complete and unabridged Bible into the hands of children. The reason for this attitude is one that testifies to the great pedagogical wisdom of the Church. She cannot bear the thought that the most sacred of books should become a stumbling-block to the innocent, or a means of gratifying the unholy curiosity of vicious youths. There are earnest Protestants who in this matter side with the Catholic practice. It may suffice to quote one testimony, that of a Protestant educator of the first rank, namely of Professor Schiller, Director of one of the best training schools for teachers in Europe. Speaking of the causes of impurity among students, he finds one in the reading of the unabridged Bible. He affirms that a large experience has proved that most deplorable vicious habits among pupils, boys and girls, sprang up in the first place from the reading of certain passages of the Bible, the selection and knowledge of which were handed down as a tradition among the pupils. This danger, he adds, can be so easily avoided by preparing special school Bibles that the opposite practice seems unpardonable. We think it well to quote the instructive passage in the original in