In a few weeks, following a hopefully restful summer break, the schools of the Society of St. Pius X across the United States will again open their doors to the many children of our faithful, ready to begin a new year of study. I would like, first of all, to thank all the benefactors who help to make this possible. To keep our schools open each year is a financial miracle...
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
In a few weeks, following a hopefully restful summer break, the schools of the Society of St. Pius X across the United States will again open their doors to the many children of our faithful, ready to begin a new year of study.
I would like, first of all, to thank all the benefactors who help to make this possible. To keep our schools open each year is a financial miracle. Every priest with charge over one of our schools wonders each year how he will meet the financial obligations of that school. But Providence watches over us, and for years now our benefactors have made it happen.
The Society of St. Pius X recognizes the great importance of schools. We witness the need, firstly, to protect our youth from the moral corruption of the world. But, more deeply, we understand the necessity of forming their intelligence—enabling them to think and judge properly.
It is easy, and necessary, to see the moral corruption that is brought about by the public schools and even by so-called “Catholic” schools. The recent events, covered in the news, regarding Notre Dame University is just one example. By mixing people with various beliefs, and without any moral guidance, a certain habituation and acceptance of sin is created. This is, even by itself, sufficient reason to stay away from these mechanisms of corruption.
What is more difficult to see, but as necessary if not more so, is the corruption of minds — indoctrination of the intelligence, formation of the mind according to the revolutionary spirit of the “rights of man,” according to Freemasonic principles. This spirit penetrates virtually everything in our world, but it is fostered and cultivated especially in the modern school.
We see this intellectual corruption in the way history is taught in the modern school. The history of Christian Civilization is veiled in enforced silence. Young people are kept in ignorance of their Catholic or even Christian roots, and of the true—Christ-centered—history of the world. The only accepted studies are criticisms of the Church; a distorted and disfigured approach to the Inquisition, Galileo and the like—a well-planned attack on the Truth and on the Church.
Still more grave, thinking itself, the mechanism of thinking, is being corrupted. The mind is created to know the truth, to learn about what is true and what is not, what is reality and what is not. Undermining this most basic understanding of the intelligence, the modern school says, “Nothing is really true; we are in fact unable to reach or grasp the reality of things with certainty.” It’s an old philosophical error, now very widespread. But if we are not able to know the truth or reality of things, well then the only thing that matters is the utility of a thing. “What is the usefulness of this thing? How can I use it? What can it do for me?” The function or utility of a thing becomes more important than the nature of the thing itself.
This may sound a bit philosophical, but it is the root of modern thinking, and in reality the ruin of thinking—“The intelligence in danger of death,” as Marcel De Corte put it. It really is the destruction of intelligence. Because if you can’t know the truth or reality of things, then you cannot judge; you cannot hold any judgment to be absolutely true. Any idea becomes just an opinion among many others; your own point of view.
Even your religion becomes just one among many. For the Catholic Church to stand up in this world and say, “There is only one true God, one revealed and true Church”—that is more and more heroic. The origins of the ecumenical heresies of today are firstly philosophical, and it is this thinking that the public schools enforce in the minds of the children. It is this thinking that the media are conveying. It is the politically correct way of thinking, and all are supposed to follow.
I apologize for being a bit philosophical here, but I think it is important to understand the roots of the civil and religious crisis in the world.
It is also here that we find the profound reason for all the sacrifices made for the good of our schools. We want to save the souls of our youth, and for that we must save their intelligence; we want them, like us, to believe in Christ the King, Master of our minds and of our lives.
Your efforts for our traditional Catholic schools are thus deeply appreciated, and we thank you sincerely for the generosity that makes them possible.
We assure you of our prayers, and our blessing.
In the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Fr. Arnaud Rostand