Pius XI, 1922-1939

gymnastic games and exercises, in which special care must be taken for the Christian modesty of girls, inasmuch as it is especially unbecoming for them to expose themselves, and to exhibit themselves before the eyes of all.

2216. But to obtain perfect education care must be taken that all the con- ditions which surround children while they are being trained, fittingly correspond with the end proposed.

And surely from the necessity of nature the environment of the child for his proper training must be regarded as his family, established by God for this very purpose. Therefore, finally, we shall rightly consider that institution stable and safest which is received in a family rightly ordered and well disciplined; and the more efficacious and stable as the parents especially and other members of the household present themselves before the children as an example of virtue.

2217. Moreover, for the weaknesses of human nature, rendered weaker by the ancestral sin, God in His goodness has provided the abundant helps of His grace and that plentiful supply of assistance which the Church possesses for purifying souls and for leading them on to sanctity; the Church, we say, that great family of Christ, which is the educational environment most intimately and harmoniously connected with individual families.

2218. Since, however, new generations would have to be instructed in all those arts and sciences by which civil society advances and flourishes; and since the family alone did not suffice for this, accordingly public schools came into being; yet in the beginning—note carefully—through the efforts of the Church and the family working together, and only much later through the efforts of the state. Thus the seats and schools of learning, if we view their origin in the light of history, were by their very nature helps, as it were, and almost a complement to both the Church and the family. So the consequence is that public schools not only cannot be in opposition to the family and the Church, but must ever be in harmony with both, as far as circumstances permit, so that these three, namely, school, family, and Church seem to effect essentially one sanctuary of Christian education, unless we wish the school to stray from its clear purpose and be converted into a disease and the destruction of youth.

2219. From this it necessarily follows that through schools which are called neutral or lay, the entire foundation of Christian education is destroyed and overturned, inasmuch as religion has been entirely removed from them. But they will be neutral schools in no way except in appearance, since they are in fact plainly hostile to religion or will be.

It is a long task and there is indeed no need to repeat what Our pred- ecessors, especially Pius IX and Leo XIII openly declared, in whose reigns especially it happened that the serious disease of such laicism invaded the