CONVENT SCHOOLS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 23, 1879

CONVENT SCHOOLS.

When Madame Campau inquired of Napoleon, “What does France need to elevate her?” his reply was, “Mothers.” The Jesuits have discovered that to lay this Republic where Italy, Spain, Belgium, Mexico, Canada, and South America have lain, priest-ridden at the feet of the pope, they must secure the future mothers of America to be pliant tools in their hands. For this purpose they make their convent schools “attractive,” not by thorough education, but by imparting showy accomplishments and by giving a pledge—constantly violated—not to interfere with the religious convictions of their pupils.

The New York Herald says there are 35,000 Protestant girls in Roman Catholic schools; and the Romanists claim that one out of every ten of these girls is converted to their faith, and that three out of ten are taught to hate Protestantism. So this is the way the religious convictions of pupils will not be interfered with. “’T would be just as sensible to put your finger in the flame and not expect to be burned.”

The “American Colony” is the name given to the Americans living permanently in Paris. Families reside there for years to educate their children, but there are hazards attending it. The number of young American girls that have become “converts,” as they are called in the Roman Church, is surprising to those who do not know the process by which the change is accomplished. Day by day, year after year, the proselyting process is ingeniously carried on, not, perhaps, by persuasions and arguments, but by familiarity with the Popish services, a heart hunger for something to break up the monotony of such a life, and above all, by those innumerable artful devices plied too successfully by the “sisters.”

Gavazzi styled convent life the “moral assassination of our sons and daughters.” In the time of Henry VIII. numbers of these nests of iniquity and hiding-places of sin were broken up. A correspondent of the London Record writes:—

“Having traveled considerably in Roman Catholic countries, I find that the monastic and conventual systems are fast dying out, while I regret to say that they are increasing in England and North America. Being in North America last year, I was very much grieved to find those ‘canker-worms’ of society spreading all over the Republic.”

There is a warning in all this to parents; if they would keep their daughters free from all Jesuitical influences, and within the church where they have received their first religious impressions, they must not place them within the reach of those whose whole lives are given to the cause of Rome, and whose principal object in existence is to seek proselytes. There is a warning, also, to our citizens. In every State there should be a law similar to Pennsylvania’s, providing for an annual inspection by examiners appointed by the Judges of the district where situated. Perhaps by putting these iniquitous institutions under rigid official espionage we may make them less formidable, if we cannot diminish their number.—Protestant Standard.