The Catholic Home

THE Christian family is the unit which goes to build up the Catholic Church. To vary the metaphor, the Holy Family of Nazareth was the mustard-seed out of which the vast tree of the Universal Church has grown. In Joseph and Mary and the Holy Child we have the prototypes and models of the Father, the Mother, and the children who form the Catholic Family. Indeed, it is the ideal of the Family which pervades the whole constitution and life of the Church. Our Lord in His parables frequently refers to Almighty God as the Father of the family (paterfamilias), or simply as the Father. Think of the touching parable of the Prodigal Son. Christ taught us when we pray to address God as "Our Father." St. Paul tells us that after Him "all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named" (Eph. iii. IS). As Joseph, the foster-father, or legal father, of Christ in the home of Nazareth was, as spiritual writers tell us, the vicar er vicegerent of the Heavenly Father on earth-so that Mary could call him to her Divine Son, " Thy father" (Luke ii. 48)-so do we style the vicar or vicegerent of Our Lord on earth, the visible head of His Church, the " Holy Father." And we love to speak of the Church herself as " Holy Mother Church," and are proud to call ourselves her children. Everywhere the same analogy of the Family life and relationship-Father, Mother, Children. The Christian Family, then, is a very sacred thing. I t is God's ordinary means for the salvation of souls. The Christian Home is a shrine, an ark in which is preserved the priceless treasure of the Faith, and with it the virtues of the Christian life and heritage. Any book which makes us realize better these great truths; which teaches us love and reverence for the Christian family and home and home-life; which teaches parents the sublimity of their office in God's plans and raises up their thoughts I to a higher conception of their privileges and duties; which teaches the adolescent the true sanctity and beauty of home, and, whilst filling them with a loving appreciation of what they owe to their parents, helps them to prepare themselves for the privileges and duties of Christian parenthood in God's good time-such a book is likely to produce very great good, not only spiritual, but even social, in these dark and deplorable days of materialism andthe forgetfulness of man's higher destinies. But the little book before us seems to me to fulfil this task with a quite unusual measure of success. It handles great and often very delicate problems with theological clearness and sureness, combined with great reverence. It inspires an enthusiasm for the high, sacred ideals of family and home. I hope it will be very widely read by parents-especially by young parents-and by young married couples and youths and maidens who are preparing for the holy state of Matrimony. In these times, when so much pernicious teaching is widespread in literature and on the platform concerning the marriage tie and its obligations, it is well that the sane authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church should be clearly set before men's minds.