THE Pittsburg Catholic, of January 14, notes that “Governor Hastings, in his message, deplores the fact that official statistics show that crime is increasing at a [76] more rapid ratio than our population,” and adds: “Building additional prisons will not prove a preventive. When the growing generation is trained in morality, as it is in secular knowledge, the State may look for a decrease. The education from which God is banished is the root of the evil.”
The “root of the evil” is the depravity of human nature; and only that which will change that nature can prove a remedy. Will training the growing generation “in morality” avert the evil? The Roman Catholic Church trains the growing generation of her adherents in “morality,” but criminal statistics do not speak more favorably for that class of our citizens than for any other. The morality which will restrain people from crime is that which is taught to individuals by the Holy Spirit, through the Word of God; and that morality does not come through any secular channel.