All these things come with our Catholic faith and practice if it is
rightly understood. Catholic family life, Catholic citizenship,
Catholic patriotism are the truest, the only really true, because the
only types of these virtues that are founded on truth. But they do not
come of themselves. Many will let themselves be carried to heaven, as
they hope, in the long-suffering arms of the Church without either
defending or adorning her by their virtues, and we shall but add to
their number if we do not kindle in the minds of children the ambition
to do something more, to devote themselves to the great Cause, by
self-sacrifice to be in some sort initiated into its spirit, and
identified with it, and thus to make it worth while for others as well
as for themselves that they have lived their life on earth. There is a
price to be paid for this, and they must face it; a good life cannot
be a soft life, and a great deal, even of innocent pleasure, has to be
given up, voluntarily, to make life worth living, if it were only as a
training in _doing without_.
Independence is a primary need for character, and independence can
only be learnt by doing without pleasant things, even unnecessarily.
Simplicity of life is an essential for greatness of life, and the very
meaning of the simple life is the laying aside of many things which
tend to grow by habit into necessities.
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