If I shall be lifted up, I shall draw all things to myself, said our Lord speaking of the new life to be given to men by his redemption. ‘All things’—every faculty of man, every from of human experience; indeed, everything that man does and is, save for sin alone, is drawn into Christ and into his life. Apart from sin there is nothing which cannot partake in and be an expression of the eternal life of Christ endlessly renewing itself in time and place by the sacraments of his presence. ‘This is the bread that gives life to the world.’ And what is this bread? ‘This is my body.’ The bread is Christ himself. And what is the life? It is his life—‘I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me’. Without Christ there can be no life.

The title of this address may sound to you a little tough and abstract, yet it is a good subject for this afternoon’s meeting because you are all parents, and each parent has a Person, often several persons, your children, in whom you are deeply interested, and for whose welfare and education you are personally responsible, since God has chosen you to co-operate with him in bringing them into being, and in preparing them for their independent lire as persons in the world.

Now I am not a parent and it would be impertinent for me to try to teach you your job as parents in detail. What I want to do this afternoon is to remind you of certain basic principles underlying the true notion of education. Principles are important; without them we can never really understand any problem, and this is a problem it is supremely important to understand thorghly.

In English universities there has been a growing awareness during the last dozen years or so of the need to integrate science with other sources of knowledge, even with religious knowledge: this independently of any specific Catholic investiga tion. Faculties of the history and philosophy of science have been started, in which undergraduates reading science can spend a year either before or after taking their degree. It is important for schools to be aware of this, not only because they will be sending pupils on to the university, but because young science teachers will increasingly have their eyes turned towards the implication of their subject beyond the narrow limits of an examination syllabus, and in Catholic schools in particular towards religious instruction. In this moreover they will have greater help from books than has been available in the past.

The whole man must be the holy man, the deprivations of evil made good, the darkness of sin enlightened, the faculties and powers of mind and body integrated and controlled by the will, the whole fired by the flame of charity. This is God's will for each of us, the work which never ceases and at which we must hammer day by day. Everyone concerned with the religious education of children must have these considerations in mind. But who are they? All too often the phrase is taken in tthe narrow sense of the school teacher, or the priest who teaches the catechism class. ‘They’ will prepare him for his first Confession, his first Holy Communion, and in due time for Confirmation. The responsibility is ‘theirs’. There are signs that this attitude is beginning to change, but do we as teachers relize sufficiently the delicate balance between the contributions of home, church and school?