Repost: Our Boys; What Are We Doing for Them?

[51] In every well organized parish of any considerable size in this country, the religious and social instincts of the congregation are supplied with manifold outlets of activity through societies sufficiently diversified to meet the inclinations [52] of all. This is particularly true of city churches. Devotional, benevolent, educational, temperance and insurance societies flourish and bring forth admirable fruit among the men. Sodalities of various kinds help to preserve and stimulate the faith and virtue of our young women. The parochial school, or where its existence is not yet practicable, the Sunday school, shapes the young heart and mind in moulds of correct religious principles. In fact the entire line of defence [sic] against the inroads of infidelity and sinfulness seems strongly maintained; but while, in comparing our continued growth in strength with the manifest disintegration of the sects, we may take honorable pride in the possession of the principle that marks true progress, it would be folly not to admit at the same time the existence of weak spots in our safeguards here and there, which, as facts plainly prove, our enemy has discovered and taken advantage of.

We propose here briefly to point out one of these vulnerable spots and see how best we can repair and strengthen it. The period that elapses between the age of fifteen, when the average boy leaves school, and the attainment of his majority, is unquestionably a most important one in the formation of his character. During these years the imitative faculty, which is universally characteristic of childhood, becomes a dangerous element if unrestrained or not diverted into wholesome channels. Now it is a lamentable fact, the result presumably of our natural proneness to evil, that bad example is more readily followed than good, and, owing to the same inherent tendency, bad habits are more easily acquired and tenaciously adhered to than good ones. The early use of tobacco familiarly illustrates this inclination in vetitum among boys, and we know that the greater vices have a similar fascination and are proudly adopted by the boy who is physically almost a man in the same spirit of manhood mimicry. Habits of crime and carelessness among boys and young men are the logical consequence of this condition of things, and our reformatories and penal institutions contain emphatic evidence of youthful depravity, the result of uncontrolled boyhood. Besides these, what we may call extreme [53] cases, there is another class more numerous by far who go but seldom to Mass and never frequent the Sacraments, young men, too, who as boys in class room or Sunday school gave promise of unswerving fidelity to their religious duties; but the guardians of their souls lost sight of them for a few precious years and when next they met them were surprised to discover that so many of them had drifted far away from the fold.

It will be urged that we, the clergy, are not responsible for this, that the parents are the natural guardians of the child, and by divine right and obligation should keep their boys in the paths of duty so clearly staked out for them by the Church; moreover, the good influences of home should form an efficient antidote to the contagious poison of bad example. But as a matter of fact parents are not always alive to this duty, which is more difficult in the case of boys than of girls, for whom the ordinary safeguards of home generally suffice as a check to evil tendencies. There are, of course, many homes the atmosphere of which developes [sic] steady and good habits in boys, who subsequently become good young men. But the average boy is exposed to other influences equally or more powerful than those of the home circle. The boy of the laborer as a rule finds his attraction outdoors, especially at evenings, and fortunate is he if he escape the pitfalls which await his steps on all sides. The street corner has its quota of worthless young hoodlums who fairly revel in "manly" vice and vulgarity; the saloon, one of the Church's mightiest foes, opens its glistening doors—though unlawfully—eager to fill the places of those who are constantly falling from the dignity of customers to the degradation of victims; the cheap and nasty theatre [sic], conspicuously and immodestly advertised, abounding in immoral suggestiveness, attracts and corrupts him; add to this a passion, not uncommon, for flashy and criminal literature and the road to ruin stretches alluringly before him.

Where are we, the clergy, with the many soul-saving appliances at our disposal, in behalf of these victims? Can we stand by, with folded arms, watching the downward procession [54] of boys going to their ruin as they absorb the seeds of vice that permeate the atmosphere around them? It will not do to trust wholly to the moral strength that Christian education, and holy Mass, and the Sacraments have in the past supplied to destroy these pernicious germs, for evil is a ceaseless and a quick growth, especially in the youth. But what more can we do?

If it is an excellent thing to provide or encourage places where men can innocently or profitably spend an evening, such as the parish lyceums or society club rooms, and to establish also, where feasible, like institutions for young women; then a similar provision for the boy—who is father to the man—cannot be deemed less advantageous.

We venture to suggest that there should be in every parish large enough to afford it, some place where the boys, who will not spend their evenings at home (and often small blame to them for it), may congregate and occupy themselves harmlessly and pleasantly; a resort which will be an efficient counter-attraction to those places in which his morals would be in danger, where his natural buoyancy and love of amusement may find innocent scope in games, gymnastics, music, and light, clean reading, where, in short, the boy will be willingly kept under the protecting wing of Mother Church during these years which, perhaps, of his whole life are most fraught with danger.

There are, we know, parishes in which such provision is made for boys who have just left school. Readings and theatricals of a healthy and instructive character, drills, hours devoted to various branches of industrial training, relieved by games, music, and occasional out-door festivities, give interest and zest to the meetings and create an espirit de corps which rarely fails to do good service to the Church, not only in its parochial, but in its wider social relations.

But the subject deserves a larger share of attention than it actually receives, and it is with a view of eliciting discussion of it in the pages of the REVIEW that we have ventured to broach it here.

W. J. M.

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Source: W. J. M., "Our Boys; What Are We Doing for Them?," American Ecclesiastical Review 8 (January 1893): 51–54.