The Truth Shall Make You Free

This is Part 2 of a series of articles on How to End Abortion written by Fr. Anthony Mellace (drdavila@aol.com) and is published here with his permission. Fr. Mellace has a new website: http://www.freehorizon.org/.

In this article, Fr. Mellace discusses the importance of true education.

How to End Abortion: Part II - The Truth Shall Make You Free

The second thing to do in order to end abortion is to be educated in the matter. Before I get into this, however, I would like to say something about education itself. The object of education is to come to freedom, whether internal or external. Education has to free our youth or else it is not education. A young man or woman educated to generous love, a sense of law, dedication to others, a respect for human life, etc. becomes liberated. Education does not mean that we are to produce a generation of consumers. It does not mean that we are to form a group of technocrats geared for scientific discoveries. This is simply the fruit of a materialistic society.

What we need to teach to our youth is truth and goodness. When youth have knowledge of the good, then they will want to possess and love it. A young man’s or woman’s will also needs to be guided and perfected and not only his intellect. It is amazing how many people in America are greatly informed about so many things, but the formation of their will is nil. Intellectualism is not the answer to our problems.

The first school of education is in the family. All the psychological traumas, bad examples, ignorant ideas and discriminating attitudes start in this environment. The places where the youth work, study, sing, dance and pray will also influence them to either respect human life or destroy it. Emotional suffering, lack of love and affection, disillusions, friendships, social customs, laws, popular opinions, gossip and broken relationships all will affect a young man or woman in his educative process and outlook on life itself.

Youth have an innate tendency toward heroism and if this aspiration is not fulfilled, they will turn it against themselves and society. Instead of becoming heroes and martyrs for the good (because of a family or society that frustrated such ideals and dreams) they will become drug addicts, alcoholics, ambitious materialists and socialists. Such energy in youth needs to be recognized, gathered, accepted and channeled into right use. It must not be denied nor suffocated. Youth need to know that the truth exists of its own nature and not because it is based on the word of some authority. They therefore are to sincerely dedicate themselves to its search throughout their lives. Our teachers and parents are to help us to come to this awareness and not to mislead us. Those who deny the truth to youth show their own incompetence, cowardice and despair and frustrate these young people in their search for it.

Those involved in the formation of youth need to be a rock, guide, light and beacon for them. They are not to deceive them, since the youth have need of this help. Youth today have nowhere to go and will be lost without a reference for truth. The search for truth, finally, has to be a humble and sincere one.

Once the intelligence is fed with the truth, moral education will come as natural result. It will not be necessary to educate the will since practical reason will take care of this itself. Practical reason is educated through the presentation of principles that influence the will. It is due to this mistrust of reason that so many Catholic schools invented hundreds of rules and regulations that really annoyed the students in them. It is for this motive, too, that a great number of these religious schools and their educational systems failed miserably.

Father Anthony Mellace