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4th Pastoral Letter of the Bishop of Acqui

happen, unfortunately, that a child surrounded by a thousand
cares within the family may fall victim to the seductions of a
bad companion and lose its innocence miserably because of a
lack of vigilance outside the home.
It is true that in spite of all your vigilance, you will not
always succeed in rescuing your dear children from every
danger, and even if you were to succeed, that innate inclination
to evil which is the effect of original sin and common to all the
children of Adam, would be enough to put them in danger of
some fault, or make them yield to evil tendencies and dispose
them to bad habits. For you therefore, dear parents, there begins
another duty to be accomplished with every care: that of timely
correction.
May you keep far from you, O fathers and mothers, O
teachers of the young, that false tenderness that prevents you
from addressing a word of reproof to your children; from
making them shed a tear, and which renders you so tolerant of
their defects as to make light of them or laugh them off.
Whereby children taking advantage of such thoughtless
condescension and looking upon it almost as a tacit approval of
their action, not only do they not correct themselves, but they
fall every day into worse faults. God does not want that, having
become incorrigible, they cause you affliction and tears, as well
as becoming a cause for remorse due to your having neglected to
admonish them seriously and correct them on time.
With this we do not mean to say that we must always be
severe with children and nothing excuse because of the
tenderness of their age. They are certainly blameworthy those
fathers who treat their children with excessive rigor, or who
reprove them for their faults only with bitter words full of
threats and anger; even (and would that it were not) with
imprecations accompanied by brutal punishments. Such fathers,
instead of correcting, ruin their offsprings and impel them to
further wrong doing.

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