Preaching by St. Alphonsus de Liguori
Fathers should not allow their children to read
romances. These sometimes do more harm than even
obscene books; they put fantastical notions and affections into young persons heads,
which destroy all devotion, and afterwards impel them to give themselves
up to sin. "Vain reading," says St. Bonaventure,
"begets vain thoughts and extinguishes devotion."
Make your children read spiritual books, ecclesiastical histories, and the lives of the saints.
And here I repeat:
Do not allow your daughters to be taught their lessons
by a man, though he be a St. Paul or a St. Francis of
Assisi. The saints are in heaven.
5. Be careful, also, not to permit your sons to act
plays, nor even to be present at an immodest comedy. St.
Cyprian says: "Who went chaste to the play, returned
unchaste." A young man or woman goes to the play
full of modesty and in the grace of God, and returns
home without modesty and at enmity with God.
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