"The very grave question you have
put to me has given me much anxiety. It
could not but do so since it occupied, I knew,
so fully your own holy reflections. I pondered
it during the night while I repeated one
hundred Aves on my knees, and I think the
Blessed Virgin has vouchsafed her assistance.
"I understood you to say you thought that
the physical health of the infant, so singularly
and miraculously thrown upon your care,
required the offices of his heretic mother, and
yet that you felt how inconsistent it was with
the noble future we contemplate for him, that
he should receive unorthodox lacteal sustentation.
In this you are but following the
usage of the Church in all ages, for She has
ever enjoined the advantage of infusing Her
doctrines into Her children with the mother's
milk.
"Three courses only appear to me to be
open to us. First, we may try to work upon
the mother's feelings, and on behalf of her
child induce her to avail herself of the
inestimable privileges of the Church in which
he is fostered. Secondly, should she repel us
—and these lower class heretics are even
brutally refractory—we might at least allure
her to allow us to make with holy water the
sign of the Cross upon the natural reservoirs
of infant nourishment each time before she
approaches the infant. This, besides overcoming
the immediate difficulty and securing
for the child a supply of sanctified food, might
open the way for the entrance into her own
bosom of the milk of the word. Thirdly,
should she reject these proposals, I see nothing
for it but to forbid her to have access to
her infant, and, commending him to the care
of the Holy Mother, to feed him with pap or
other suitable nourishment, previously consecrated
by me in its crude state, and prepared
by the most holy hands of your community.
Thus we may hope to shield the
young soul in its present freshness from
contact with carnal elements.
"Your loving Father in, &c.,
"CERTIFICATUS.''
