Catholics, Bolsheviks: Know the Difference

Who hasn't heard the “famous Jesuit maxim,” “give me a child for the first seven years, and I'll give you the man”?

Usually, no specific author is given. It's just a “Jesuit maxim.” Sometimes it is cited as “attributed to” St. Ignatius Loyola, or “attributed to” St. Francis Xavier—but it shows up nowhere in their copious writings.

Get this: it seems to actually have come from that seminal Jesuit thinker, Vladimir Illyich Lenin.

What he actually said was, “Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”

The thought fits well with the Marxist notion of the infinite malleability of man. But not with Catholic beliefs about man's nature: trifles like free will.