The Teaching of the Catholic Church on Home Schooling
Parents for Eternal Life
Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
Why should we ask the question, “What is the
teaching of the Catholic Church on Home Schooling?”
The reason is obvious: Because we are Roman
Catholics!
We know how much emphasis the Church had placed
for generations on Catholic education, and for generations people came to
practically equate Catholic education with institutional education. Home
schooling as home education had not been the focus of the Church’s magisterial
teaching until fairly recent times. We might say it was taken for granted.
But no more. The rise of global secularism
on every level of modern life has placed the Church on guard. Her authoritative
stress is now more than ever on the role of parents as the primary teachers
of their children.
The most recent and authoritative ecclesiastical
documentation on this subject is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
issued by Pope John Paul II on the very day of the five hundredth anniversary
of the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.
The key word that stands out in the Church’s
teaching on home schooling is the word “primary”.
Parents’ responsibility to educate their children
is primary. This means, it is their first responsibility. It is primordial;
it is inalienable; it is almost impossible to provide an adequate
substitute.
It is critically important to understand what
the Church means when she says that parents have the primary right and duty
to teach their children.
After all, there is a primacy in what the
children are being taught.
- They can be taught how to walk and how to talk.
- They can be taught how to read and write.
- They can be taught arithmetic, and spelling and history and geography.
All of these things they can be taught and should
be taught. But what they mainly need is to know why God made them; why they
are on earth at all; why they are in this world; that they are here in this
life in order to prepare and train themselves for the world to come. In a word,
children are to be taught that their short stay here in time is only a preparation
for the world that will never end. They are to be trained for heaven.
That is why the subtitle of my talk to you is,
“Parents for Eternal Life”.
Having said this, we are now in a position to
get into the principal message I wish to share with you. It can be stated in
a single declarative, or shall I say imperative statement: The Church teaches
that, “Under God, parents are the first in time, first in authority,
first in responsibility, first in supernatural ability, and first
in dignity to educate their children for eternal life.”
Parents as Primary Educators
Even a generation ago, most people assumed that
parents are the primary educators. Certainly over the centuries the primacy
of parents as educators of their children was taken for granted. But then a
number of things occurred which have put parents on the defensive as the main
teachers of their children.
Nothing could be plainer than the directive
of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, stating that parents
must “teach their children to avoid the compromising and degrading influences
which threaten human societies” (2224).
In one country after another, the State came
to monopolize education from pre-school kindergarten through childhood and adolescence
and young adulthood. In materially affluent societies like the United States
and Canada, compulsory education by agencies controlled by the State became
the law of the land.
Those in control of the government began to
dictate what should be taught to the children, who should do the teaching, how
the teachers are themselves to be trained. And unless the teachers were approved
by the government, they were forbidden to teach.
But that was not all. Teachers’ associations
were formed, which have become dictators in the education of our children.
These associations are supported by political power, which makes parents second
citizens. Either parents conform to this dictatorship or they are forbidden
to teach their children.
The phenomenon of day-care-centers that have
spanned throughout North America is only a symptom of this State dictatorship
in the education of children from their tenderest years in infancy.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. For
over two centuries in our country dedicated and consecrated men and women -
priest, religious and the laity - operated our Catholic school systems. It
became the envy of other nations. I remember a bishop friend of mine telling
me about his audience with Pope Paul VI in Rome. The Holy Father asked the
bishop, “What has happened to your thousands of Sisters in America who have
been doing such wonderful work in Catholic schools teaching tens of thousands
of children their faith and preparing them for a good moral life here on earth
and for heaven in eternity?” At this point, the bishop told me, the Pope broke
down in tears; he wept over the breakdown of so many once-flourishing teaching
orders of men and women who sustained, what had been a Catholic, Catholic school
system in North America.
We go on. We are asking ourselves what happened.
What is it that now, more than ever before in the history of our country, makes
it absolutely necessary, under God, for parents to realize that they,
they are the primary teachers of their children?
What has happened? Beyond all that we have
so far said, in nominally Catholic circles, there has grown an avalanche of
ideas that are contrary to the teachings of Christ and His Church.
We now have professed Catholics in positions
of great influence who are teaching that:
- Christ was a human person like the rest of
us, subject to the same passions as we. When the movie, “The Last Temptation
of Christ” was to be released, I spoke by telephone to the producer in Hollywood.
I pleaded with him not to release this blasphemous film. He told me the film
was produced under the guidance of a priest theologian, whom I know personally.
He was one of the leading “dissenters” from the Church’s teaching authority.
- Catholics are now being taught that the Pope
is not the supreme teacher of faith and morals in the Catholic Church. Bishops,
either individually or in their national conferences have the right to reinterpret
papal teaching. They did this in 1968, when the same Pope Paul VI issued Humanae
Vitae, in which he declared that contraception is a grave sin against God.
- Catholics are now being taught that homosexuality
is a natural inclination that some people have; therefore, we are to recognize
that sodomy is normal for some people. Homosexuals, actively practicing sodomy
are provided with parishes and pastoral care - under the guise of Dignity, in
open defiance to Catholic morality as taught since the dawn of Christianity.
Pope John Paul II could not be plainer in his
masterful Catechesi Tradendae (Catechesis in Our Time). He says
two things:
- First, “I cannot insist too strongly on the
early initiation by Christian parents in which the child’s faculties are integrated
into a living relationship with God” (36).
- Second, “The person who becomes a disciple
of Christ has the right to receive ‘the word of faith’ not in mutilated, falsified
or diminished form, but whole and entire, in all its rigor and vigor” (30).
Parents for Eternal Life
So the litany of secularism goes on. Its most
principal target is our children.
This then brings us face to face with the gravest
duty of believing Catholic parents. They must be convinced that their primary
responsibility as parents is to prepare the children that God gave them - for
eternal life.
Yes, parents are the primary teachers of their
children in all that pertains to the children’s lives here on earth. But that
is not all. That is not primary!
What is primary? The parents’ most fundamental
duty is to prepare their children for eternity.
Pope John Paul again is blunt in his insistence
that children be taught the fullness of God’s revealed truth. There is no valid
reason for refusing Christ any part of that knowledge. “What kind of catechesis
would it be,” he asks, “if it (that) failed to give their full place:
- to man’s creation and sin;
- to God’s plan of redemption and its long,
loving preparation and realization;
- to the Incarnation of the Son of God;
- to Mary, the Immaculate One, the Mother of
God, ever Virgin, raised body and soul to the glory of heaven and to her
role in the mystery of salvation;
- to the mystery of lawlessness at work in our
lives and the power of God freeing us from it;
- to the need for penance and asceticism;
- to the sacramental and liturgical actions;
- to the reality of the Eucharistic Presence;
- to participation in the divine life here and hereafter.”
No wonder, Pope John Paul II, in the same document
makes the historic statement, which I quote verbatim:
“In places where widespread unbelief or invasive
secularism makes real religious growth practically impossible, ‘the church of
the home’ remains the one place where children and young people can receive
an authentic catechesis. Thus there cannot be too great an effort on the part
of Christian parents to prepare for this ministry of being their own children’s
catechists and to carry it out with tireless zeal” (68).
Words could not be plainer, nor the Church’s
authorization of home schooling more supportive.
Grace of Matrimony
Back to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
We are told the one reason; I should say the main reason, why Catholic parents
are the primary teachers of their children is because they have the supernatural
grace to do so. In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
“Through the grace of the sacrament of marriage, parents receive the responsibility
and privilege of evangelizing their children” (2225).
What does this mean? It means that parents,
more than anyone else, have the supernatural light to know and the strength
to choose what, before God, the children need in this life as a prelude for
the life to come.
After all, the only purpose that God has in
having parents here on earth, is that they might raise families for everlasting
life in heaven.
As Christ made so plain, after the last day
there will be no marriage, or giving in marriage after the last day of what
we call this world. Why not? Because the quota of those who are destined for
eternal happiness will be complete.
Parents must always keep this vision clearly
in their minds: we are fathers and mothers of children for heaven. Our one
hope is to be reunited in heaven with our families, and children and grandchildren
and great, great grandchildren, in the everlasting City of Jerusalem which is
our heavenly home.
How are Parents to Become Primary Educators
Needless to say, the vision we are describing
can remain just that: a vision. It can be an ideal or even a dream.
But God wants it to be a reality. This, I am
convinced, is the providential reason that God has allowed so many forces of
error and evil to plague the modern world: and, with emphasis, on our American
society.
Where sin abounds, St. Paul tells us, there
grace even more abounds. In His providence, God wants to wake parents up from
their lethargy. He wants them to open the eyes of their faith and see what
is going on. He wants them to come out of the dream that so many parents are
still sleeping in - and arouse them to the gravest, and I mean gravest, duty
they have before God. What is that - to pay whatever price they have to, in
order to educate their children for eternal life.
Of course this will not be easy. Of course
parents with this faith vision will be criticized, even ostracized. Of course
parents will have to give up many things that the modern world has provided
in such profusion for their own and their families’ enjoyment here on earth.
But the price is worth it. When Christ told
us, “Take up your cross daily and follow me,” He was speaking not only to individuals
in general, but especially to parents.
To be the primary educators of their children
for eternal life is not easy for parents. It never has been since the dawn
of Christianity.
But in today’s world: intoxicated with its own
pride, addicted to its own pleasures, indoctrinated in its own faith – that
only temporal life exists and eternal life is a mirage - to become parents of
eternal life demands heroism.
Only heroic parents can be parents for eternal
life. But let us not be afraid. Christ told us, “Have confidence, I have overcome
the world.” So can we parents, provided we believe that the Son of Mary is the
Son of the Eternal God; provided we trust that His promises to us will certainly
be fulfilled; and provided we love God so much that no sacrifice is too great
to bring our families, with us, to that everlasting home for which we were made.
PRAYER
Mary, Mother of the Holy Family, obtain for
all Catholic parents the grace to raise their children for a heavenly eternity.
Teach us parents to do everything which your
Divine Son tells us to do. If we do, we shall be reunited, not only as families;
we shall join the Family of the Most Holy Trinity.
Make us parents courageous and firm and clear:
that we are the primary teachers of our children to prepare them for that final
graduation and the first day of a heavenly eternity. Amen.
Copyright © 1998 Inter Mirifica
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