My husband and I were hanging out a few days ago with another Catholic couple here where we live in South Asia. They’re from the US and have one wee one with number two on the way. They’re great company indeed.
We got talking about their plans, most likely to move back to the US in a few years when the kids are ready to start school. We got onto the question of the kids schooling – what the options are in their area. All four of us went to public, non-religious primary schools for various reasons.
Where we live, despite Christians being less than 2% of the population, the Catholic primary schools are the best in the country. The reality is that almost none of the students in those Catholic schools are Catholic because by and large Catholics in this country are dirt poor. The schools are filled with mainly Muslim students who can afford it (which isn’t to say there aren’t millions of dirt poor Muslims here too). I’m not sure what the RE classes are like in a Catholic school where 95% of students are Muslim…that’d be interesting.
Anyhow, I digress a bit. All of us went to Catholic high schools and all agreed that we’d want the same for our kids – a good, solid, faithful Catholic community during those potentially turbulent, hormonal, ‘I’m-figuring-out-who-I-am’ years. In the US, this is a lot easier to do where the probability of landing on a faithful and orthodox Catholic high school is much higher than in New Zealand. I had one too many RE classes that started with, “This is what the Church teaches, but…”.
However, we were all a little less certain on the question of primary school. In the case of our friends, the Catholic schools in their home city are prohibitively expensive in all cases (and limited scholarships are only available to those under a certain income threshold). We’re talking more than the cost of a Bachelors degree per year. If they had to make the choice between a Catholic primary school or a Catholic high school, they’d take the latter, and even that will require enormous financial sacrifice. We were all in admiration for those who manage to home school too but they weren’t sure they’d be capable of that. Finally, we weren’t convinced that sending your child to a Catholic primary school would automatically eliminate those typical schoolyard issues – bullying, negative peer pressure, academic challenges. But then, we all went to public schools, so we haven’t got a lot to compare with.
In any case, we all recognised that of course, the family life, the ‘domestic church’ is the most importance place where children learn the faith, and agreed that as parents we’d have the primary responsibility to bring our kids up in the faith with charity, hope and love (see the Catechism 2223).
Keen to make sure we didn’t head too much further without checking in with the Church on this one…regardless of our own childhood experiences…we headed to the Catechism to know what the Church teaches on making decisions for your kids’ education:
2229 As those first responsible for the education of their children, parents have the right to choose a school for them which corresponds to their own convictions. This right is fundamental. As far as possible parents have the duty of choosing schools that will best help them in their task as Christian educators. Public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise.
As is frequently the case in Catholic teaching, the Catechism doesn’t impose concrete, black-and-white requirements upon parents – e.g. “You must send your children to a Catholic school or home school them if there is no Catholic school available.” She lays out the principle and leaves it up to the individual faithful to, with a well-informed conscience and a pure heart, make the decision they believe will best support them in raising their children in the faith. The Church is very wary of imposing obligations or non-negotiables – only those that are absolutely essential to salvation (reception of the Eucharist at least once a year, Sunday Mass, sacrament of reconciliation once a year, baptism, all that which protects the sanctity of life and the conjugal bond etc…). My understanding is that the Church recognizes the diversity of concrete day-to-day life in terms of the options available to Catholics, and to Catholic parents. The more ‘absolute rules’, the less space there is for individual persons to exercise free will and choose, engaging their reason and conscience, to do something out of love for the Lord. Unfortunately, a quick internet search made it clear that some Catholics thought there was no ‘choice’ on the question of public/Catholic/home-schooling (like this one that call it a ‘sin’ to send your kids to a public school). To be frank (since this is Being Frank), is it really wise/necessary/appropriate to speak in such black and white terms when the Catechism clearly states that parents have the fundamental right to choose a schooling option that corresponds to their convictions and that will best aid them in the faith (which may not be the local Catholic school if it’s prohibitively expensive/elitist/unfaithful/a combination of all those three or more)?
What do you guys think? Especially those who went through Catholic primary schools and/or are sending their kids to one now…
“the animus against religion is natural–if we understand the ambitions of the modern state.”
http://catholicexchange.com/public-and-religious-education-letat-cest-tout/
My brother and his wife home schooled their five children and those children are growing into clear minded individuals for whom ‘peer’ doesn’t mean ‘pressure’. Catholicism, however, has been bowing to ‘peer’ pressure now for decades. Public school, catholic school – as ‘catholic’ becomes increasingly nominal – a word signifing a word – where’s the difference anymore?
“In front of St Francis’ Basilica where, perished by the cold, each one seemed to draw closer in that elbow-to-elbow finale (John Paul II was beside the Dalai Lama), when some young Jews leaped up on to the platform to offer olive branches to us, and to Muslims first of all, I found myself wiping the tears from my own face…”Spirit of Assisi”, come upon us all!
Card. Roger Etchegaray
The ‘spirit of assisi’ is what Catholicism invokes all too often nowadays far and wide, a catholicism who’s main aim seems to bow to all ‘peer pressure’ coming from other world views (after all catholicism must learn that it is just one kind of ‘truth’ amongst many, so what is Catholic? The Catechism? The essentials of the faith became suggestions under JPII – everyone baptised or not, shares in the grace of baptism, the eucharist is simply something to be shared amongst believers and non believers alike, those who’ve never and will never go to confession are not weighed to hell by unconfessed sins since Redemption is now Universal, belief or no belief. After JPII’s Theologies of the Body, we need not really concern ourselves with thinking that purity is something one must sacrifice for and seek after – Pope John Paul II: Doubts About a Beatification by Fr. Patrick De La Rocque.
Indro Montanelli, after a conversation he had with John Paul II and after calling him “a subversive Pope”, asked himself: “… but what Church does he have in mind? … Toward what kind of Church, will Pope John Paul II set off the Catholic one? … I knew, or thought I understood, that this Pope would leave behind a pile of rubble: that of the authoritarian and hierarchical structure of the Roman Curia. Now I understand that this perception was a vaguely catastrophic error, yes, but by default; as that which Pope John Paul II will leave behind, is not only the ruins of the Roman Curia but of the Church, at least of that one which we have been accustomed to for two thousand years and regard as such and that which we, the laity, ourselves, have in our blood.” (Indro Montanelli – Corriere della Sera, March 9, 2000).
if Rome is happy to bow to ‘peer pressure’, is it any wonder catholic education has followed suit?
Its an interesting world isn’t it Tuppence.
You asked this question, which made me wonder too.
I’m not sure what the RE classes are like in a Catholic school where 95% of students are Muslim…that’d be interesting.
I met a teacher from Lebanon in the last couple of years and the school she taught in was about 50% Muslim…she seemed to think the school did a good job as a melting pot.
I came across an article in the UK where some Catholic schools were 90-95% Muslim. The headmaster of one said the Muslim children attended Mass and RE classes. The teachings of Jesus were taught. I thought that an interesting comment…the teachings of Jesus. I wondered how they got around teaching WHO Jesus was…if they did. The headmaster said they followed the Diocese religious education curriculum. I wonder what that’s like?
That’s the danger I think…the divinity of Jesus could go out the window…in which case he just joins a long line of spiritual teachers. I wonder if, when these children’s parents enrolled them they were told that the school teaches definitively the Trinity and the divinity of Christ whether they would still enrol them? Perhaps they are told that…I don’t know. If they do good for them. Perhaps they think faith in Christ is better caught than taught? Interesting.
On the other hand I found this about Indonesia.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/01/17/catholic-schools-blitar-agree-provide-islamic-lessons.html
Withhope
I think the best way to understand Blessed John Paul II and the Church in relation to Mission (which the encountering and evangelisation of the world beyond the practising Catholic faithful) is to read the encyclical letter by him called Redemptoris Missio.
I think it overturns any suggestion of syncretism or a weakening of mission in order to convert others to Christ. What has been written is stronger than impressions gained by onlookers to what seem symbolic actions by John Paul II…including kissing the Quran. I don’t know why he did it but his written word is stronger than what I thought about things like that.
Pope John Paul II said this in Redemptoris Missio, 55; “I recently wrote to the bishops of Asia: “Although the Church gladly acknowledges whatever is true and holy in the religious treaditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam as a reflection of that truth which enlightens all people, this does not lessen her duty and resolve to proclaim without fail Jesus Christ who is ‘the way, and the truth and the life.’…The fact that the followers of other religions can receive God’s grace and be saved by Christ apart from the ordinary means which he has established does not thereby cancel the call to faith and baptism which God wills for all people….Dialogue should be conducted and implemented with the conviction that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation and that she alone possesses the fullness of the means of salvation.
(the italics above were in the printed text of the encyclical…the point being emphasised).
Withhope: I think the problem is that we need to recognise that the Church is the ordinary means established by Christ by which humanity enter in the salvific grace of salvation in Christ. That is what we know and is revealed faith. What we also know is that while God is faithful to the Church God is entirely free to save beyond the Church, though in mystery this Grace would also come through the Church in this world. It enters into the realm of speculation but must be as God is God and not bound to the visible Church only. The point is it doesn’t let us off the hook re evangelisation in order to Baptise into the visible Church.
“What we also know is that while God is faithful to the Church God is entirely free to save beyond the Church, though in mystery this Grace would also come through the Church in this world.”
I agree with what you mean – but I do not think the above setnece is technically accurate.
Here’s food for thought:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dcfj0PU_JQ
There is no perfect act of charity without there being first God’s Grace. If expressing perfect charity is an individual’s response to that Grace then there is hope. Love remains eternal when faith and hope end and so those who co-operate with God in perfect charity belong with God. We could never know this or define its extent or limitations…This is the work of Christ for all…but its a mystery and we can only hope that Grace offered is graciously received somehow, somewhere, sometime by all.
But the only certainty we know is that Baptism saves and so we evangelise in order to Baptise.
God’s Grace in Christ is given through the Church from the eternal realm via the sacramental world and enters the created order…the work of the Holy Spirit.
Some great comments there – thanks guys. I second Benedicta’s quote of JPII …and well, anything that JPII and Benedict have to say, count me in, by virtue of the fact that they’re the Holy Fathers…I’m not about to make myself ‘more Catholic than the Pope’ per se…but I think a lot of people ran away with JPII’s words in practice…took them further than he intended (and not because he wasn’t clear what he intended…).
Hi Tuppence
Re the Catholic schools with extraordinary roles of non-Catholic and probably Muslim students is a challenging phenomenon. It seems to be happening occasionally even in Britain.
What an opportunity! Hopefully the Muslim majority countries will let the schools teach a Christianity which is faithful to the humanity and divinity of Christ and the schools in Britain won’t surrender their particular Catholic identity to become what appears to be a more inclusive ‘faith school’.
Interesting things happen in the global encounter.
Best wishes for your commitments and efforts at that level.