Raising a child in the faith
What if they will not come to Mass?
The fecundity of conjugal love cannot be reduced solely to the procreation of children, but must extend to their moral education and their spiritual formation. "The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute." GE 3. The right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable. Cf. FC 36.
Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. the home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery - the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the "material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones." CA 36 # 2. Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them:
He who loves his son will not spare the rod.... He who disciplines his son will profit by him. Sir 30:1-2. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Eph 6:4.
As long as a child lives at home with his parents, the child should obey his parents in all that they ask of him when it is for his good or that of the family. "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." Col 3:20; Cf. Eph 6:1. Children should also obey the reasonable directions of their teachers and all to whom their parents have entrusted them. But if a child is convinced in conscience that it would be morally wrong to obey a particular order, he must not do so. As they grow up, children should continue to respect their parents. They should anticipate their wishes, willingly seek their advice, and accept their just admonitions. Obedience toward parents ceases with the emancipation of the children; not so respect, which is always owed to them. This respect has its roots in the fear of God, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
When they become adults, children have the right and duty to choose their profession and state of life. They should assume their new responsibilities within a trusting relationship with their parents, willingly asking and receiving their advice and counsel. Parents should be careful not to exert pressure on their children either in the choice of a profession or in that of a spouse. This necessary restraint does not prevent them - quite the contrary from giving their children judicious advice, particularly when they are planning to start a family.
Through the grace of the sacrament of marriage, parents receive the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children. Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith of which they are the "first heralds" for their children. They should associate them from their tenderest years with the life of the Church. LG 11 # 2. A wholesome family life can foster interior dispositions that are a genuine preparation for a living faith and remain a support for it throughout one's life.
Education in the faith by the parents should begin in the child's earliest years. This already happens when family members help one another to grow in faith by the witness of a Christian life in keeping with the Gospel. Family catechesis precedes, accompanies, and enriches other forms of instruction in the faith. Parents have the mission of teaching their children to pray and to discover their vocation as children of God. Cf. LG 11. The parish is the Eucharistic community and the heart of the liturgical life of Christian families; it is a privileged place for the catechesis of children and parents.
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. Cf. GE 6. Public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise.
§1. According to their own vocation, those who live in the marital state are bound by a special duty to work through marriage and the family to build up the people of God.
§2. Since they have given life to their children, parents have a most grave obligation and possess the right to educate them. Therefore, it is for Christian parents particularly to take care of the Christian education of their children according to the doctrine handed on by the Church.
§1. Parents and those who take their place are bound by the obligation and possess the right of educating their offspring. Catholic parents also have the duty and right of choosing those means and institutions through which they can provide more suitably for the Catholic education of their children, according to local circumstances.
§2. Parents also have the right to that assistance, to be furnished by civil society, which they need to secure the Catholic education of their children.
In the work of education, the family forms man in the fullness of his personal dignity according to all his dimensions, including the social dimension. The family, in fact, constitutes “a community of love and solidarity, which is uniquely suited to teach and transmit cultural, ethical, social, spiritual and religious values, essential for the development and well-being of its own members and of society” Holy See, Charter of the Rights of the Family, Preamble, E, Vatican Polyglot Press, Vatican City 1983, p. 6.. By exercising its mission to educate, the family contributes to the common good and constitutes the first school of social virtue, which all societies need Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration Gravissimum Educationis, 3: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 731-732; Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 52: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 1073-1074; John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 37, 43: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 74 (1982) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1982), 127-129; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1653, 2228.. In the family, persons are helped to grow in freedom and responsibility, indispensable prerequisites for any function in society. With education, certain fundamental values are communicated and assimilated Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 43: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 74 (1982) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1982), 134-135..
The family has a completely original and irreplaceable role in raising children Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration Gravissimum Educationis, 3: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 731-732; Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 61: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 1081-1082; Holy See, Charter of the Rights of the Family, art. 5, Vatican Polyglot Press, Vatican City 1983, pp. 10-11; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2223. The Code of Canon Law devotes canons 793- 799 and canon 1136 to this right and duty of parents.. The parents' love, placing itself at the service of children to draw forth from them (“e-ducere”) the best that is in them, finds its fullest expression precisely in the task of educating. “As well as being a source, the parents' love is also the animating principle and therefore the norm inspiring and guiding all concrete educational activity, enriching it with the values of kindness, constancy, goodness, service, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice that are the most precious fruit of love” John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 36: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 74 (1982) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1982), 127.. The right and duty of parents to educate their children is “essential, since it is connected with the transmission of human life; it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children; and it is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others” John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 36: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 74 (1982) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1982), 126; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2221.. Parents have the duty and right to impart a religious education and moral formation to their children Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, 5: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 933; John Paul II, Message for the 1994 World Day of Peace, 5: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 86 (1994) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1994), 159-160., a right the State cannot annul but which it must respect and promote. This is a primary right that the family may not neglect or delegate.
Parents are the first educators, not the only educators, of their children. It belongs to them, therefore, to exercise with responsibility their educational activity in close and vigilant cooperation with civil and ecclesial agencies. “Man's community aspect itself — both civil and ecclesial — demands and leads to a broader and more articulated activity resulting from well-ordered collaboration between the various agents of education. All these agents are necessary, even though each can and should play its part in accordance with the special competence and contribution proper to itself” John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 40: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 74 (1982) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1982), 131.. Parents have the right to choose the formative tools that respond to their convictions and to seek those means that will help them best to fulfil their duty as educators, in the spiritual and religious sphere also. Public authorities have the duty to guarantee this right and to ensure the concrete conditions necessary for it to be exercised Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration Gravissimum Educationis, 6: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 733-734; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2229.. In this context, cooperation between the family and scholastic institutions takes on primary importance.
Parents have the right to found and support educational institutions. Public authorities must see to it that “public subsidies are so allocated that parents are truly free to exercise this right without incurring unjust burdens. Parents should not have to sustain, directly or indirectly, extra charges which would deny or unjustly limit the exercise of this freedom” Holy See, Charter of the Rights of the Family, art. 5 b, Vatican Polyglot Press, Vatican City 1983, p. 11; cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dignitatis Humanae, 5: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 933.. The refusal to provide public economic support to non-public schools that need assistance and that render a service to civil society is to be considered an injustice. “Whenever the State lays claim to an educational monopoly, it oversteps its rights and offends justice ... The State cannot without injustice merely tolerate so-called private schools. Such schools render a public service and therefore have a right to financial assistance” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Libertatis Conscientia, 94: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 79 (1987) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1987), 595-596..
The family has the responsibility to provide an integral education. Indeed, all true education “is directed towards the formation of the human person in view of his final end and the good of that society to which he belongs and in the duties of which he will, as an adult, have a share” Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration Gravissimum Educationis, 1: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 729.. This integrality is ensured when children — with the witness of life and in words — are educated in dialogue, encounter, sociality, legality, solidarity and peace, through the cultivation of the fundamental virtues of justice and charity Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 43: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 74 (1982) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1982), 134-135.. In the education of children, the role of the father and that of the mother are equally necessary. Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 52: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 1073-1074. The parents must therefore work together. They must exercise authority with respect and gentleness but also, when necessary, with firmness and vigor: it must be credible, consistent, and wise and always exercised with a view to children's integral good.
Parents have, then, a particular responsibility in the area of sexual education. It is of fundamental importance for the balanced growth of children that they are taught in an orderly and progressive manner the meaning of sexuality and that they learn to appreciate the human and moral values connected with it. “In view of the close links between the sexual dimension of the person and his or her ethical values, education must bring the children to a knowledge of and respect for moral norms as the necessary and highly valuable guarantee for responsible personal growth in human sexuality” John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 37: AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 74 (1982) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1982), 128; cf. Pontifical Council for the Family, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality: Guidelines for Education within the Family (8 December 1995), Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1995.. Parents have the obligation to inquire about the methods used for sexual education in educational institutions in order to verify that such an important and delicate topic is dealt with properly.