Back to School: Choosing a Catholic School

Catholic Online ^ | 8/1/08 | Deacon Keith Fournier

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The expression “back to school” is a bit of a misnomer when we understand the teaching of the Catholic Church on the nature and vocation of the Christian family. The family is the first school and the home is the first school house. Parents are the first teachers of their children. Also, a polestar of Western educational law for centuries was that teachers acted “in loco parentis”, in the place of the parents, meaning at their direction.

When Christian parents send their children “back to school”, they are really extending their educational mission to teachers and entrusting their treasured children to others. That is why the Catholic Catechism and Catholic Social Teaching treats that choice as an issue of Social Justice and insists that all parents should have a right to choose from among all the various options, the school which is best for their children, no matter what their economic conditions. Many will choose Catholic Schools. Many more should be able to do so and this is an important issue for Catholics and other Christians to consider in exercising their right to vote.

These parents make great sacrifices to send their children to Catholic Schools. They do so because they want them to have a Catholic Education. Of course they want the academic excellence which is clearly a part of the Catholic educational system. However, they could find academic excellence in many other choices including Public, private and Charter Schools. In short, parents want the school to be discernibly and foundationally Catholic. It is important to note that education is not something the Church adds something to, as though the process of educating were some kind of nakedly secular pursuit which we somehow make “religious”. Rather, education is the very heart and core of the Churches’ mission.

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The primary Purpose of a Catholic School is to be a Catholic School, to teach, form and prepare students in Jesus Christ who has been raised and continues His redemptive mission through His Body, the Church.