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.

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - Soon parents will be sending their children “back to school”. It is a time of frenzied preparation, replete with shopping, worrying and a whole lot of prayer.

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. Sadly, in some situations in the current public school environment, though certainly not all, that approach seems to have been forgotten. That will be the subject of a future article.

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. When parents choose Catholic schools they carry on a wonderful tradition of promoting one aspect of the Church’s educational mission, the parochial school.

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.

In his masterful letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul calls all Christians to a “…renewal of their minds”. (Romans 12:2) This renewal of the mind is the essence of Catholic education. In speaking of herself, the Church often notes that she is an “expert in humanity” who “walks the way of the person”. In words of Pope John XXIII which are echoed in so many pronouncements of the Magisterium, the Teaching Office, the Church is, both “Mater et Magister” “Mother and Teacher.” She is herself an educating institution. Catholic Identity in a catholic school, just as in Catholic persons, begins from the inside and works its way throughout like leaven or yeast. Catholic identity must be the very heart and core of a Catholic school, providing the infrastructure for the entire educational mission.

In 1997, the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Vatican Congregation charged with ensuring that Catholic educational institutions are worthy of bearing that august name, summarized the Purpose, Identity and Mission of the Catholic School with crystal clarity in its seminal document entitled “The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium.” The following words are taken from a subsection of that work entitled “Catholic Schools at the Heart of the Church”:

“It is from its Catholic identity that the school derives its original characteristics and its "structure" as a genuine instrument of the Church, a place of real and specific pastoral ministry. The Catholic school participates in the evangelizing mission of the Church and is the privileged environment in which Christian education is carried out. In this way "Catholic schools are at once places of evangelization, of complete formation, of inculturation, of apprenticeship in a lively dialogue between young people of different religions and social backgrounds….

“The ecclesial nature of the Catholic school, therefore, is written in the very heart of its identity as a teaching institution. It is a true and proper ecclesial entity by reason of its educational activity, "in which faith, culture and life are brought into harmony". Thus it must be strongly emphasized that this ecclesial dimension is not a mere adjunct, but is a proper and specific attribute, a distinctive characteristic which penetrates and informs every moment of its educational activity, a fundamental part of its very identity and the focus of its mission. The fostering of this dimension should be the aim of all those who make up the educating community.

“By reason of its identity, therefore, the Catholic ...