Page 4: The Five Essential Marks of a Catholic School

The Church Teaches . . .

The following is an abridgement of a Keynote Address delivered in 2005 to a conference on the future of Catholic education by Archbishop J. Michael Miller, Secretary for the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education. The conference was sponsored by the Solidarity Association, which has since issued an updated monograph entitled “The Holy See’s Teaching On Catholic Schools” published by Sophia Press. The full text of the keynote address is available at http://publicaffairs.cua.edu/speeches/06ArchbishopMillerKeynote.htm.

Solidarity Association, Sept. 14, 2005

Dear Friends:

. . . .

Right from the days of their first appearance in Europe, Catholic schools have generously served the needs of the “socially and economically disadvantaged” and have given “special attention to those who are weakest.” The vision set out by the Second Vatican Council confirmed this age-old commitment: the Church offers her educational service in the first place, the Fathers affirmed, to “those who are poor in the goods of this world or who are deprived of the assistance and affection of a family or who are strangers to the gift of faith.” The Solidarity Association, with its providential name which embodies the heritage of our beloved Pope John Paul II, is inserted in the long tradition of St. Angela Merici, St. Joseph of Calasanz, St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle, St. John Bosco and so many other Religious and lay people who generously dedicated themselves to Christ’s love for the poor, the humble and the marginalized in their educational apostolate.

My intervention’s theme, “the Holy See’s teaching on Catholic education,” is vast, far too vast to be summarized in one brief lecture. Even so, I will try to introduce into the conversation the major concerns that can be found in the Vatican documents published since Vatican II’s landmark Decree on Christian education Gravissimum Educationis. In this talk I shall draw on the conciliar document, the 1983 Code of Canon Law in its section on schools, and the five major documents published by the Congregation for Catholic Education: The Catholic School (1977); Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith (1982); The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988); The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997); and Consecrated Persons and their Mission in Schools: Reflections and Guidelines (2002). Among these documents, in particular I would like to recommend for your study The Catholic School and The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School. First I will say something about parental and government rights, followed by some remarks on the school as an instrument of evangelization, and then describe the five components which must be present if a school is to have a genuinely Catholic identity.

[2] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium, 15.

[3] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Gravissimum Educationis , 9; cf. Congregation for Catholic Education, Consecrated Persons and their Mission in Schools: Reflections and Guidelines 70.