Five Things to Remember on Jan. 8

 

1.      For National Migration Week, January 6-12, USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services has launched a postcard campaign that calls on Congress to pass just and compassionate immigration reform. You can send an electronic postcard to the local representative and senator from the Justice for Immigrants Website, http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/index.shtml.

2.      January is Poverty Awareness Month. Today in America, over forty-six million people live in poverty. That’s over ten percent of all families and more than 1 in 5 children. Close to 23 million are unemployed or underemployed; our economy still cannot produce enough decent jobs. This is a scandal and a serious moral failure, but there is hope.  For over forty years, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has been empowering families and communities to fight poverty and create economic opportunity because as Pope Benedict XVI said in Deus Caritas Est, “love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind, is as essential to [the Church] as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel. The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word.”

3.      Ambassador Thomas Melady makes a strong case that Americans must take child poverty seriously in his guest blog on the USCCB media blog yesterday.

4.      Catholic Schools in the inner cities and urban areas remain a significant presence: four decades ago 46.5 percent were located in urban and inner city areas, today 42.3 percent of the schools are still in the urban/inner city locales.  During the same period of time, suburban schools increased from 25 percent to 36.5 percent. Source: “The Annual Statistical Report on Schools, Enrollment and Staffing; United States Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools 2011-2012 published by National Catholic Educational Association.

5.      God loves you.

 

Five Things to Remember on Nov. 30

 

1.  Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, begins a new church year. The U.S. Conference of CatholicBishops has outdone itself with this year’s Advent resources. Among them is a downloadable family Advent calendar, in English and in Spanish. There are easy ways to make the hectic season holy.
 
2. Pope Benedict’s latest book “The Infancy Narratives—Jesus of Nazareth” is getting some negative press. Pundits like Stephen Colbert, the master of the tongue-in-cheek, are making the pope out to be a grinch for writing that the bible’s Christmas story doesn’t speak of animals at the crib and that the angels said, not sang, “Glory to God in the highest…” Reuters’ Journalist PhilPullella, however, clarifies what’s really in the book in his wire servicearticle. Hint: you can still sing carols and place replicas of dogs, camels, cows and sheep in your manger scene.
 
3. The National Religious Retirement Collection will be taken up in parishes the weekend of Dec. 8-9. If you want to know why it is important, consider the following: The U.S. Social Security system projects that it needs four wage earners for every retired beneficiary in order to keep the system solvent.  By 2022 religious institutes will have one wage earner for every four retired – the exact inverse. If you want a worthy collection, this one is it. Check out www.retiredreligious.org
 
4. When it comes to giving gifts, it is time to recognize the church’s largesse through the Catholic school system. Based on public school per pupil cost, Catholic elementary and secondary schools save the nation more than $20 billion dollars a year. Lots of info at www.ncea.org
 
5.      God loves you.

 

The Council at 50: Education: Joint Venture of Church, State

Welcome to one of the series of blogs on the Second Vatican Council. Each piece reviews one of the 16 documents produced by the Council Fathers during the extraordinary occasion in Church history. Vatican II, which drew together the world’s bishops, opened fifty years ago in St. Peter’s Basilica, October 11, 1962.

 

(Photo courtesy of Catholic News Service)

 
The Second Vatican Council spoke to the entire world and the Council Father’s document Gravissimum Educationis (The Importance of Education), made that clear in the “Declaration on Christian Education.” Published October 28, 1965, the brief declaration came during the fourth and final session of Vatican II. It addressed education in general but focused primarily on Christian education.  Three of its themes hold critical importance today.

1) Christian education is to help a person get to heaven. The Council Fathers wrote that “true education aims at the formation of the human person in the pursuit of his ultimate end and of the good of the societies of which, as man, he is a member, and in whose obligations, as an adult, he will share.”  (GE, 1) Living a good Christian life, the Fathers noted, enhances order, natural democratic virtues, and the common good but, more importantly, by grace, it is a path to live a holy life.  Today when technology and media bombard the senses with positive and negative images, sounds and words, the need for sound Christian education that teaches intelligent discernment in a pluralistic world is critical. 

2) Parents are the first educators of their children and have the duty and fundamental right to choose an education in keeping with their beliefs. The declaration recognizes the fundamental role of parents and thus of the family in our society. “The family is the first school of social virtues that every society needs” (GE, 3), the Fathers said. Children meet God, neighbor, and community through the family. Through the family they learn the elements of social justice, sharing with the less fortunate and experiencing how to give of themselves.   “Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators.”  (GE, 3)

The Fathers pointed out that “among all educational instruments the school has special importance.  It is designed not only to develop with special care the intellectual faculties but also to form the ability to judge rightly, to hand on the cultural legacy of previous generations, to foster a sense of values, to prepare for professional life.” (GE, 5) As a result parents must have the option of providing an education that supports the positive values of family life and their beliefs. 

3) Through the principle of subsidiarity, the Church and state should support parents in their exercise as primary educators of their children.  It is critically important that parents find support from civil society and the Church community to fulfill this fundamental right and duty. The Church has the obligation to establish schools that provide for a Christian education by which the whole child – body, mind and soul – develops in a Gospel environment.  Financial support for Catholic education is an increasing concern; and it is important for the entire Church to support its educational mission to the young. The Fathers also pointed out that civil society has an obligation to provide a proper education for all children to promote the welfare of its citizens.  These two obligations, of the Church and state, do not need to be in conflict. A respectful recognition on the part of both creates a setting in which education for many can flourish.  Both the Church and civil society must work together to provide educational options for the young and the options should include Christian schools. 

Fifty years ago the Church began a dialogue about the proper role of education. Times have changed but the need for the dialogue has not.

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Bishop Joseph McFadden of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania chairs the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Education.