What The Catholic Church Says About The Family

According to the Catholic Church, parents have a duty to raise children in the faith. And the right to choose a school that will help them do this. (Rights and Duties of Parents, USCCB)

 

Parents must organize to resist efforts by the State, the media or population control groups that present erroneous models of sex education which corrupt their children. (The Second International Theological Pastoral Congress at the Second World Meeting of the Holy Father with Families, The Family: Gift, Promise, and Hope for Humanity, October 3, 1997, #3.9)

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The family “has priority of nature and therefore of rights over civil society,” as Pius XI taught in his encyclical on Christian education (12). A nation is misguided and even guilty of despotism if it tries to replace the family or to tamper with its role.

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(More here Who Should Educate Your Children? | Catholic Answers Magazine)

 

The Catholic Church teaches that parents have God-given authority over their children, and that this authority is a religious act of worship. Parents are responsible for their children's well-being and should exercise their authority wisely and justly.

 

Like all who exercise authority, parents derive their authority from God. Therefore, as St. Paul puts it: “Let everyone be subject to higher authorities, for there exists no authority except from God, and those who exist have been appointed by God...and they that resist, bring on themselves condemnation” (Rm 13:1-2).

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“Where families cannot fulfill their responsibilities, other social bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting the institution of the family” (#2209). Further, “civil authority should consider it a grave duty to acknowledge the true nature of marriage and the family, to protect and foster them, to safeguard public morality, and promote domestic prosperity” (#2210).

 

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."  Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. (#2223)

 

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. 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. (#2225)

 

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. 35 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. (#2226)

 

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. 38 Public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise. (#2229)