Paving The Road to Sainthood in Catholic Education

Be Perfect As Your Heavenly Father Is Perfect -Matthew 5:48

This is the universal call for every Catholic and therefore the mission of every Christian to attain this end. It has often been said that the best gift we can give to a child is education. The best gift we can give then to a Catholic child is catechism and the opportunity to become a saint.

Here's a powerful and thought-provoking article on primary education by Leon J. Suprenant, Jr., editor-in-chief of Emmaus Publishing.

"...The Church has always taught that the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children. This traditional formulation dates back at least as far as St. Isidore of Seville, a seventh-century Doctor of the Church.

In 1944, the Holy See unequivocally affirmed in response to a formal question (dubium) that the procreation and education of children is the one and only primary end of marriage.It is true, nonetheless, that over the past 50 years the Church has used slightly different terminology that gives greater attention to the unitive dimension of marriage. Yet the Church still affirms that marriage “is by its nature ordered toward...the procreation and education of offspring” (Catechism, no. 1601). This teaching can be traced to the first command given by God to man: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gn 1:22). With regard to the phrase, “the procreation and education of children,” the first part of this formulation gets most of the attention. After all, “procreation” conjures up a host of issues, from Humanae Vitae and women’s “liberation” to the complementarity of the sexes and the intrinsic value of motherhood. It’s the second part of the formulation — the “education of offspring” — that is sometimes overlooked. What does the Church mean when she says that an objective “end” or purpose of marriage entails the education of offspring?

The Church does not simply mean raising the next generation of Harvard, Yale, or even Notre Dame graduates. Rather, the Church has always understood “education” in the sense of preparing children for the worship of God — in other words, helping them discover and fulfill their vocation as children of God. As Popes Paul VI and John Paul II have affirmed in recent decades, the Church is by her nature missionary, sent by Christ to make disciples of all the nations. The Church’s mission, then, is to extend Christ through space and time. Great missionaries like St. Francis Xavier, who brought thousands to the faith, have the particular vocation of extending Christ through space — indeed to the four corners of the world. Catholic parents, on the other hand, have the challenging vocation of extending Christ through time, by raising up the next generation of disciples. How parents are to fulfill this vocation is beautifully summarized in the Catechism, nos. 2221-33. I think this perspective helps us to keep sight of the big picture when we examine Catholic education."

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