St. Thomas Aquinas Homeschool

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Grave Primary Duty

First, what do we mean? Parents have the grave primary duty to educated and train their children in the Catholic faith, in Catholic worship and in morality. Why? In order to prepare them for eternal life in heaven. In one declarative sentence—the purpose or goal of Catholic education is heaven. And the only reason under God that parents even should bring children into the world is to prepare them for heaven. It would be shear madness to bring children into the world for “just” this world. Lord, spare us!

Noting what we are saying, it is a grave duty, to repeat, binding under mortal sin.

Not too many years ago it was a grave obligation for parents to send their children to a Catholic school when there were “Catholic” schools. And it is primary in two ways. It is primary both for the parents, in other words, no one else can really replace them. They may need help, they may be in a position where they cannot provide, really cannot provide the religious education. But then to that extent they are transferring or transmitting their own primary responsibility to someone else, but no one else has the primary responsibility.

 

Primacy of Teaching Religion

And secondly, it is also a primacy of teaching religion. However, when we say teaching religion, that is not quite the same as “religious education”...  So primary that the obligation to not really teach religion as an isolated subject, which was never the mind of the Church-never! Everything you teach, because everything we are to learn has bearing on eternal life. And therefore religious education is that education which provides those who learn, to understand that everything in their lives- from the breakfast that they have in the morning, to the car that won’t start, to the cold to whatever. Everything in our lives is meant to be a divinely ordained means of reaching our eternal destiny.

 

To Educate

To educate-instruction of the mind, but watch it, to educate includes the mind indeed, but the mind is to be educated in order to inspire the will. There is nothing more devastating, and I mean devastating, than acquiring what may be call, “sterile knowledge”. Feeding the mind, stuffing the mind, with all kinds of ideas and not having that mind motivate the will to do what God wants us to do...

The Catholic faith, what to believe and what the Faith means. Catholic worship, prayer and the sacraments, Catholic morality, the decalogue and the beatitudes. In other words, we are talking about the meaning of religious education. It means therefore, that the parents train the children, both in their minds and in their wills on all three levels of our religious instruction. Namely, what our minds are to believe, how we are to worship God and especially how we are to put what we believe into practice, in other words, how we are to behave...

In order to prepare, God gave the parents children to be the channels of grace to their offspring. In other words, the single principle (whatever word we use) means, vehicle, by which the children are to both learn their faith in their minds, know how to worship from infancy, and know how to live in practicing the moral law. The parents are the principle means that God put into their lives, to educate and train their children. But then let's be clear, the purpose is not merely to be pedagogue to their children, not even by their good behavior as parents to edify their children. No. It is mainly that the parents might be channels of grace to the children whom God gave them...

 

Motives

Now the motives: Why should parents have a grave duty to train their children religiously? First, because they are the parents. Except for the parents there would be no children. And even now with all kinds of stupid tampering with parenthood, that so-called “scientists” are indulging in, and this is one aspect not just of our faith, but of our sanity. And a country like ours, that we had better be clear about, because parenthood in our country is becoming more and more obscured. But remember, and I hope to be clear, parents are by God meant to be parents for their children twice over. They are obviously parents for their children physically—except for mother and father there would be no children. The physical existence of the children depends on having father and mother bringing them into the world, but we have two kinds of lives. We have a physical life and we have a spiritual life. This is different than merely that parents are to educate their children. That is still on the natural level. In other words, parents are to be believers and only believers can reproduce other believers. And the more clearly and deeply the parents believe their Catholic faith, the more grace they will be communicating to their offspring. In other words, parents are to be parents both of the physical and spiritual lives of their children. First of all, unless the parents have the faith in the first place, the odds are the children would not even have been baptized to begin with. Believing parents then, will make sure that their children are baptized...

Why is there such a grave responsibility? Because the parent’s responsibility is revealed by God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, especially Saint Paul, and therefore, it is part of our faith. It is therefore, a revealed truth taught by God and gravely binding on everyone who has the faith. First, to make sure that the children who they have brought physically are baptized and thus receive the supernatural life at baptism...There must be faith behind the baptism, and this is first faith in the parents.