By CHRISTOPHER MANION
“Going to school” used to be pretty routine, but it’s an uncertain prospect these days. Amidst the widespread uncertainty, many parents are discovering a new dimension of their God-given vocation as their children’s first teachers.
Holy Mother Church has defended this parental role for centuries, and she reaffirms it once more in Vatican II’s Declaration on Christian Education: “Parents who have the primary and inalienable right and duty to educate their children must enjoy true liberty in their choice of schools,” the Church fathers taught.
As the sexual revolution raged, St. John Paul II was a faithful defender of parents as we faced the secular culture’s assaults on the family. In Familiaris Consortio, John Paul highlights the Church fathers’ emphasis of not only the rights of parents, but also their responsibilities: “Since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it.”
In embracing that noble task, today’s parents face a host of unknowns. Children no longer simply “go to school” at the end of summer. Even where school takes place can be a matter of intense debate. But amidst the cloud of uncertainty, parents have the opportunity to fulfill their obligation in new and creative ways.
Whatever the teaching arrangements — distance learning, in-school classes, micro-pods (family shared small-group classes) or traditional home-schooling — Mom and Dad now have a better view of what Professor Anthony Esolen calls a simple but vital question: “We want to know not only what’s being taught, but what isn’t being taught.” When something is taught wrong, we can make it right. And when something crucial isn’t taught at all, Mom and Dad can fill in the blanks.
In these troubled times that duty is crucial. In recent years the public schools have become increasingly secular, but lately they’ve been going for broke. They now feature programs that not only offend good taste but violate common decency and, all too often, the Ten Commandments, especially those addressing sexual morality.
Education cannot be neutral about morality. If schools aren’t teaching our children to respect the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, they are teaching them to break them, it’s that simple. In fact, right now a powerful faction of educational and cultural “leaders” is working to force every government school pupil at every grade level to have his face rubbed in the most squalid and base sexual behaviors, all in the name of “diversity.”
And while some children are fortunate enough not to be oppressed by that sordid curriculum, they can hardly escape being exposed to, or even surrounded by, children who are. That sad reality calls on us to respond to the challenge all the more forcefully, and we can do it most effectively in the family.
Children raised to respect the gifts of modesty and purity in the home learn by experience. They will acquire the moral and spiritual habits that will dispose them naturally to welcome the beauty of God’s teaching on marriage and family when they are grown.
Confronted with the intensifying public opposition to morality and civility, the call to make the family home a place of peace and holiness is all the more important. As Esolen puts it, we can teach “the sheer beauty of what we believe, and of what our Christian cultures have bestowed upon the world.”
The Population Research Institute offers families encouragement and support to sustain them in their divine calling to teach the next generation. To support its Humanae Vitae Project, PRI has devoted an entire website to the truths of Humanae Vitae and the rich spiritual and intellectual tradition that surrounds it.
At humanaevitaeproject.org, you will find papal documents, articles, studies, teaching aids, and lively discussions addressing the beauty and dignity of married love. This treasure trove provides parents with the truths they need to defend their right to be “the first and foremost educators of their children.”
Today financial and political circumstances deny many parents the “true liberty in their choice of schools” that the Church fathers defend. Where we do enjoy that liberty, it is constantly threatened. Whatever the political and social conditions, we can exercise that liberty most freely in the home. And that is where saints are raised.
Waiting On “Uncle Ted”
Long before 2002, The Wanderer had been reporting on the clerical sex-abuse and coverup scandals, led by the intrepid investigative reporting of our colleague Paul Likoudis. But it was only in 2002 that the USCCB finally got around to addressing publicly the crimes that they had known about for years. At their June 2002 meeting, they were finally compelled to address the public outrage caused by reports that had appeared in the secular media.
A special section of The Dallas Morning News greeted attendees as they alighted from their planes at DFW International Airport. Well over half of the bishops assembled in Dallas that June had covered up for or actively enabled abusers, the News reported, complete with details.
At the time, we asked why the guilty prelates at that fateful meeting didn’t merely rise, bid their colleagues farewell, and leave, either to surrender to law enforcement or to slink away into an early retirement.
Well, they didn’t. Instead, they stayed on, shepherded and protected by their de-facto leader, then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Many of those 2002 coverup bishops have since retired, but we can surmise that they were instrumental in the appointment of their successors. We have dubbed that network “The McCarrick Machine,” and it has only grown stronger with time.
So this past Tuesday, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan cited sources who tell him that the McCarrick Report should be published later this month.
Will it tell the truth?
We wait.
Haven’t We Already Seen This Movie?
Criminal rioters have torn down statues, firebombed churches, and burned Bibles, all in the memory of George Floyd. However, new revelations advise that we stay tuned for a sharp turn in that narrative.
Video from the body-cams of the four policemen at the scene of Floyd’s arrest and death were kept secret for months by Keith Ellison (D), Minnesota’s radical attorney general. Ellison kept the evidence secret while rioters rampaged throughout the country, supposedly “demonstrating peacefully” against police brutality.
When those officers go to trial, these videos will be Exhibit A, and they portray Mr. Floyd, God rest his soul, as anything but an innocent victim of racism. An autopsy reportedly indicated that he had taken fentanyl, methamphetamines (also known as crystal meth), and cannabis before his death. This powerful concoction might well have exacerbated the erratic behavior that is clearly displayed in the videos.
Looking forward, a Minnesota judge has tentatively scheduled a March 2021 trial for the four policemen charged in the incident. We should be prepared for another worldwide round of rioting and destruction if jurors find that prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused are guilty of any or all of the charges.
If Joe Biden or his vice-president successor is in the White House when such a verdict is rendered, count on federal civil rights charges being filed, in the same script that followed the “Not Guilty” verdicts in the state’s April 1992 trial of the officers involved in the arrest of Rodney King. Double jeopardy can apparently be sidelined when the mob demands satisfaction.
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