DOMENICALE, SCUOLA

SUNDAY SCHOOL. – According to the definition by G. Everette, “the Sunday School is the school of the Church of Christ, gathered on Sunday, in which the word of God is taught to all, both great and small.”

I. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

Born from the initiative of Robert Raikes (1735–1811), who in 1780 in Gloucester began to gather, every Sunday, street boys to teach them to read and write using the Bible as a text, the Sunday School developed rapidly throughout England. Five years later, the first society of Sunday Schools was formed, of which Raikes himself was president and which, by 1811, counted 100,000 members. In the United States, the institution was welcomed as an excellent means of supplementing the non-denominational teaching of government schools and was extended to young people and adults. The Sunday Schools were later supported by national and international bodies. On the occasion of the 1st World Congress of Sunday Schools held in London in 1889, the World Sunday School Association (W.S.S.A.) was founded with the aim of unifying individual activities, studying proposals for improvements, preventing obstacles, and setting the venue for quadrennial congresses, etc. In 1907, the 5th Congress met in Rome. In 1932, there were 361,145 schools with 36,000,829 pupils (in Italy, 350 schools with 10,000 pupils).

II. OPERATION

The enrolled (from 5 to 20 years and older) are divided into 8 sections: infant, preparatory, primary, union, intermediate, senior, youth, and adult. Before or after Sunday worship, a chapter of the Bible is explained, of which the recitation of some previously assigned verses is required; some complementary study of exegesis or catechism is added, and after hymns and prayers, the session concludes with the apostolic blessing (sic) or the Gloria. The programs are predominantly standardized according to the system of graded lessons: each section has different lessons from the previous one, but the lessons of each section focus on the same subject matter. Officials of the Sunday Schools are: the pastor, who oversees the progress of the pupils; the superintendent, who manages administration and the selection of texts and teaching and subordinate staff; the teacher, who imparts instruction and is chosen from among the best public school teachers or prepared in special institutes.

The Sunday Schools, which are harmful in Catholic countries where they instill in pupils from Catholic families prejudices against the Church of Rome, in Protestant countries and in missions contribute to the propagation of certain truths of Christianity, albeit unfortunately mixed with the errors of various sects.