RELIGIOUS, TEACHING. - That part of education and instruction which has as its object the explanation and learning of religious truths.
Man, in fact, and the Christian, are not, in the individual, two distinct and separable parts, such that one could be educated and instructed without educating and instructing the other; but they are closely joined, so that, in forming the Christian, one comes to form the whole man in his completeness, and, conversely, in forming the man, one should at the same time form the Christian.
According to the teaching of the divine Master, the sole preceptor of all humanity, man must no longer live only a natural life, rich in virtues, in culture, in human affections, but also a supernatural life, in which those very virtues, that same culture and those same affections are clothed in a higher and more intimate light, in a meaning and a strength altogether new and more profound, which will bear better fruits because better is the sap by which they are nourished, and the substance with which they ripen them. As in a grafted wild tree one cultivates at the same time and tends both the trunk that has remained wild and the grafted branch, so in man one must cultivate, along with the natural faculties, also the supernatural faculties, which are infused in him in Baptism; in other words: one must cultivate the man as man, and the man as, elevated to the supernatural order, he rises to become part of the divine sonship.
Religious instruction fulfills four purposes, which increasingly demonstrate the firmness of the conjunction: man-Christian.
I. CULTURAL AIMS
In addition to the knowledge obtainable through experience, school, personal study and research, religious instruction provides man with a whole most lofty heritage of truths. Some of these concern God directly in His essence, in His attributes and in His works, manifesting His greatness (creation, providence, divine life) and His exquisite goodness (Incarnation, Redemption, institution of the Church and of the Sacraments, eternal reward); others concern our life and our conduct in the light of the supernatural, showing its nobility (divine adoption through Grace), its value in all circumstances, even the humblest, most painful, most unknown (sorrows, injustices, privations), which become effective means of expiation and redemption; the immense fruitfulness of good works, even the most hidden (the Communion of Saints). Now, these truths would not otherwise be known to us without divine Revelation, which is precisely the object of religious instruction. And this Revelation, moreover, while it gives a sure answer to the perhaps most pressing problems of humanity (the reason for suffering and evil, the existence of the afterlife, etc.), also serves to direct rightly the research and the progress of scientific truths themselves, inasmuch as it clears the field of deviations and false ideologies.
II. RELIGIOUS AIMS
Since religion consists in the fulfillment of our duties toward God, our creator, preserver and rewarder, religious instruction aims to inform, from the earliest years, the whole of life toward the fulfillment of these duties, transforming them into a joyful and ready service to be rendered to the Sovereign Master and Lord, and it points out to us in Jesus Christ the highest model of this. It further explains to us the means by which to acquire, maintain, recover and develop the character of sonship and of participation in the very divine life to which we have been raised; and it makes known to us Christian worship, centered in the Eucharist, especially considered as sacrifice, leading us to understand it, savor it and live it with a conscious participation.
III. ETHICAL AIMS
Ethics is the sum of our duties, especially with regard to ourselves and to our neighbor, which can be summed up in the maxim: do good and shun moral evil, which is sin. Now religious instruction is, in this, a start and a sure guide amid so many vain moral constructions, invented by human fickleness, inadequacy or malice, and vainly seeking to replace the one true morality, founded on our relations with God. It further points out for our reprobation not only external evil, but also the internal evil of thoughts and desires; it pervades duties with the spirit of love, which makes all men be regarded as children of one and the same Father and therefore brothers, and fuses all loves into one alone, the love of God, from which every charity toward ourselves and toward our neighbor then derives. No other ethical conception, devised by human intelligence, is so sublime and so truly a source of good.
IV. FINALITÀ SOCIALI
Social coexistence entails these postulates: family, homeland, property, work, authority, order. Now religious instruction gives these postulates the most stable and unshakable foundation and offers the most solid and integral practical solutions, indicating at the same time the means, even supernatural ones, so that their implementation may be carried out in an ever more perfect manner.
V. THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION
The study of these various purposes of religious instruction serves to demonstrate what a profound benefit it brings to the moral conscience, to the education of the will and to the formation of character.
To the moral conscience, in fact, which does not depend solely on the judgment of laws or on human customs, but needs internal and external principles concerning good and evil, which continue to be valid even under the onslaught of the passions, the impulses of interest, of personal egoism, of false ideologies, it offers the sure vision of our otherworldly end, the spirit of love that validates, indeed surpasses, the spirit of fear, the persuasion of the presence of God, who sees and watches over all things and will one day demand an account of all things. To the will, which easily shrinks from whatever is painful and especially from self-denial and from victory over one's own self, it presents a higher motive, a source of inexhaustible energy: duty for the love of God. To the formation of character, which requires a continual consistency between one's convictions and one's public and private actions, it offers not only human motives (philanthropy, civic spirit, patriotism) but also supernatural motives: the love of God, the example of Jesus and of the Saints, who always cooperate effectively in the highest heroisms. The same holds when, in order to form a strong character, one must subject oneself to a quantity of painful renunciations; in these cases religious instruction appeals to the nobility and to the formative efficacy that these have with respect to our nature, corrupted and weakened by sin.
VI. I. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOL
How much is suggested by the reason for the Church's continuous and vigilant interest in ensuring that religious instruction be maintained or restored in all schools, including those of the State (cf. CIC, art. 1374 and the sources cited there). Against it, on the other hand, from the time of the Enlightenment onward, the advocates of the secular or neutral school have always labored, with greater or lesser zeal and under the most varied pretexts. Out-and-out secularists proclaim the absolute ostracism of religious instruction from state schools; others, less hostile, would be willing to admit it, but outside school hours and classrooms; still others would tolerate it even in classrooms, but generally only in elementary classes, surrounding their tolerance, however, with such restrictions and precautions as to render it as ineffective as possible; thus, they think, on the one hand the danger of clerical invasion is averted, and on the other hand religious instruction retains the character of a subject unto itself, without troublesome connections or references to other subjects. There are also those who would wish religion to be spoken of and treated in school as well, but only under the historical aspect; Christianity would be merely one of the many religions (even, if one wishes, the best), springing up on earth according to times and places. Others, finally, go so far as to think that the child, still lacking a critical sense, should be given a dogmatic religious instruction, as the first possible position of his mind and conscience before virtue and duty: later, when the child has become a young man, as the maturity and personality of his spirit grow, he will be able to surpass this puerile, primordial, fantastic or sentimental conception of religion and pass to a philosophical conception. This would happen gradually in middle and upper school (cf. M. Barbera [v. bibl.], p. 322).
The Church, on the other hand, shows herself, and logically so, intransigent on the point of the secular or neutral school, both for other reasons and above all for the religious and educational reason, rightly concerned either about the absolute absence of religious instruction or about a religious instruction not imparted rightly, in conformity with the truth. This concern is fully justified also on pedagogical grounds. Pedagogy, in fact, postulates "educational unity," by which each person has the right to an education and instruction that is not contradictory. Now both silence is contradictory (when one party keeps silent, as a secondary and irrelevant matter, about what another party proclaims as fundamental), and speech is contradictory (when the professor of physics, of natural sciences, of philosophy affirms as true what the professor of religion must deny as false). In a Christian society, therefore, the Christian religious principle must be posited as fundamental.
It should be noted, moreover, that "the mere fact of imparting religious instruction is not sufficient to say that that school conforms to the rights of the Church and of Christian families; for this purpose it is necessary that the whole teaching and the whole ordering of the school: teachers, programs, books, in every discipline, be governed by a Christian spirit under the motherly direction and vigilance of the Church, so that religion may truly be the foundation and crown of all instruction, in all grades, not only elementary, but also middle and upper" (cf. the encyclical of Pius X: Divini illius magistri, of 31 Dec. 1929, in Denz-U. 2220).
VII. I. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE ITALIAN SCHOOL
1. In the primary or elementary school
The Casati law (13 Nov. 1859) provided in art. 315 for "religious instruction as a compulsory subject in the primary schools," and in art. 374 allowed exemption for "pupils whose parents have declared that they themselves will take care of their religious instruction." But two ministerial circulars, of 27 Sept. 1870 and 12 July 1871, arbitrarily overturned the law by establishing that the municipalities were to have religious instruction given only when the pupils' parents requested it. The law, then, of 13 July 1877 enumerated the compulsory subjects in all public elementary schools, but made no mention of religious instruction, substituting instead a new subject: the rudiments of the duties of man and of the citizen. The Regolamento dell'istruzione primaria (6 Febr. 1928) made religious instruction optional even on the part of the municipalities, leaving them free to have it given, or not, to the pupils themselves whose parents had requested it, and leaving the teachers also free to accept or refuse. But the circular of minister A. Anile (20 Oct. 1922) declared illegitimate the claim to have the signatures of parents requesting religious instruction authenticated, and warned the municipalities that they could not at all refuse to grant schoolrooms for the purpose; and it authorized those concerned to apply to the minister in the event that the suitability of parish priests and their assistants to impart religious instruction was not recognized.
Finally, through the work of minister Giovanni Gentile, there came Royal Decree-Law no. 2185 of 1 Oct. 1923, in which art. 3 placed the teaching of Christian doctrine, according to the form received in Catholic tradition, as the foundation and crown of elementary instruction. The Superiore commissione ecclesiastica published a Guida d'insegnamento religioso per le scuole elementari secondo i vari punti del programma ministeriale.
2. In the secondary schools or those of the middle order
The Casati law cited above further prescribed that religious instruction be imparted in every order of secondary schools by the spiritual director charged with the collective practices of worship. Little by little it came to be considered a subject optional for the pupils whose parents requested it; then, since requests were ordinarily lacking, the spiritual directors, already in fact suppressed in two thirds of the secondary schools of the Kingdom, were abolished in all ginnasi, technical schools and licei by the law of 23 June 1877, and both religious instruction and the collective practices of worship ceased entirely.
Religious instruction did not return to the secondary schools until 1927-28, on the basis of art. 62 of the Regulation of 30 Apr. 1924, which authorized optional courses in all middle schools, and of the circular of minister Fedele of 27 Nov. 1926. Finally the Concordat concluded between the Holy See and Italy (11 Febr. 1929), art. 36, noted that the Italian Government consented that religious instruction, already imparted in the elementary schools, should have a further development in the middle schools, according to programs to be established by agreement between the Holy See and the State. In execution of this article, law no. 824 of 5 June 1930 instituted religious instruction in all institutes of classical, scientific, teacher-training, technical and artistic education as a compulsory subject, with exemption for the pupils whose parents made written request for it. The S. Congr. of the Council, by circular of 21 June 1930, laid down its programs and the norms for its practical implementation.
3. Universities
The Casati law preserved also in the Universities the theological Faculties that already existed there. But these were suppressed by the Government with the law of 26 Jan. 1873, which gave the minister of Public Instruction the power to establish, at the Faculties of letters and philosophy, chairs of those religious subjects that have an interest of historical, philological and philosophical culture. In fact, some were established in various universities and still endure (cf. G. Monti, La scuola laica, Brescia 1947, pp. 75-82).