RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. – 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, so that one might be educated and instructed without the other; but they are so closely united that, in forming the Christian, one forms the whole man in his completeness, and, conversely, in forming man, one should at the same time form the Christian.
According to the teaching of the Divine Master, the one Teacher of all humanity, man must no longer live merely a natural life, rich in virtue, culture, and human affections, but also a supernatural life, in which those same virtues, that same culture, and those same affections are clothed in a higher and more intimate light, in a meaning and force entirely new and deeper, which will yield better fruits because the soil in which they are nourished is better and the substance with which they are matured is nobler. Just as in a wild tree that is grafted, both the remaining wild trunk and the grafted branch are cultivated and cared for at the same time, so in man the natural faculties must be cultivated along with the supernatural faculties, which are infused into him in Baptism; in other words, man must be cultivated both as man and as one elevated to the supernatural order, thus becoming a part of the divine sonship.
Religious instruction fulfills four purposes, which increasingly demonstrate the solidity of the conjunction: man-Christian.
I. CULTURAL PURPOSES
In addition to the knowledge obtainable through experience, school, personal study, and research, religious instruction provides man with a very lofty patrimony of truths. Some of these truths concern God directly in His essence, His attributes, and His works, manifesting His greatness (creation, providence, divine life) and His exquisite goodness (Incarnation, Redemption, the institution of the Church and the Sacraments, eternal reward); others concern our life and conduct in the light of the supernatural, showing their nobility (divine adoption through Grace), their value in all, even the most humble, painful, and obscure circumstances (suffering, injustices, privations), which become effective means of expiation and redemption; and the immense fruitfulness of even the most hidden good works (the Communion of Saints). Now, these truths would not be known to us otherwise without Divine Revelation, which is precisely the object of religious instruction. Moreover, this Revelation, while providing a sure answer to the most pressing problems of humanity (the reason for suffering and evil, the existence of the afterlife, etc.), also serves to direct properly the research and progress of the very scientific truths, inasmuch as it clears the field of deviations and false ideologies.II. RELIGIOUS PURPOSES
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 with the fulfillment of these duties, transforming them into a joyful and ready service to be rendered to the Sovereign Lord and Master, and pointing out in Jesus Christ the highest model of this service. It also explains the means by which to acquire, maintain, recover, and develop the character of sonship and participation in the very divine life to which we have been elevated; and it makes us understand Christian worship, centered on the Eucharist, especially when considered as a sacrifice, so that we may come to comprehend, savor, and live it with conscious participation.III. ETHICAL PURPOSES
Ethics is the sum of our duties, especially with regard to ourselves and our neighbor, which can be comprehended in the maxim: “do good and avoid moral evil,” which is sin. Now, in this regard, religious instruction is a sure guide amidst so many vain moral constructions, invented by human fickleness, presumption, or malice, and vainly seeking to substitute themselves for the true and unique morality founded on our relations with God. It also points out to us not only external evil but also the internal evil of thoughts and desires; it permeates duties with the spirit of love, which causes all men to be regarded as children of the same Father and thus as brothers, and fuses all loves into one, the love of God, from which all charity toward ourselves and our neighbor then derives. No other ethical conception, devised by human intelligence, is so sublime or such a true source of good.IV. SOCIAL PURPOSES
Social coexistence implies these postulates: family, country, property, labor, authority, order. Now, religious instruction gives to these postulates the most stable and unshakable foundation and offers the most solid and integral practical solutions, at the same time indicating the means—even supernatural ones—by which their realization 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 beneficial influence it exerts on moral conscience, the education of the will, and the formation of character.To moral conscience, which does not depend solely on the judgment of laws or human customs but needs internal and external principles on good and evil that remain valid even under the sway of passions, the impulses of self-interest, personal egoism, and false ideologies, it offers the sure vision of our otherworldly end, the spirit of love that confirms, indeed surpasses, the spirit of fear, and the conviction of God’s presence, who sees and watches all and will one day demand an account of everything. To the will, which easily shrinks from what is arduous and especially from self-denial and the victory over one’s own ego, 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 coherence between one’s convictions and one’s public and private actions, it offers not only human motives (philanthropy, civic spirit, patriotism) but also supernatural ones: the love of God, the example of Jesus and the Saints, which always effectively cooperate toward the highest heroisms. This is true even when, in order to form a strong character, one must submit to a great deal of painful renunciation; in such cases, religious instruction appeals to the nobility and formative efficacy that these renunciations have with respect to our nature, which is corrupted and weakened by sin.
VI. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOL
What has been outlined gives the reason for the Church’s constant and vigilant interest in ensuring that religious instruction be maintained or restored in all schools, including state schools (cf. CIC, can. 1374 and the sources cited there). Against it, however, have always been arrayed, from the time of the Enlightenment onward, with greater or lesser vehemence and under the most varied pretexts, the advocates of secular or neutral schools. The most uncompromising secularists proclaim the absolute ostracism of religious instruction from state schools; others, less hostile, would admit it only outside school hours and outside school rooms; still others would tolerate it even within school rooms, but generally only in elementary classes, hedging their tolerance about with such restrictions and precautions as to render it as ineffective as possible. Thus, they think, on the one hand the danger of clerical encroachment is averted, while on the other religious instruction is preserved as a subject apart, without significant connections or references to other subjects. There are even those who would have religion discussed and treated in school only from a historical point of view; Christianity would be no more than one of many religions (even if, if one wishes, the best), springing up on earth according to the times and places. Finally, some go so far as to think that the child, still lacking critical judgment, should be given dogmatic religious instruction as the first possible position of his mind and conscience before virtue and duty: later, when the child has grown into youth, with the maturing of his spirit and personality, he will be able to outgrow this puerile, primitive, fantastic or sentimental conception of religion and move on to a philosophical conception. This would happen gradually in the middle and higher schools (cf. M. Barbera [V. BIBLICA.], p. 322).
The Church, instead, is—and logically—uncompromising on the point of secular or neutral schools, both for other reasons and above all for religious and educational reasons, rightly concerned either about the absolute absence of religious instruction or about its being imparted improperly, not in conformity with the truth. This concern is fully justified even from a pedagogical standpoint. Pedagogy, in fact, postulates “educational unity,” by which each person has the right to an education and instruction that are not contradictory. Now, contradiction arises both from silence (when one part remains silent, as something secondary and irrelevant, about what another part proclaims as fundamental) and from speech (when the teacher of physics, natural sciences, or philosophy affirms as true what the religion teacher must deny as false). In a Christian society, therefore, the fundamental principle must be the Christian religious principle.
It should be noted, moreover, that “the mere fact of imparting religious instruction is not sufficient to say that a school conforms to the rights of the Church and Christian families; for this purpose it is necessary that the entire teaching and organization of the school—teachers, programs, books, in every discipline—be governed by a Christian spirit under the maternal direction and vigilance of the Church, so that religion may truly be the foundation and crown of all instruction, at all levels, not only elementary but also middle and higher” (cf. Pius X’s encyclical Divini illius magistri, 31 Dec. 1929, in Denz.-U., 2220).
VII. 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 primary schools, and in art. 374 allowed exemption for pupils whose relatives would declare that they themselves would 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 municipalities were to provide religious instruction only when the parents of the pupils requested II. The law of 15 July 1877 then listed the compulsory subjects in all public elementary schools but made no mention of religious instruction, substituting instead a new subject: notions of the duties of man and of the citizen. The Regulations for Primary Instruction (6 Feb. 1938) made religious instruction optional even on the part of municipalities, leaving them free either to provide it or not for those pupils whose parents requested it, and free also for teachers to accept or refuse. But the circular of Minister A. Anile (20 Oct. 1922) declared illegitimate the requirement to have the signatures of parents requesting religious instruction authenticated and warned municipalities that they could not in any way refuse to grant the use of school rooms for this purpose; it also authorized those concerned to appeal to the minister in case the suitability of parish priests and their assistants to impart religious instruction was not recognized.
Finally, through the work of Minister Giovanni Gentile, Royal Decree-Law no. 2185 of 10 Oct. 1923 was issued, in which art. 3 placed at the foundation and crown of elementary instruction the teaching of Christian doctrine according to the form received in Catholic tradition. The Superior Ecclesiastical Commission published a Guide to Religious Instruction for Elementary Schools according to the various points of the ministerial program.
### 2. In the Secondary or Middle Schools
The Casati Law cited above still prescribed that religious instruction be imparted in every type of secondary school by the spiritual director charged with collective acts of worship. Gradually, however, religious instruction came to be considered an optional subject for pupils whose parents requested it; and 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 gymnasia, technical schools, and lyceums by the law of 23 June 1877, thereby ceasing entirely both religious instruction and collective acts of worship.
Religious instruction did not return to secondary schools until 1927–28, on the basis of art. 62 of the Regulations of 30 Apr. 1924, which authorized optional courses in all middle schools, and the circular of Minister Fedele of 27 Nov. 1926. And finally the Concordat concluded between the Holy See and Italy (1 Feb. 1929), art. 36, noted that the Italian Government consented to the further development of religious instruction already imparted in elementary schools in the middle schools, according to programs to be agreed upon between the Holy See and the State. In execution of this article, Law no. 824 of 5 June 1930 established religious instruction in all institutes of classical, scientific, normal, technical, and artistic instruction as a compulsory subject, save for exemption for pupils whose parents made a written request. The Sacred Congregation of the Council, by a circular of 21 June 1930, laid down the programs and practical norms for its implementation.
### 3. Universities
The Casati Law preserved in the universities the theological faculties that already existed there. But these were suppressed by the Government by the law of 26 Jan. 1873, which gave the Minister of Public Instruction the power to establish in the Faculties of Letters and Philosophy chairs of those religious subjects that have an interest from the standpoint of historical, philological, and philosophical culture. In fact, some were established in various universities and lasted for a time (cf. G. Monti, La scuola laica, Brescia 1947, pp. 75–82).