RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. — That part of education and instruction whose object is the explanation and learning of religious truths.
For man and the Christian are not, within the individual, two distinct and separable parts, so that one might be educated and instructed without educating and instructing the other; rather, they are closely united, so that in forming the Christian one comes to form the whole man in his completeness, and, conversely, in forming man one ought at the same time to form the Christian.
According to the teaching of the divine Master, the sole teacher of all humanity, man must no longer live merely a natural life, rich in virtues, culture, and human affections, but also a supernatural life, in which those same virtues, that same culture, and those same affections are clothed with a higher and more intimate light, with an entirely new and deeper meaning and power. They will bear better fruits because the sap with which they are nourished, and the substance by which they ripen, are better. Just as, in a grafted wild tree, one cultivates and cares for both the trunk that has remained wild and the grafted branch at the same time, so in man the natural faculties must be cultivated together with the supernatural faculties infused into him at Baptism; in other words, man must be cultivated both as man and as man who, having been raised to the supernatural order, rises to become 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 acquired through experience, schooling, personal studyand research, religious instruction provides man with an entire lofty heritage of truth. Some of these truths directly concern God in his essence, his attributes, and his works, revealing his greatness (creation, providence, divine life) and his exquisite goodness (the Incarnation, Redemption, the institution of the Church and of 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 circumstances, even the humblest, most painful, and most obscure (sufferings, injustices, privations), which become effective means of expiation and redemption; and 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 precisely constitutes the object of religious instruction. This Revelation, moreover, while providing a sure answer to the most troubling problems of humanity (the reason for suffering and evil, the existence of the afterlife, etc.), also serves to direct properly the investigation and advancement of scientific truths themselves, insofar as it clears the field of deviations and false ideologies.
II. RELIGIOUS ENDS
Since religion consists in the fulfillment of our duties toward God, our creator, preserver, and rewarder, religious instruction aims, from the earliest years, to orient the whole of life toward the fulfillment of these duties, transforming them into a joyful and prompt service to be rendered to the Sovereign Master and Lord, and points to their highest model in Jesus Christ. It also explains to us the means by which to acquire, preserve, recover, and develop the character of children and participation in that divine life itself, to which we have been elevated; and it acquaints us with Christian worship, centered on the Eucharist, considered above all as sacrifice, guiding us toward understanding it, appreciating it, and living it through conscious participation.III. ETHICAL AIMS
Ethics is the sum of our duties, especially with regard to ourselves and our neighbor, which may be summed up in the maxim: to do good and flee moral evil, which is guilt. Now religious instruction is, in this regard, a sure initiation and guide amid so many vain moral constructions, invented by human fickleness, inadequacy, or malice, and vainly seeking to replace the true and unique morality founded on our relations with God. It also points out for our condemnation not only external evil, but also the inner evil of thoughts and desires; it imbues duties with the spirit of love, which leads us to regard all human beings as children of one and the same Father and therefore as brothers, and fuses all loves into one, love of God, from which there then derives every charity toward ourselves and toward our neighbor. No other ethical conception devised by human intelligence is so sublime and so truly productive of good.IV. SOCIAL AIMS
Social coexistence entails the following postulates: family, fatherland, property, work, authority, order. Now religious instruction gives these postulates the most stable and unquestionable foundation and offers the most solid and comprehensive practical solutions, while at the same time indicating the means, including 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 aims of religious instruction serves to demonstrate what an immense benefit it confers upon the moral conscience, the education of the will, and the formation of character.Indeed, to the moral conscience—which depends not only upon the judgment of laws or human customs, but needs internal and external principles concerning good and evil that remain valid even under the onslaught of the passions, the impulses of self-interest and personal egoism, and false ideologies—it offers the sure vision of our supernatural end, the spirit of love that confirms, indeed surpasses, the spirit of fear, and the conviction of God’s presence, since he sees and watches over everything and will one day demand an account of everything. To the will, which easily recoils from whatever is burdensome, and above all from self-denial and victory over the ego, it presents a higher motive, a source of inexhaustible energy: duty for the love of God. To the formation of character, which
entails 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, and the example of Jesus and the Saints, which always contribute effectively to the highest acts of heroism. The same is true when, in order to form a strong character, one must submit to a host of painful renunciations; in such cases religious instruction appeals to the nobility and formative efficacy that these renunciations possess with regard to our nature, corrupted and weakened by sin.
VI. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOL
What has been indicated explains the Church’s continual and vigilant concern 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, however, ever since the age of the Enlightenment, the advocates of the secular or neutral school have consistently worked, with greater or lesser hostility and under the most varied pretexts. Extreme secularists proclaim the absolute exclusion of religious instruction from state schools; others, less hostile, would agree to admit it, but outside school hours and classrooms; still others would tolerate it even in classrooms, but generally only in the elementary grades, surrounding their tolerance, however, with such restrictions and safeguards as to make it as ineffective as possible. Thus, they think, on the one hand the danger of clerical invasion is avoided, while on the other religious instruction retains the character of a subject apart, without inconvenient connections or references to the other subjects. There are also those who would like religion to be discussed and taught in school, but only from the historical standpoint; Christianity would be merely one of the many religions (even, if one wishes, the best), appearing on earth according to times and places. Finally, others go so far as to think that a child, still lacking critical sense, should be given a dogmatic religious instruction as the first possible orientation of his mind and conscience before virtue and duty: later, once the child has become a young man, as the maturity and individuality of his spirit develop, he will be able to overcome this childish, primordial, fantastic, or sentimental conception of religion and pass to a philosophical conception. This would occur gradually in the middle and upper schools (cf. M. Barbera [V. BIBLICA.], p. 322).The Church, on the other hand, and logically so, shows herself uncompromising on the question of the secular or neutral school, both for other reasons and above all for religious and educational reasons, rightly concerned either by the absolute absence of religious instruction or by religious instruction not imparted correctly, in conformity with the truth. This concern is fully justified also from the pedagogical standpoint. Pedagogy, in fact, presupposes “educational unity,” whereby everyone has the right to an education and instruction that are not contradictory. Now both silence (when one side remains silent, as though it were secondary and irrelevant, about what another side proclaims fundamental) and speech (when the teacher of physics, natural sciences, or philosophy affirms as true what the teacher of religion must deny as false) are contradictory. In a Christian society, therefore, the Christian religious principle must be established as fundamental.
It should also be noted that “the mere fact of imparting religious instruction is not sufficient to say that a school conforms to the rights of the Church and of Christian families; for this purpose it is necessary that the entire teaching and the entire organization of the school—teachers, curricula, books, in every subject—be governed by a Christian spirit under the maternal direction and vigilance of the Church, so that religion may truly be the foundation and crowning of all instruction, at every level, not only elementary but also middle and upper” (cf. encyclical of Pio X: Divini illius magistri, of 31 Dec. 1929, in Denz-U. 2220).
VII. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE ITALIAN SCHOOL
1. In primary or elementary school. — The Casati Law (13 November 1859) provided in art. 315 for “religious instruction as a compulsory subject in primary schools,” and in art. 374 allowed exemption for “pupils whose parents shall have declared that they themselves will take care of their religious instruction.” But two ministerial circulars, of 27 September 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 II. The law of 13 July 1877 then enumerated 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 citizen. The Regulations for Primary Education (6 February 1928) made religious instruction optional even on the part of the municipalities, leaving them free to have it given, or not, to those pupils whose parents had requested it, while teachers too were free to accept or refuse. But the circular of Minister A. Anile (20 October 1922) declared illegitimate the demand that the signatures of parents requesting religious instruction be authenticated, and warned the municipalities that they could not refuse to make the school classrooms available for this purpose; it also authorized those concerned to appeal to the minister if the qualification of parish priests and their assistants to impart religious instruction was not recognized.Finally, through the work of Minister Giovanni Gentile, there came the Royal Decree-Law no. 2185 of 1 October 1923, whose art. 3 placed the teaching of Christian doctrine, according to the form received in Catholic tradition, as the foundation and crowning element of elementary education. The Superior Ecclesiastical Commission published a Guide to Religious Instruction for Elementary Schools according to the Various Points of the Ministerial Programme.
2. In secondary schools or schools of the intermediate level. — The above-mentioned Casati Law further prescribed that religious instruction be given in every type of secondary school by the spiritual director charged with collective worship practices. Gradually, religious instruction came to be regarded as an optional subject for pupils whose parents requested it; since such requests were ordinarily lacking, the spiritual directors—already in fact abolished in two-thirds of the Kingdom’s secondary schools—were eliminated in all gymnasia, technical schools, and lyceums by the law of 23 June 1877, and both religious instruction and collective worship practices ceased altogether.
Religious instruction did not return to secondary schools until 1927–28, on the basis of art. 62 of the Regulations of 30 April 1924, which authorized optional courses in all middle schools, and of the circular of Minister Fedele of 27 November 1926. Finally, the Concordat concluded between the Holy See and Italy (11 February 1929), art. 36, noted that the Italian Government consented to the further development in middle schools of the religious instruction already given in elementary schools, according to programmes 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 classical, scientific, teacher-training, technical, and artistic educational institutions as a compulsory subject, subject to exemption for pupils whose parents submitted a written request. The Sacred Congregation of the Council, in a circular of 21 June 1930, outlined its programmes and the norms for its practical implementation.
3. Universities. — The Casati Law also retained in the Universities the theological Faculties that had already existed there. But these were suppressed by the Government through the law of 26 January 1873, which granted the minister of Public Education the power to establish within the Faculties of Letters and Philosophy professorships in those religious subjects possessing an interest from the historical, philological, and philosophical points of view. In fact, some were established at various universities and still continue to exist (cf. G. Monti, La scuola laica, Brescia 1947, pp. 75–82).