To Catholic Educators and Catechists (4 March 1983)

On Friday, 4 March 1983, the Holy Father addressed Catholic Educators and Catechists in Leão, Nicaragua. In his speech, the Pope addressed in particular the laity, “who live their vocation to holiness and the apostolate in their profession as educators.”

Dear brothers and sisters

1. On this medical university campus in the city of León, to which I come as the seat of the oldest diocese in the country, I have the joy of meeting you, largely peasants. I greet you with great affection, especially the victims of violence — which is often unleashed on you — or natural disasters. I greet in a particular way the dear Pastor of this diocese, the other Bishops and the entire Church of God in León and the region.

In the overall plan of my trip to this geographical area of ​​Panama, I will speak specifically to the peasants. Today I am addressing people in Nicaragua and other countries who dedicate themselves in one way or another to education in the faith, a task that is partly the responsibility of every Christian and that vitally affects everyone.

From the outset, I express to you, dear educators, my deep esteem for your valuable and important mission. You must consider yourselves — not without legitimate pride — the continuators of a centuries-old and fruitful educational work, put into practice by the Church based on the dynamism inherent to the evangelization and elevation of man. Wasn't education — and still continues to be — one of the Church's greatest concerns and achievements since the dawn of the history of the various American peoples? Many were, in fact, its fruits in the founding, guidance and animation of educational institutes at all levels; and in collaboration for an increasingly widespread literacy and schooling — both in ancient and recent times — contributing to greater social, economic and cultural progress in your Nations.

This, which is your tradition and dignity, is also a demanding responsibility for the present and for the future. Because your task dedicates you to the integral formation of new generations, shaken by profound changes and tensions. This is where the life and future of the Nation and also of the Church play out to a large extent.

For this reason, I pay homage here with esteem and gratitude to so many priests, men and women religious educators who yesterday, today and, I am sure, also tomorrow, dedicate themselves with selflessness and enthusiasm, in fidelity to their human vocation and their Christian faith, to this task.

2. However, today I would like to address myself especially to the laity, who live their vocation to holiness and the apostolate in their profession as educators.

Not in vain did the Second Vatican Council encourage lay people to fully live their responsibility as baptized, giving fruitful witness to their faith and imbuing all areas of the temporal order with the values ​​of the Gospel (cf. Apostolicam actuositatem , 7). Among these, at school, because "the role of teachers constitutes a true apostolate... and at the same time a true service provided to society" ( Gravissimum educationis , 8). Rightly so, the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education recently promulgated a document entitled "The Catholic layman, witness to the faith at school", which I recommend you read, as it could be of great help to you.

It could be said that the educational task is connatural to the layman. Because it is closely linked to your marital and family responsibilities. In fact, lay people participate in the evangelizing and sanctifying educational mission of the Church, by virtue of their primary and original right-duty to educate their own children (cf. Gravissimum educationis , 3; Familiaris consortio , 36-42). And there is no doubt that school is a complement to the education received within one's own family.

The Church recognizes this when it emphasizes the primacy of the family in education. That's why I myself, on my visit to UNESCO headquarters two and a half years ago , claimed "the right that belongs to all families to educate their children in schools that correspond to their vision of the world, and in particular, the strict right of believing parents not to see their children subjected, in schools, to programs inspired by atheism".

However, it is logical that parents have the duty to transmit the faith also within the family, especially if this could not be done adequately at school. Furthermore, every lay Christian must feel the responsibility to give reason for their faith and be a bearer of it in all areas, with their own example and their own words.

The freedom of families and the freedom of teaching in the educational process are based on a natural human right that no one can ignore. It is, therefore, neither a claimed privilege nor a concession from the State, but an expression and guarantee of freedom, inseparable from a global framework of duly institutionalized freedoms. Be therefore, as Catholic educators, collaborators and completers of the family mission in the integral formation of the new generations. In this way, you will help to forge a homeland of free men who are consciously responsible for their being and destiny.

3. Your Christian vocation and, based on it, your educational profession, will lead you, through the responsible exercise of freedom, to the transmission and search for truth. This is the intimate requirement of freedom, the center and horizon of all creation and communication of culture; It is also a requirement of faith which, accepted with conscience, thought deeply and lived faithfully, generates and becomes culture.

Therefore, education degrades when it becomes mere "instruction". Because the simple fragmentary accumulation of techniques, methods and information cannot satisfy man's hunger and thirst for truth; instead of acting in favor of what man should "be", it then works for what serves man in the context of "having", "possession" (cf. John Paul II, Speech at UNESCO , 13). The student is thus faced with a contradictory heterogeneity of things, confused, indecisive and defenseless in the face of possible political and ideological manipulations.

The passionate love for the truth must animate the educational task beyond mere "scientist" or "secularist" conceptions. It must teach how to discern the true from the false, the fair from the unfair, the moral from the immoral, what elevates a person and what manipulates them. It is these objective criteria that will guide education, and not extra-educational categories based on instrumental terms of action, of power, of useful or useless subjectivism, of what is taught by friend or adversary, by what is labeled as advanced or retrograde.

Educating in an authentic way is the task of an adult, a father and a mother, who helps the student to discover and make their own, progressively, a unitary meaning of things, a global approach to reality, a proposal of values ​​for life itself, seen in its integrity, from freedom and truth.

4. To educate a Christian - as the document from the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education that I quoted you before says - "any truth will always be a participation of the only Truth, and the communication of truth as an achievement of one's professional life becomes character fundamental part of his peculiar participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, which he prolongs with his teaching" (n. 16).

If education is the integral formation of the human — and all education presupposes, implicitly or explicitly, a certain conception of man — the Catholic educator will inspire his activity in a Christian vision of man, whose supreme dignity is revealed in Jesus Christ, Son of God , model and goal of full human growth.

Man, in fact, cannot be reduced to a mere instrument of production, nor an agent of political or social power. Therefore, the Catholic's educational task helps to discover, from within his own dynamism, "the wonderful horizon of answers that Christian Revelation offers regarding the ultimate meaning of man himself" ( Ibid ., 28).

This original presence and educational service of the Catholic layman are forged in a demanding intellectual and vital synthesis that gives coherence and fruitfulness to his teaching. The entire dualism between his faith and his professional activity would reflect that divorce between the Gospel and culture, which Paul VI already denounced in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi as one of the greatest dramas of our time.

Therefore, do not be afraid — with sincere respect for the conscience of the student — to live and proclaim the message of Christ as the key and profound meaning of all human experience. There mature all the authentic human values ​​that the educator cultivates in the moral conscience of the student: the awareness of their own dignity, their sense of responsibility, their spirit of solidarity, their availability for the common good, their sense of justice, his honesty and rectitude. In Christ the Truth of man is revealed. He is the Way, Truth and Life. he is our Peace.

5. You, Christian educators, must be forgers of free men, followers of the Truth, just and loyal citizens, and builders of peace.

Allow me to dwell for a moment on this last characteristic aspect of all true education.

Yes, builders of peace and concord based on the beatitudes. Know how to forge in your students great and serene hearts in love for their country and, therefore, builders of peace. Because only a profound reconciliation of minds will be able to overcome the spirit and dialectics of enmity, violence — whether covert or overt — and war, which are paths to self-destruction.

I pray with insistence and confidence that the Lord — also through you — gives Nicaragua and all of Central America peace and concord, and makes you builders of peace within nations and in their reciprocal relations.

6. Dear educators: I know that you have taken on a difficult and difficult task. Remember that the Lord accompanies you. The entire Church is very close to you. You are fortified by the rich human and Christian energies of your admirable peoples. But all of this requires that you know how to be, first and foremost, authentic disciples of the Master par excellence.

Do not resist the Lord's call, even in the midst of adversity. Remain rooted in his Body, which is the Church. Nourish yourself frequently with the sacraments and other spiritual means that it offers. Drink from its source of Truth: Truth about Christ, about the Church, about man. And always maintain close bonds of loyalty with your Bishops.

Firm in your own identity, be men of dialogue and generous collaboration, in everything that is authentic growth in peace and justice, together with all your brothers. And do not forget that — as I already highlighted in Puebla ( 28 January 1979, III, 2 ) —- you do not need ideologies foreign to your Christian condition to love and defend man, because at the center of the message you teach is present the commitment to your dignity.

Finally, live charity in everything. In this way you will be worthy, as faithful disciples, of the title of masters, servants of national life, children of the Church, citizens of that "civilization of love" that we want to emerge on the horizon, also, based on the reality of Nicaragua, Central America, all of Latin America. Forward with boldness and hope! With the protection of Mary our Mother. With my affection and my blessing. Amen.

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