The Congregation for Catholic Education explained in the introduction that it had been “confronted with cases of conflicts and appeals resulting from different interpretations of the traditional concept of Catholic identity by educational institutions.”
Many of these conflicts, it said, concerned rapid changes in society, including the process of globalization and the growth of interreligious and intercultural dialogue.
“It seemed therefore appropriate to offer a more in-depth and up-to-date reflection and guidelines on the value of the Catholic identity of educational institutions in the Church, so as to provide a set of criteria responding to the challenges of our times, in continuity with the criteria that always apply,” it said.
One of the issues addressed in the new instruction is the role of teachers and administrators of a Catholic school. The instruction said that the witness of lay and consecrated educators was “increasingly relevant to achieving the integral formation of students.”
Quoting from the 1997 document “The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium,” it said: “In fact, ‘In the Catholic school’s educational project there is no separation between time for learning and time for formation, between acquiring notions and growing in wisdom. The various school subjects do not present only knowledge to be attained, but also values to be acquired and truths to be discovered. All of which demands an atmosphere characterized by the search for truth, in which competent, convinced, and coherent educators, teachers of learning and of life, may be a reflection, albeit imperfect but still vivid, of the one Teacher.’”
The instruction said that teachers in a Catholic school also bear witness to the Catholic identity through their lives and should be hired with that in mind.
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