School education should be founded upon the truth about man, cardinal says

Toledo, Spain, May 2, 2008 / 14:02 pm

Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera of Toledo spoke out on school education this week saying that, it should be founded upon the truth, especially nowadays, when there is a cultural climate that “seeks to keep human reason from tending towards the truth.”

In an article he wrote on education, the cardinal explained that schools “must help kids to love, think and act according to right reason.  For this reason they have as their mission the search and the presentation of the truth, with no other limits than the truth itself.”
Educational policies, he said, must have the value and dignity of man at their center, be based on the truth about man, that is, in conformity how God created him.

After emphasizing that the Church is certain that man can only base himself on the truth of Christ, “who shows man what man himself is and reveals to him the greatness of his vocation,” Cardinal Canizares explained that “without violating right reason in any way, we can affirm and bear witness that every aspect of authentic humanism is closely linked to Christ.”

“The search and access to truth, the fulfillment of the truth, the obtaining of the truth about man himself, belongs to this authentic humanism.  To exclude from man access to this truth is the root of all alienation,” the cardinal warned.

“For this reason,” he continued, “the central problem for schools, in my view, is the issue of the truth, which is nonetheless not one of the many questions that man must face, but rather, the fundamental issue that cannot be eliminated and that spans all times and stages of life and of the history of humanity,” the cardinal said.