Court rulings on Education for the Citizenry fail to address main concern, cardinal says

Madrid, Spain, Feb 26, 2009 / 13:35 pm

The new Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Antonio Canizares, warned this week that the recent Supreme Court rulings in Spain on the school course Education for the Citizenry do not resolve concerns that parents be able to decide how their children are morally formed.

“That parents have the right to have their children educated according to their own moral and religious convictions, and that they can choose that education, has not been resolved at all, it continues to be valid,” the cardinal told the COPE radio network.

The cardinal noted that the Church supports “an education for peaceful coexistence within Spanish society” and that “the fundamental rights” of the Constitution and Spanish law be taught. 

Nevertheless, he warned that the royal decrees establishing Education for the Citizenry “go beyond” the laws on education and impose “an obligatory moral education on everyone,” to the detriment of the right of parents to choose which kind of formation they want for their children.

Cardinal Canizares continued by reaffirming the Church’s mission of being a “witness and guarantor of fundamental human rights.”

“Precisely her faith in God, in God the Creator, brings her to recognize these fundamental rights that belong to the human person for mere fact of simply being man.”

Thus, he concluded, the Church’s demand that human rights be respected “does not fall under Church-State relations, but rather is consubstantial with her mission, and if the Church did not do so, she would be betraying her own identity.”