Toledo, Spain, Jun 9, 2008 / 21:08 pm
The Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, said this week teachers at Catholic schools must not only “transmit the faith with words but also with the explicit testimony of their own lives.”
In an article on Catholic schools, the cardinal said they “propose a Christian vision of man and the world that offers children and young people the possibility of a fruitful dialogue between faith and reason, of encountering the truth, depending on it and being guided by it.”
He went on to underscore that “truth, goodness and beauty are fundamental contents and ends of a Catholic school,” which should be “at the service of truth” and should teach everything about Jesus Christ, “who is the truth in person, and not something abstract or unreal.”
In today’s world, the cardinal explained, Catholic schools should embrace a teaching strategy that allows students to “not only acquire human, moral and spiritual maturity, but also to become involved in the transformation of society and be concerned with collaborating on the coming and establishing of the Kingdom of God among us.”
“At the center of everything,” he continued, must be “the human person, the dignity of all human beings, the establishing of fundamental human rights created not by human powers, nor forged through a consensus or through parliamentarian majorities, but rather that precede them and that are inscribed in man’s very being.”
He also called on teachers to be true evangelizers and to bring students into a closer relationship with Jesus Christ.