Toledo, Spain, Oct 1, 2008 / 19:07 pm
The Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Antonio Canizares, has sent a letter to the administrators, teachers, parents and students of the archdiocese’s Catholic schools instructing them that the controversial course Education for Citizenship cannot be taught in its current form and must be adapted to Church teaching.
To not do so, he said, would be “to violate the character of our own schools, the right of parents to choose the kind of religious and moral formation they want for their children, and the legitimate right they have to exercise conscientious objection, which many have already done. In addition, it is not right to impose a specific moral formation on everyone,” he said.
Europa Press reports that in his letter, the cardinal acknowledged the legal character of the government-sponsored course. “For this reason, in our schools, students will indeed be taught based on the truth of the person to be moral and honorable citizens who fulfill the principles and mandates of the constitution,” he stated.
The cardinal said the contents of the course would be adapted to the nature and mission of Catholic schools and that teachers would be provided with materials for the course that “do not contradict the Christian vision.”
“We support the law and we want to obey it,” Cardinal Canizares emphasized, but some aspects of Education for Citizenship “are not compatible with the Christian vision of man which is what gives our schools their identity and which is what you parents and teachers have opted to have.”
The course imposes a “moral and human formation” that has not been chosen by parents and is imposed on schools in violation of Catholic doctrine, Cardinal Canizares added. “In our diocesan schools, we defend liberty, within and at the service of the common good,” he said.
The Bishops’ Conference of Spain has decried the Education for Citizenship course for elements “contrary to Catholic teaching and to authentic humanism, such as moral relativism and gender ideology.”