The Mandate of Catholic Parents

These are some more thoughts I am writing for a talk I am giving Saturday on an Introduction to Catholic Home Education. and you know how it goes – think it, write it, blog it!

Often times when the conversation turns to “homeschooling” the topic turns to, “do parents have the right to educate their own children?”

Catholic parents can rest assured that they not only have the right to educate their offspring, but they have a holy obligation to do so.

The Church has always affirmed the primary right and duty of parents to educate their children.


.you shall teach them to your sons (and daughters) when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up.”  Deut. 11:18-19

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2221 The fecundity of conjugal love cannot be reduced solely to the procreation of children, but must extend to their moral education and their spiritual formation. “The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute.” The right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable.

2223 Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited foreducation in the virtues. 

2225 Through the grace of the sacrament of marriage, parents receive the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children. Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith of which they are the “first heralds” for their children. They should associate them from their tenderest years with the life of the Church. A wholesome family life can foster interior dispositions that are a genuine preparation for a living faith and remain a support for it throughout one’s life.


2229 As those first responsible for the education of their children, parents have the right to choose a school for them which corresponds to their own convictions. This right is fundamental. As far as possible parents have the duty of choosing schools that will best help them in their task as Christian educators. Public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise.

The Charter Rights of the Family issued by the Vatican in 1983 makes this statement: “Since they have conferred life on their children, parents have the original, primary and inalienable right to educate them; hence they must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children.”

A little over 10 years later, the late, great John Paul II wrote in his Letter to Families for the International Year of the Family in February 1994:   Parents are the first and most important educators of their own children, and they also possess a fundamental competence in this area:  They are educators because they are parents.

And just a few weeks ago the Vatican’s delegation to the United Nations called on the world to respect families, the
rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, and
non-governmental forms of education. The Holy See’s representatives also called
on governments last week to stop indoctrinating the youth.

So from an historical perspective, homeschooling is the norm, not the exception and homeschooling parents should feel very confident that by homeschooling their children they are following a time honored, centuries old tradition.