Religious education is an inalienable right, Costa Rican bishops assert
March 9th, 2010 | by admin |The bishops of Costa Rica released a statement expressing concern over a recent ruling by the country’s Constitutional Court which stripped the Church its right to choose which religion teachers will be hired in Costa Rican schools.
Last month, Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court took away the Church’s right to choose which religion teachers it will hire, after reversing a 1972 law stating that all religious teachers must be approved by the Bishops’ Conference of Costa Rica.
“We respect the decision of the Constitutional Court, but at the same time we are concerned about the insecurity and confusion that the ruling has caused among teachers and students of religious education, as well as parents,” the bishops said.
The foundation of religious education, they explained, “lies in the inalienable right of Catholic parents to educate their children according to their faith and convictions. It is a human right that must be respected, and it is the duty of the Costa Rican State to make the greatest effort possible to ensure parents are offered this education in public schools.”
After noting that religious education is also good for the state, the bishops expressed their concern over “the tendency to want to replace Catholic religious education with … education in ethics, aesthetics or values, denying the rights of parents and to choose Catholic religious education for their sons and daughters.”
For these reasons, the bishops called on parents to provide the necessary religious education to their children; on authorities to respect this right; on teachers to assume this task with responsibility and to respect “current law that protects Catholic religious education.”
They also encouraged a strengthening of the collaboration between the State and the Catholic Church in the area of education.
By Anthony Cosentino on Jul 23, 2010
This legislation might be one more move by the state to secularize Costa Rica’s culture. The Second Vatican Council regarded secularism’s splitting faith from daily life as one of the most serious errors of our times. Faith provides the moral framework upon which guides the development of culture. With the cleaving faith from culture, the door is opened to general cultural decay, manifested in an undermined dignity of the human person in many arenas. Rises in abortion, drug culture, organized and petty crime, pornography and domestic violence are concrete examples of what has resulted in Europe and North America due to removal of faith from public discourse – to the corruption of our cultures. In this sense, Vatican II’s words on the perils of cleaving faith from life are truly prophetic. If CR’s Catholic Bishops can embark on some serious pastoral training for all its members, especially its teachers, they may be able to reverse the growing secularizing tide which has morally devastated Europe and North America. There is an important window of opportunity here for a renewed evangelization in Costa Rica. Costa Rican culture that is no longer animated by the Catholic values upon which it was constructed will no longer be Costa Rican culture. It will be a secularized shallow, globalized vestige of its once beautiful self.