Bradley Eli, M.Div., Ma.Th. reports for ChurchMilitant.com : Cardinal Raymond Burke is instructing parents to protect their children from immoral education.
The former head of the Vatican’s highest court on Friday — during a virtual conference titled “Fathers’ Call to Bishops: Help Us to Defend Our Children’s Purity” — defended the role of parents as primary educators of their children. The conference was hosted by the international pro-life group Voice of the Family in conjunction with LifeSite News.
Burke stated that parents must be attentive to the “curriculum” as well as “the life” in schools to ensure their children will be formed in virtue and not “deformed by indoctrination in the confusion and error concerning the most fundamental truths” that would “lead to their slavery to sin and therefore to their profound unhappiness and to the destruction of culture.”
A primary concern behind the conference was encouraging fathers to work with the United Kingdom’s Catholic bishops in resisting the British government’s compulsory program “Relationships and Sex Education,” set to roll out this fall not only in public but also in Catholic schools. Agendas in the program include:
- Pro-LGBT
- Pro-contraception
- Pro-abortion
Burke warned parents they “must be especially vigilant, for some schools have become the tools of a secular agenda.”
“One thinks for example, of the compulsory so-called gender education in some schools, which is a direct attack on human sexuality and on marriage and, therefore, on the family,” observed Burke.
Cdl. Burke explains the role of parents’ obligation to oppose teaching that contradicts moral law
The conference comes in the wake of U.K. legislation called the “Children and Social Work Act 2017” that has made “Relationships [and Sex] Education compulsory in primary schools in England and Relationships and Sex Education compulsory in secondary schools in England, including in Catholic schools.” The program was supposed to be launched in September, but owing to COVID-19, full implementation has been delayed until the summer of 2021.
Concerned Catholic parents have formed the Coalition in Defense of Primary Educators to resist the implementation of the program in their children’s schools. The group’s primary goal is to inspire Catholics to offer prayers in the form of daily Rosaries and sacrifices, especially for bishops, so they’ll resist the program they are currently embracing.
Citing a document from the Second Vatican Council titled Declaration on Christian Education, Burke pinpointed the role of parents in their children’s education:
As it is the parents who have given life to their children, on them lies the gravest obligation of educating their family. They must, therefore, be recognized as being primarily and principally responsible for their education. The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute.
In its letter last month to the English cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Coalition expressed how “shocking and deeply troubling” it was to see the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales “consistently and publicly” support the deviant sex education program. Even more problematic, they noted, the program “denies parents the right to remove their children from the Relationships and Sex Education” curriculum.
Burke’s Plea to Parents
During the conference, Burke spoke up for the need of parents to be vigilant over their children’s education.
“Parents, for their part, should be fully engaged in whatever service of education is provided by society and the Church,” noted Burke.
He contrasted the incongruity of moral formation received in Catholic homes with the perverse moral education found in many schools today.
“Children and young people should not be confused or led into error by an education outside of the home which conflicts with the education given in the home,” the cardinal asserted.
His eminence also set straight the often misconstrued meanings of love and tolerance that Christians must always keep towards those caught up in sin.
“In the context of charity,” Burke related, “tolerance means unconditional love of the person who is involved in evil but firm abhorrence of the evil into which the person has fallen.”
This wisdom is summed up in the oft-quoted phrase, “Love the sinner, but hate the sin.”
Anti-Catholic teaching is also being pushed in the United States under the federalization of education known as Common Core. Common Core is hyped by media and educators as “state-based,” though it was developed by private interests in Washington, D.C. without any representation from the states and pushed by billionaire Bill Gates, who spent $2.5 billion to see it implemented.
It has taken a stealth approach in implementation, first rolling out only changes to English and math, but later affecting other courses where its deviant sex education, among other things, promotes that abortion is “essential care.” The curriculum was denounced by the Cardinal Newman Society and other whistleblowers long before its sex ed component was introduced.
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