Thursday, May 27, 2021

Divini Illius Magistri and RC Social Teaching Are Wrong on This Point

Peter Kwasniewski:
First, the encyclical asserts and defends throughout the fundamental, inviolable right of parents to educate their own children (31ff.) and of the Church to educate the whole of mankind, especially those who are already her children by grace (15ff.). This right belongs naturally to the parents and supernaturally to the Church, and only by parental or ecclesiastical permission to the State or its officials.


One can understand this as an attempt to respond to the state and its abuse of power but taken as an absolute, it is wrong. The community (or the tribe) also has a right to educate the young, especially the males, and while parents are the primary teachers, they are not the only teachers, and there is no "delegation" of the exercise of this right to others -- they are exercising their own responsibility towards the young. The customs or laws that order behavior in a community or tribe, especially behavior towards others, are not determined by the family alone, but by the community (or its representatives), and parents aren't the only one with the authority to admonish or correct the young if the young fail to observe these laws. (Whether other adults have the authority to punish children or if this is delegated is a question worthy of attention.)

If there is someone in the tribe who is unqualified to teach, then he should not be teaching, but this is true of parents as well, and even more so. To accept a theologoumenon from a pope as if it is a part of Divine Tradition is a mistake but ultramontanist Latins, despite their intellectual manuevering on the "limits of infallibility" and "different levels of authority" still suffer from a slavishly uncritical attachment to papal opinions.

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