As more and more parents are choosing to homeschool, it is perhaps not surprising that long-simmering tensions between parish religious education and homeschooling parents are coming to a head. California alone has seen an astonishing 78 percent increase in homeschooling since 2017-2018, with similar explosive growth evident across much of the United States.
As early as 2000, the Catholic bishops of Florida established a policy compelling Catholic homeschools to have their children “fully participate in the parish based program for sacramental catechesis,” though they did permit other religious education to be carried out at home. Last September, the Diocese of San Diego went further, prohibiting charter schools, private school programs and homeschool groups from using parish facilities. The diocese justified this policy by arguing that “[p]arish run schools and religious education programs are the primary means by which the church accomplishes its teaching mission for children and young people.” In an explanatory statement, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy reiterated that the “historic ministry of Catholic schools lies at the center of the Church’s educational mission.”
Cardinal McElroy, who has since been appointed to lead the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., did affirm that parents are “the first teachers of their children in faith,” and he added that the diocese “supports the decision of a growing number of parents to choose home-schooling for their children.” So what are the ways the church might support homeschooling parents as they seek to provide their children with a comprehensive Catholic education?
Catholic parochial elementary schools were founded at a rapid pace in the second half of the 19th century, largely in response to new compulsory education laws. As in other English-speaking nations, public schools in the United States were initially Protestant in all but name. But in the United States, this Protestantism in the schools was gradually replaced by secularism—equally inappropriate, Catholics argued, for forming the minds and souls of children in the faith. Religious education limited to the home or parish, they argued, could not undo the lesson of secular education: that God was unimportant. So parishes built schools, and bishops took to the public square to demand that the government respect parental freedom of conscience in educational policy.
The institutional church wanted to keep Catholic children Catholic, poor and rich alike, and it understood that the only way to do this was for parishes to support poor parents in their duty to educate their children. The moral dignity of the poor meant that educating one’s children according to one’s conscience could not be a luxury good. Consequently, the whole parish—and not just parishioners with children in school—was expected to contribute toward the education of its youngest members.
What about homeschooling? It was not a real option except among the wealthiest. In an 1871 lecture, Bernard McQuaid, the first Catholic bishop of Rochester, N.Y., explained why, describing the “laborer’s child” whose mother “all day long labors on, busy in many ways to keep things together and eke out a bare subsistence” and whose father “works from morning until night, and has, perhaps, neither time nor strength, nor patience to sit down with his children.” The life of poor parents simply did not admit time to homeschool. The laborer required church support to provide a religious education for his child. He could not accomplish it alone.
Thus, the rights and duties of parents and the hierarchy go together. The job of the bishop is to assist Catholic parents by establishing Catholic schools and ensuring their Catholicity and academic integrity. Canon law states that Christian parents, for their part, should use those schools if possible, but also work to ensure that civil society respects their religious freedom by observing what the Code of Canon Law calls “distributive justice” (No. 797). More specifically, the Code states, “the Christian faithful must be concerned that civil society recognizes this freedom for parents and even supports it with subsidies.”
Religious and moral formation
The situation in most of the United States for Catholic parents is little better now than in the 1870s. Catholic schools have become too expensive for even many middle-class families, but in most states, civil society does not ensure that parents can educate their children in accordance with their consciences. The average wealth of the Catholic population is much higher now, but it is not high enough to cover the increased cost of Catholic schools where lay teachers must, in justice, be paid a living wage. Particularly for Catholic families blessed with several children, parochial schools are often not a possibility. In addition, because of their size and limited finances, parochial schools often cannot provide accommodations for neurodivergent children. For instance, few Catholic schools are equipped to provide the extensive tutoring needed to help a dyslexic child learn to read, but a Catholic homeschooling family can often use public resources to get that tutoring while still providing a full Catholic education at home.
Catholic parents today have one great advantage over their 19th-century forebears. Despite the myriad faults of our age, labor-saving devices such as washing machines have greatly eased the domestic load required to keep a household going. Moreover, Catholic parents today are often far better educated than their predecessors. That education, combined with easily available curricula and teaching resources, makes it possible for busy, sometimes even working, parents to homeschool. The education they provide, like that provided by Catholic schools, ensures that religious and moral formation are at the center of a child’s instruction.
In addition, homeschooling can provide many advantages over traditional schooling, including customization, allowing multiple members of a family to learn together, and a more flexible schedule. Yet the financial advantages of homeschooling are important—homeschooling older children might allow a parent who wants to stay home to care for younger children as well. In contrast, paying for Catholic school often requires two incomes and outside child care. Increasingly expensive child care makes this an even greater burden on families. Even with these benefits, it would still be better if parents had a true choice between sending their children to Catholic school and homeschooling. However, given political realities in most states, the rise of Catholic homeschooling ought to be seen as a hopeful moment of creativity by the lay faithful to fulfill their duty to provide a religious education.
The hierarchy should take seriously its obligation to assist all Catholic parents, including those who homeschool. This does not imply a universal right to use diocesan facilities. But to prohibit such use runs contrary to the bishop’s fundamental duty to assist Catholic parents in their fulfillment of these most sacred duties—the very reason that Catholic schools exist in the first place.
Surely there is room for cooperation. Perhaps some parishes could provide space for homeschool co-ops while also overseeing the religious education provided therein. Perhaps some Catholic schools could offer part-time options to high-schoolers, such as in upper-level science and mathematics courses. The details will vary with local circumstances, but the problem calls for creativity and innovation.
Nineteenth-century Catholic clerics were convinced that the right and duty of Catholic parents and the right and duty of the church to teach the faith were not only complementary but inextricably united. Today, Catholics can be inspired by the fervor of that belief to embrace diverse approaches to education that reflect our 21st-century circumstances.
