Professional and lay character

Our apostolate, I will repeat a thousand times, is always professional, lay, secular work, and this must also – and even especially – be seen unmistakably, as an essential characteristic of the educational establishments which are corporate apostolates of the Work.

Activities not officially, nor semi-officially, Catholic

These will always be centres set up and run by ordinary citizens, whether members of the Work or not, as a professional, lay activity, in full conformity with the laws of the country, and obtaining from the civil authorities the recognition accorded to similar activities by other citizens. Moreover, they will ordinarily be set up on the express condition that they are never considered as official or semi-official Catholic activities, that is to say, depending directly on the Church’s hierarchy.

Work by citizens exercising their rights

They will not be educational centres that the hierarchical Church promotes and creates in various ways, in accordance with the inviolable right conferred on her by her divine mission. They will be initiatives of citizens, exercising their right to work in the various fields of social life and, therefore, in education. And parents will be exercising their right to give their children a Christian education, because “the family holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate their offspring. It is an inalienable right being inseparably joined to a strict obligation, a right anterior to any right whatever of civil society and of the State, and therefore inviolable on the part of any power on earth.”¹⁷ The State should safeguard the exercise of this right, by providing the means and by monitoring it in an appropriate manner so that it is exercised with integrity; and should supply for it where parents are unable to do so alone or through others, or where the common good clearly requires it. “Accordingly, any educational or scholastic monopoly is unjust and unlawful, which, physically or morally, forces families to make use of government schools, contrary to the dictates of their Christian conscience, or contrary even to their legitimate preferences.”¹⁸