The great mandate to the Church can be called “educational,” for Jesus commanded His apostles to make disciples of all nations. A disciple is one who learns. One who “makes” a disciple teaches him. Ergo, the Church’s mission is (largely, if not exclusively) a teaching mission.
Traditionally, the Church speaks of the tria munera, that is the three offices, or duties, of the ordained. These are especially the offices of the bishop (seen in its height in the papacy), but all the ordained participate in them, and, to a lesser extent, the lay faithful do, too.
The munera are listed as follows:
Munus docendi (office of teaching, based on Christ’s role as Prophet)
Munus regendi (office of governing, based on Christ’s role as King)
Munus sanctificandi (office of sanctifying, based on Christ’s role as Priest)
The first on the list is the office of teaching. I have never seen the list given where this was not the first. The answer to why this is so seems rather obvious. People are neither holy nor governable if they have not been taught the Faith. How can a bishop govern his people if they do not know what the Faith is or what its moral laws demand of them? How can we grow in holiness when, “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6)?
The Holy Father, with his personal infallibility and primacy of jurisdiction, possesses these munera in a unique way, for he is a divinely appointed Monarch. Bishops, who possess the fulness of the priesthood, exercise them fully and by right, with and under the Roman Pontiff. The lesser clergy, by virtue of being conformed to Christ the Head through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, carry out these offices in a correspondingly lesser degree. But the lay faithful really do participate in the munera by virtue of their baptism and confirmation. For instance, in a family, parents have the office of teaching, governing, and sanctifying their children. They teach them the Faith in its rudiments before anyone else does; sanctify them by saying prayers with them, blessing them before bed, and forming their consciences by word and example; and govern them by issuing positive and negative commands in conformity with Catholic morals. They do all this by strict right as parents — and they have a duty to do so. Of course, it is the father of the family who has the highest authority in this divinely established hierarchy, which so beautifully reflects the Trinity and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
So far we have established that the most fundamental of the three offices is the teaching office, and that the laity participate, albeit to a limited degree, in this office.
Enter the Crusade of Saint Benedict Center. Our mission is educational in the broad sense, by which I mean that it is not limited to schools or formal programs of instruction — although we have both of these in our IHM School and the Saint Augustine Institute, by which anyone, anywhere, can advance their formation in the Faith.
The apostolate is not something reserved to clergy and religious. It never was. Long before Vatican II — which, according to a strange mythology, was the first to assert the importance of the laity in propagating the Catholic message — Saint Vincent Pallotti made layfolk members of his “Union of the Catholic Apostolate.” In doing so, he made no claim to originality.
Ven. Pope Pius XII spoke of the lay apostolate to spread the Gospel in his Encyclical, Evangelii Praecones: “It can certainly be claimed that the lay cooperation which we today call Catholic Action, has existed since the foundation of the Church. Indeed the Apostles and other preachers of the Gospel received no little help from it and the Christian religion thereby made great advances. In this respect Apollo, Lydia, Aquila, Priscilla and Philemon are mentioned by the Apostle of the Gentiles. We have also these words of his to the Philippians: ‘Yes, and I ask thee, who sharest the yoke so loyally, to take part with them; they have worked for the Gospel at my side, as much as Clement and those other fellow laborers of mine, whose names are recorded in the book of life.’ [Phil. 4:3].”
The right and obligation of the laity to work for the spread of the Catholic Faith — education in the broad sense — is given in the Latin Church’s Code of Canon Law:
“Can. 225 §1 Since lay people, like all Christ’s faithful, are deputed to the apostolate by baptism and confirmation, they are bound by the general obligation and they have the right, whether as individuals or in associations, to strive so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all people throughout the world. This obligation is all the more insistent in circumstances in which only through them are people able to hear the Gospel and to know Christ.
“§2 They have also, according to the condition of each, the special obligation to permeate and perfect the temporal order of things with the spirit of the Gospel. In this way, particularly in conducting secular business and exercising secular functions, they are to give witness to Christ.”
Note this sentence: “This obligation is all the more insistent in circumstances in which only through them are people able to hear the Gospel and to know Christ.” The Code does not specify the circumstances that render the laity the only ones capable of making the divine message of salvation known and accepted. It is possible, nay plausible, that a respectable number of priests dwell in a given place, but that their own internal “circumstances” make them incapable of helping people to know Christ or the Gospel. Modernism has done its damage.
Whether or not the clergy in a given place are up to the task, the general obligation of all the faithful “to strive so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all people throughout the world” remains. But as Brother Francis said countless times, one has to be a reservoir before he can become an aqueduct. Our formation in the Faith must continue; our knowledge of it must grow if we are to educate others. These days, when the Faith is so heavily attacked by enemies both without and within the Church, we have an especial duty to learn the Faith and witness it to others.
We want not only to pass on a remedial knowledge of the Faith to our fellow man, but to form those closest to us into a genuine Christian civilization — an integral Catholic society that will be a seed for tomorrow’s Christendom. Since the lay faithful have a “special obligation to permeate and perfect the temporal order of things with the spirit of the Gospel,” as the Church tells us in her Canon Law, then they ought to be formed in those aspects of Christian civilization that it is their duty to revive, whether it be in the areas of business, law, politics, art, architecture, music, literature, poetry, science, etc. — and yes, education. Each must do this according to his means, the gifts God has given him, and his opportunities to perfect those gifts.
All for the glory of God and the salvation of souls!
And this is why we at Saint Benedict Center do what we do. Whether it is meeting people on the street in our missionary apostolate, teaching in our school or the SAI program, publishing on Catholicism.org, giving presentations or lectures, we want to imitate Saint Paul, who said, “I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord” (Phil. 3:8), and Saint Peter, who commands us to “sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts, being ready always to satisfy every one that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in you” (I Peter 3:15).
“Keep the Faith!” the Irish are wont to say. “And share it!” Brother Francis used to add. This is Catholic education in the broad sense.
