Freedom and responsibility

Representatives of 27 countries of Europe gathered in Prague on 7 – 8 October to discuss priorities in the area of Catholic education, share national experiences on international level and define current challenges that need to be faced. The autumn plenary assembly of the European Committee for Catholic Education (CEEC) was administered by its general secretary, Etienne Verhack, who shared his view on development of Catholic education in an interview to Danka Jaceckova, SIR Europe correspondent from Bratislava. Could you describe the history and the mission of the European Committee for Catholic Education?“It was created in 1974 in Brussels as an international association of national secretaries for Catholic education. It was necessary because we had European Union coming up and at that time we were a little bit afraid about the plans and project of European Commission. The aim of this association, since its beginning, has been to defend the freedom of education, to defend the rights of parents to choose their own schools and to defend the rights of Catholic schools in Europe. It started as a ‘club’ of 7-8 countries and after the fall of the Berlin Wall we had the countries of the Eastern Europe coming. Now we consist of 27 countries of EU and besides EU, including Ukraine and Albania. We cover 7,6 million pupils and 26,000 primary and secondary schools in Europe”.What are the main problems and challenges that the Catholic education in Europe has to face today?“Catholic education finds itself in a very problematic situation: we have secularisation, growing multiculturality, a lot of refugees coming in, we also have problems of the family education that is declining and some parents resign to education of their children, we have a lot of broken families and that’s really a problem. There is also an influence of the media. Some 30 years ago the education was provided at home and at school, but now everything the children learn there, can be easily destroyed by the media and also by the contacts that children have in the streets. In the Western European countries we have huge problems with diminuition of vocations, in many Dutch and Belgian schools there are no priests or nuns anymore, and we have to say that in some nordic secularized countries the actual number of believing teachers in Catholic schools has been gradually decreasing”.What can be done to change these tendencies, especially by the CEEC?“We bring together people from these 27 countries and we need to say that the small country counts exactly as a big country, so there’s no difference between France and Albania, we respect one another equally. The general assembly we normally have two times a year decides about the priorities of action, because we cannot handle all the problems and a lot of them are addressed on a national level. 8 years ago we had general assembly in Bratislava tackling a problem of school pastoral. Because of decrease of the number of priests we had to find a way of maintaining the Catholic education at schools in this new situation. Afterwards we had a colloquium concentrating on responsibility of headteachers in school pastoral. Results of this colloquium were very important. For instance, the national secretariate in France has created a centre for formation of headteachers, so when a teacher aspires for the position of the headteacher, he/she has to follow a 3-year special preparation course including theological formation. Our methodology is to compare various models of formation and let the respective countries choose which one is the most suitable for them”. What are the preferences of CEEC for the future?“We need to face individualism, materialism. Many ministries of education see the role of schools as a mere preparation for the job. You need to speak languages very well, but there’s no discussion about literature where mankind and its problems are discovered. So there’s certain sort of functionalism here, concentrated on preparation for job. We agree that this is an important part but for us the Catholic education means formation of a whole person for life. Christian dimension is very important for us and we put stress on the fact that teachers should live an example of Christian message. Another measure against individualism that I suggested to the representatives of the member states of CEEC, is to follow an example of the countries where young people aged 17-18 undertake some kind of social work for a short time, to learn how to give themselves to others. And the last thing – we invite teachers, headteachers and parents to read the Bible again. To rediscover fundamentals of their faith. Many people don’t read the Bible and thus don’t enter in dialog with Christ. And I consider this to be essential. Faith doesn’t meen to see others from my perspective, it means to take the position of my neighbour. I believe this is very important for the future”.