“Restoring links with memory, with the past, with one’s own roots, is a very important educational task which schools must assume: if we no longer recognize ourselves to be ‘children’ of a shared history, of a common past, it then becomes difficult to engage in dialogue”. The point is made by Msgr. Giuseppe Betori, secretary general of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), in an interview given to SirEurope at a time when schooling, school reform, the relation between state and private schools, and the teaching of religion in schools are at the centre of a lively debate in Italy. The Church observes Betori is convinced that “a large cultural and social, as well as religious, part of the past is linked to profoundly Christian roots, or derives its origin from Christianity. Enabling children to rediscover all these types of ‘memory’ also means forming an ‘alphabet’ of the rules with which to ‘read’ the present, as well as the past: without a ‘Christian alphabet’, the world in fact becomes incomprehensible. That’s why it’s essential to enhance the teaching of Catholic religion in all its expressions literary, artistic, scientific in such a way as to rediscover the ‘traces’ of these Christian roots in our culture“.
