According to Church law (Canon 226), those who are married have the specific obligation to contribute, as spouses, to the building up of the People of God.
The Second Vatican Council stated that the fundamental duty of married people is to give clear proof of their lives of the indissolubility and holiness of the marriage bond, to assert with vigor the right and duty as parents to give their children a Christian upbringing, and to defend the dignity and autonomy of the family.
This obligation to ensure a Christian education for their children is a moral, not legal, obligation for parents. Juridically, the religious dimension of the family is set in the freedom of partners to procreate and to educate their children. The education of children in the faith is of paramount importance to the future of the Church. Parents are free to determine the particular method of Catholic education with the support and recognition of such a right by the State (Canon 797). Parents are free to select schools where they will educate their children. Yet, it must be recognized that it is not always possible to do so.
At this point, it would be well to refer to the many Church laws on marriage and those on Catholic education. A summary canon would be 1055, Section 1: "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized."
Editor's note: This series about the rights and obligations of the Christian faithful, as set forth in canon (Church) law, has been written especially for the Catholic News Herald by Mercy Sister Jeanne-Margaret McNally. Sister Jeanne-Margaret is a distinguished authority on canon law, author of the reference guide "Canon Law for the Laity," and frequent lecturer at universities and dioceses. A graduate of The Catholic University of America with multiple degrees including a doctorate in psychology and a licentiate of canon law (JCL), she is a psychologist for the Tribunal of the Diocese of Charlotte and a judge in the Metropolitan Tribunal of the Archdiocese of Miami.