By Daniel Tyler Chua
56YP MA Humanities
In the previous exposition on the University of Asia and the Pacific’s (UA&P) Credo, we discussed the meaning and importance of whole-person education. Now, we are confronted with the third point in the Credo, which holds “that it is an essential part of the mission of a school to help and complement the family in the exercise of its educational rights and duties.” 1
What does it mean for a school to help and complement the family in the exercise of its educational rights and duties? In our previous discussion on the lifelong nature of education, we brought forth the fact that man has many educational influences: peers, family, schools, the Church, and God. Education, however, requires someone endowed with authority, which shares the same root word as author (auctor). The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines authority as “the quality by virtue of which persons or institutions make laws and give orders to men and expect obedience from them.” 2
The Church generally recognizes three distinct spheres of education, each endowed with its proper authority: the family, civil society, and the Church.3 According to Pius XI, the family “holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring, a right inalienable because inseparably joined to the 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.”4
Nevertheless, “the family is an imperfect society, since it has not in itself all the means for its own complete development; whereas civil society is a perfect society, having in itself all the means for its peculiar end, which is the temporal well-being of the community; and so, in this respect, that is, in view of the common good, it has pre-eminence over the family, which finds its own suitable temporal perfection precisely in civil society.”5
Hence, as Saint Paul VI noted: “The family, which has the primary duty of imparting education, needs [the] help of the whole community. In addition, therefore, to the rights of parents and others to whom the parents entrust a share in the work of education, certain rights and duties belong indeed to civil society, whose role is to direct what is required for the common temporal good. Its function is to promote the education of youth in many ways, namely: to protect the duties and rights of parents and others who share in education and to give them aid; according to the principle of subsidiarity, when the endeavors of parents and other societies are lacking, to carry out the work of education in accordance with the wishes of the parents; and, moreover, as the common good demands, to build schools and institutions.” 6
The role of civil society is only subsidiary. Pope Francis writes: “The State offers educational programmes in a subsidiary way, supporting the parents in their indeclinable role; parents themselves enjoy the right to freely choose the kind of education—accessible and of good quality—which they wish to give their children in accordance with their convictions. Schools do not replace parents, but complement them.” 7
“Subsidiarity,” says Saint John Paul II, “thus complements paternal and maternal love and confirms its fundamental nature, inasmuch as all other participants in the process of education are only able to carry out their responsibilities in the name of the parents, with their consent and, to a certain degree, with their authorization.”8 Hence, it is clear that schools play only a subsidiary role in the educational process, insofar as they belong to civil society.
However, there is another layer of subsidiarity which is often overlooked: the relationship of civil society with the State. The Church holds that society should not be conceived of merely as the State and its administrative units vis-a-vis the individual. There are other “intermediary groups, beginning with the family and including economic, social, political and cultural groups which stem from human nature itself and have their own autonomy, always with a view to the common good.”9
These intermediate institutions play an important role: they “exercise primary functions and give life to specific networks of solidarity. These develop as real communities of persons and strengthen the social fabric, preventing society from becoming an anonymous and impersonal mass, as unfortunately often happens today. It is in interrelationships on many levels that a person lives, and that society becomes more ‘personalized’.” 10
From what has been said above, it is clear that there is a right order between the various institutions present within a given society. This right order is determined by the principle of subsidiarity as formulated by Pius XI: “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.”11
The Pope continues: “The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands. Therefore, those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of ‘subsidiary function,’ the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be, and the happier and more prosperous the condition of the State.”12
How does this apply to education? To begin with, the necessity of schools comes from the fact that the family alone (at least, in most cases) cannot adequately educate young people in “the arts and sciences for the advantage and prosperity of civil society,” thus making it “necessary to create that social institution, the school.”13
The Church acknowledges that intermediate associations have a role to play in education.14 Historically speaking, schools were not always the purview of the State, but belonged to cathedrals, monasteries, convent schools, collegiate churches, communes, apprenticeships, families, townships, religious orders and other communities.15
The Church also acknowledges the State’s right to build schools whenever necessary, provide civic education, and reserve to itself the right to provide an education in things pertaining to military or civil service.16 But it rejects any form of “school monopoly, for this is opposed to the native rights of the human person, to the development and spread of culture, to the peaceful association of citizens and to the pluralism that exists today in ever so many societies.”17
School monopoly, in this sense, refers primarily to situations where the State makes public education in government schools compulsory for all citizens.18 This also consists in any attempt on the part of the State to control the Church’s prerogatives when it comes to education. The Church has the independent right to establish schools, especially given the fact that the school (in the Western context) derives its origin from the family and the Church before any State interference whatsoever.19 The State does not have the right to monopolize the government or curricula of schools.20
However, the Church “is not unwilling that her schools and institutions for the education of the laity be in keeping with the legitimate dispositions of civil authority; she is in every way ready to cooperate with this authority and to make provision for a mutual understanding, should difficulties arise.”21
As a whole, the school’s role is subsidiary to the State, and the State can neither monopolize education as such nor the government of schools. UA&P does not exist to replace the family, but to help it fulfil its primary function of education. Its relationship with the Church and the State, on the other hand, is a discussion for another day.
UA&P Student Handbook 2025–2026, 12.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897.
Pius XI, Divini illius magistri, 11–18.
Ibid., 32.
Ibid., 12.
S. Paul VI, Gravissimum educationis, 3.
Francis, Amoris laetitia, 84.
S. John Paul II, Gratissimam sane, 16.
S. John Paul II, Centesimus annus, 13.
Ibid., 49.
Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, 79.
Ibid., 80.
Pius XI, Divini illius magistri, 77.
S. Paul VI, Gravissimum educationis, 3.
Aldo Scaglione, The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1986), 11–12; Pius XI, Ecco una (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 14, 1929).
Pius XI, Divini illius magistri, 45–50; S. Paul VI, Gravissimum educationis, 3.
S. Paul VI, Gravissimum educationis, 6.
Pius XI, Divini illius magistri, 37, 48.
Ibid., 18–24, 77.
B. Pius IX, Syllabus errorum, 45, 47.
Pius XI, Divini illius magistri, 22.