Thursday 1 September 2011

Apostleship of Prayer: September General Intention

ZENIT reports that the September general intention of the Apostleship of Prayer is for teachers:
The Apostleship of Prayer announced the intentions chosen by the Pope for the upcoming month.

His general intention is for teachers: "That all teachers may know how to communicate the love of truth and instill authentic moral and spiritual values."
ZENIT'S report goes on to quote from a Vatican Radio interview with the Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education:
"If one does not know what good and evil are," he said, "if everything is relative, then the question arises, what should one educate for?"

Then, regarding "spiritual values," the cardinal reminded that "education cannot be reduced to the transmission of knowledge" because then, this knowledge "can be used both for good as well as for evil."

A person must be educated to know, Cardinal Grocholewski acknowledged, but he must also be taught to want to use that knowledge for good....

Teachers, the cardinal stressed, "must not only have an intellectual and specific formation in the subject they teach, but they must also have a certain spiritual formation, that will make them trustworthy persons to represent a certain 'authority' before the students."
It is quite legitimate for a school to be anxious about its examination results, and to consider it important to teach effectively to gain good results for the school's pupils. But how many of our schools do make that additional effort "to communicate the love of truth"?

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