Catholic School in Italy: Aspects of Religious Identity

The article deals with the peculiarities of the Catholic educational model considered as one of the most important elements of the Italian cultural tradition. The author intends to identify main aspects of the Catholic identity of the school in Italy and correlate them with the principles of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church in the educational field. The pastoral educational project was strongly influenced by the ideas of personalist philosophers such as J. Maritain, E. Mounier, R. Guardini, M. Casotti, L. Stefanini and others. The fundamental principles of Catholic pedagogy include theocentrism, the centrality of the person, the interpretation of education as a process to authenticate the personal vocation in the context of a specific community membership, the vision of “communitarianism” as an antithesis of individualism. Due to secularization and religious indifferentiation, the Catholic school is now on the fringes of the Italian educational system. Catholic “equal” schools (formally equalized in rights with public schools in 2000) now house less than 10% of Italian pupils. The personalistic model is less required today than the cognitive school model centered on the needs of the market with its intellectualism, micro-specializations, practical effectiveness in the global technological world. The author concludes that practicing Catholics and Italians who wish to give their children a Christian education perceive the marginalization of Catholic school as a threat to their religious identity.