Pastors ’ Views of Parents and the Parental Role in Catholic Schools

Over 300 years of offi cial Church teachings and documents affi rm the importance of the home-school relationship, yet relatively little research has systematically explored the need and value of parent involvement in the school community. This study is a secondary analysis of survey data collected for the Notre Dame Study of U.S. Pastors (Nuzzi, Frabutt, & Holter, 2008) and examines pastors ’ views of parents and the parental role in Catholic schools. The article closes with rec-ommendations for action based upon analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data trends from pastors ’ responses. Throughout the history of Catholic education, the Catholic Church has emphasized and extolled the primacy of parents in the education of their children (Caparros, Thériault, & Thorn, 1993; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1999; Leo XIII, 1885). At the same time, the unique and primary role of the parent-educator is not solitary. The pastors, principals, and teachers who educate and care for Catholic children in the parish and school are collaborators with parents in the spiritual and intellectual formation of their children. The Catholic parish and school become a second home of sorts where the faith and values fi rst modeled by the parents are reinforced through the formal enterprise of religious education and catechesis. The Congregation for Catholic Education (1997), the Vatican offi ce charged with internation-al oversight for all Catholic educational matter worldwide, remarked that “[m]any of the students will attend a Catholic school—often the same school— from the time they are very young children until they are nearly adults ” (§27). Because of this, “it is only natural that they should come to think of the school as an extension of their own homes ” (§27). As such, the relationship between parents and school, between the child’s primary educator and the institutio