Educational role of the family 'irreplaceable', institute director says

May 5, 2008 / 17:00 pm

The president of the Institute for Family Policy, Eduardo Hertfelder, defended the “irreplaceable” educational role of the family amidst the scarcity of public assistance it receives and the “attempts to implement Stalinist educational models.”

Hertfelder, who was participating at the first International Congress on Catholic Education for the 21st Century, organized by the Catholic University of Valencia, said the current government’s policy implies “deconstruction” as it seeks the “implementation of regressive laws on the family, life and education.”

According to the AVANA news agency, Hertfelder denounced the Spanish government for using legislative action as “a key, irreversible instrument” to allow the state to “grant rights, when man has them by his very nature.”

Hertfelder also criticized the elimination of all moral references besides the State, which takes upon itself the determination of “what is good and what is bad” and argues that “whatever is legal is good,” in reference to abortion, cloning and so-called “gay marriage.”  For this reason, the state sees as its main obstacle “the Catholic Church, as a moral guide, and the family, as the principal conveyor of the values it seeks to eliminate,” Hertfelder warned.’’

“It is in the heart of the family where people are born and develop, where we receive care and protection, where we find models, where we live the values that allow us to grow as persons,” he added.

Hertfelder called on officials to “recognize the rights of parents to educate their children, that parents are their primary educators, that the family is the ideal place for the development of persons, and that measures that favor parents in their role as educators should be implemented.”