TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL
When our children are baptized, they are initiated into a number of groups. They become members of the body of Christ. They belong to the household called Church. They begin their lives in their families, a kind of domestic Church. They share common bonds with other children in this nation and throughout the world. As children grow, they become aware of their solidarity with other children. They join hands and share that stage of life called childhood.
How do children fare in our world? Fr.Robert F. Drinan, S.J. considered this in America magazine (March 27, 1999). He writes: "Almost a billion people will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or ever sign their names....Some 855 million human beings - nearly one-fifth of humanity - will be functionally illiterate on the eve of the millennium. In the year 2000 over 130 million children will grow up without access to basic education. Girls constitute 73 percent of this number. This lack of schooling for girls aggravates the rate of infant mortality and maternal deaths in childbirth."
Children need to read to learn. They need to learn to earn. The result of illiteracy and of inadequate education is a life of absolute misery. The poorest nations cannot spend on education when they struggle to repay international, external debt. Consequently, almost 50 percent of the children in the 47 least-developed countries have no access to primary education. Sickness and malnutrition expunge the dream of eight years of schooling for every child in the world. Here's the bottom line: 17 million children needlessly die every year --- 35,000 each day!
School is impossible because children become warriors and work in slave-like labor conditions. About 300,000 children under 18 fight in more than 30 armed conflicts in our world. Efforts to raise the minimum age for military service to 18 have received support in many nations. The United States opposes this because the Pentagon wants to recruit high school juniors and seniors. Millions of children make soccer balls in Asia, pick crops in Latin America, and shepherd animals in Africa. They have no rights and no labor unions. Oftentimes children's wages are the only source of income for their families.
What is being done for children? 191 nations, including the Holy See, have signed the United Nations Covenant on the Rights of the child. The United States and Somalia are the only two nations who have not signed the covenant.
Our country skillfully shelters citizens from facing the national and global plight of children. U.S. adults and children live in a spiritual vacuum. We enjoy the bounty of material prosperity. We remain inured and indifferent. We love God devoutly. But we shy away from becoming agents of change and ministers of justice on behalf of fragile, defenseless, and voiceless children.
Each parish urgently needs local social structures to train children and adults in advocacy on behalf of children. This includes taking an active role in organizations like Bread for the World, Amnesty International, the Catholic Worker, and Oxfam, writing and calling people in Congress , and funding poor children in parishes in other nations. We need to move justice education and initiatives from the margins to the center of parish life, as well as our personal and liturgical prayer. Piety and practice need to kiss.