Should Catholics Choose to Home-school?

Recently my wife and I were faced with a question that was brought up by another Catholic mother, whether sending your children to a school from a different faith was sinful in the eyes of the Church. My first response to this was more precautionary due to the obvious occasion of hearing error and scandal. I did a little digging into this topic and found a number of teaching both from the CCC and also a sermon by Fr. Chad Ripperger, which are a major source for my material today.

I have compiled a list of quotations from the Catechism and lets just dive in and see what we can come up with.

2221 The fecundity of conjugal love cannot be reduced solely to the procreation of children, but must extend to their moral education and their spiritual formation. "The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute." The right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable.
I gather from this, that having children is only part of the equation for Catholic parents. It says that it is "almost impossible to provide adequate substitute" for the education of the children. This is a powerful statement I mean just look a the wording here: right, duty, its primordial and inalienable. 
2223 Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery - the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the "material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones." Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them: He who loves his son will not spare the rod. . . . He who disciplines his son will profit by him.Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Again, we see here some strong statements of the responsibility we have toward education our children. I especially like the last quotations from scripture on corporeal punishment. I may do a post soon on this subject. 
2229 As those first responsible for the education of their children, parents have the right to choose a school for them which corresponds to their own convictions. This right is fundamental. As far as possible parents have the duty of choosing schools that will best help them in their task as Christian educators. Public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise.

This one is interesting. It says we have a right to choose which school corresponds to our convictions. So, if you choose to send your children to public private or faith based schools, we have that right. But I think the key point is choosing a school that "best help(s) them in their task as Christian educators". This school is obviously a faith based school; specifically a Catholic one since we are obliged to educate our children in the Catholic Faith. Now we have already read above that there is no substitute for the parents as educators, therefore the school of the Home, is from what I gather from the text, the best choice thus far. 

1653 The fruitfulness of conjugal love extends to the fruits of the moral, spiritual, and supernatural life that parents hand on to their children by education. Parents are the principal and first educators of their children. In this sense the fundamental task of marriage and family is to be at the service of life.

This last quote from the catechism in a way convicts me. We are responsible for handing down moral, spiritual and supernatural life to our children. This is such a big deal, that people too often don't even concern themselves about. I believe that some children can be taught at younger ages what is right and wrong by lecture, but I would assume that most children learn by example and imitation. When you are home with your family do you strive to live a supernatural moral and spiritual life. I know statistically most people dont. I realize most of this type of education happens on the fly, while living out our daily lives, but since this is repeatedly stressed in the catechism I feel we should be putting a lot more effort into the moral and general education of our kids. I mean sitting down when you get home from work and going threw a catechism, doing apologetics Q&A with them, read a spiritual book to them etc. I don't think a laissez faire attitude is sufficient for the most important subject in a child's life.  

Another interesting thing of note, that I am sure most people have noticed, is the somewhat disappearance of the Humanities from the common curriculum. The moral truths found in literature are indispensable for the moral compass of children.  It provides hope and knowledge of good vs evil. Chesterton said it best like this "Fairly tales do not tell children that dragons exist, they already know that, they teach children that dragons can be killed." No longer do we see Greek and Latin offered in our schools, which is a foundation for the English and other Latin languages. This I feel is very important, not just because it is the ordinary language of the Roman Catholic Church, but because it is language of the great classics that again are no longer studied in our schools. Everything seems to be migrating to the Natural Sciences. There is an endless list of classes in colleges now that pertain to some technical field or another. I making plans for graduate school in the next year or two and have been looking at programs offered by local public colleges and have found very little in the area of Humanities. I get free tuition from a Texas public school due to my military service, so I am working on finding a halfway decent program; it hasn't been easy. Needless to say you can start your children out right in homeschool by teaching the classical languages at an early age, while reading them the 1000 good books. I will do a post on this program soon. 

I want to touch a bit on some of the things Fr. Ripperger says before this gets excessively verbose. 

The link to the article is thus: Parentis. It doesnt take long to read this, but being a typical Ripperger piece, it is a bit heady, so dont just blast through it. 

Fr. R. touches on a number of aspect of the role of parents and their right as well as duty to educate their little ones. He starts by presenting the problem of thr traditional parent obligation to send their children to Catholic School as per Vatican 2 and the apparent dissidence of these schools and their teaching of heresy. This of coarse is not blatant, but by looking at the fruits thereof, we obviously see poorly educated young Catholics coming out of them.  From this, we can glean that todays Catholic Schools need to be thoroughly examined before you allow them to attend, especially if you want them to remain Catholic. 

Next he goes on to explain a bit on Natural Rights and gives a good example from St. Thomas Aquinas "the good of each thing is that it comes upon its end: moreover, its evil is that it turns aside from its due end." The end of the conjugal act is two-fold, viz, the begetting of children and their proper education". The later half of this quote is from Fr. R. , which is from the CCC. I believe this is another good definition of our Natural Rights as parents. 
"Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators"

Vatican II, Declaration on Christian Education
This quote Fr. provides, seems to be his source from the documents of Vatican II that justify the rights as parents. Again this wording is very similar to that we see in the CCC.
Now there are circumstances where parents are not able to provide for the education of their children for various reasons. In these circumstances Fr. believes that the Catholic School is better suited for this than CCD classes, in that it provides a comprehensive Catholic atmosphere that can be bounced back to the similar atmosphere in the home, and thus the child is constantly surrounded by a Catholic Culture which will serve him if any questions or concerns may arise.
If a child attends a public school, which is obviously the least desirous of methods, there is an apparent lapse in that fertile and nurturing Catholic Culture, which is oh so valuable in todays secular society with its infectious lies and temptations.
The last section of Fr's. Article he lays out a history of the educational system and how state schools developed into the ordinary means of education. He states that it was primarily for those parents who were not educated and were not able to read. In circumstances like these, it seems public school is the obviouse choice. However today, though there are many who are illiterate in our society, the numbers are nowhere near where they where 150 years ago I would guess, thus reopening home-school as the more efficacious option available to parents.
I believe that the state has overstepped its bounds by requiring families to send their children to state schools in some regions. I am reminded of the phrase, "If you give them an inch, they will take the mile". This seems to be the case with education. Families entrusted education to the state and they think it belongs to them. On the contrary, this obligation is ours according to Natural Law, not a civil law.
In summary, we see that the end and purpose of the parents is to procreate and educate our children. This duty is both a blessing and an obligation, one that is founded in love and reason and is best achieved in the womb of the truly Catholic home. In it, a child will find love, consistency and a perfect image of unity between the family and the Body of Christ. Nowhere can a child truly understand the theological truths and the virtues necessary for saintly living, then in a Catholic home.
I think the best way to end this, is with Fr. Ripperger's own words,
"Home schooling, therefore, has as its foundation the natural law itself. For it was the
intention of God from the very beginning that parents should be the primary educators of their
children. Consequently, parents who home school fulfil the will of their Creator in a most excellent
fashion, for they not only provide the end which God intended when gifting them with children the necessary moral and natural education, but they also employ the best means to that end. Consequently, home schooling should never see the need to justify its existence since parents who
do so are fulfilling the Will of their Creator."

Pax Tecum