Declaration on Christian Education GRAVISSIMUM EDUCATIONIS begin thus:
Indeed, the circumstances of our time have made it easier and at once more urgent to educate young people and, what is more, to continue the education of adults. Men are more aware of their own dignity and position; more and more they want to take an active part in social and especially in economic and political life.(2) Enjoying more leisure, as they sometimes do, men find that the remarkable development of technology and scientific investigation and the new means of communication offer them an opportunity of attaining more easily their cultural and spiritual inheritance and of fulfilling one another in the closer ties between groups and even between peoples.
Consequently, attempts are being made everywhere to promote more education. The rights of men to an education, particularly the primary rights of children and parents, are being proclaimed and recognized in public documents.(3) As the number of pupils rapidly increases, schools are multiplied and expanded far and wide and other educational institutions are established. New experiments are conducted in methods of education and teaching. Mighty attempts are being made to obtain education for all, even though vast numbers of children and young people are still deprived of even rudimentary training and so many others lack a suitable education in which truth and love are developed together.
To fulfill the mandate she has received from her divine founder of proclaiming the mystery of salvation to all men and of restoring all things in Christ, Holy Mother the Church must be concerned with the whole of man's life, even the secular part of it insofar as it has a bearing on his heavenly calling.(4) Therefore she has a role in the progress and development of education. Hence this sacred synod declares certain fundamental principles of Christian education especially in schools. These principles will have to be developed at greater length by a special post-conciliar commission and applied by episcopal conferences to varying local situations.
The Diocese of Quilon is blessed my Missionaries and Visionaries who always and constantly stood for the uplifting of the diocesan folk through education. This begins with the great missionary saint Francis Xavier who stated the first center for education in the diocese and later paved the way for educating thousands through schools adjacent to the parish churches by Portuguese missionaries and later by Carmelite missionaries. The heritage was continued by the first indigenous bishop Most Rev. Jerome M. Fernandez in a wider vision which elevated the level of education provided to the possible higher levels of available education system through establishing colleges in the dioceses. Bishop Joseph G. Fernandez went on with the same spirit and with Bishop Stanley Roman it reached the heights through accomplishments in the area of Professional training.
