From its beginning, the Church has understood the transmission of the faith as a gift—received freely and handed on faithfully.
Christ did not instruct the apostles to charge admission. The early Church catechized converts through patience, teaching, and community. Monasteries educated generations. Missionaries crossed oceans to teach the faith without asking whether those they served could afford it.
This does not mean that education is without cost. It means that cost was never meant to determine access.
The Catechism reminds us that parents are the primary educators of their children in the faith, but it also affirms the Church’s responsibility to assist them. That assistance was never intended to become a financial gate.
And yet, in many places today, access to structured Catholic formation depends almost entirely on a family’s ability to pay.
This creates a tension the Church has never resolved comfortably.
On the one hand, Catholic education is treated as essential. On the other, it is structured in ways that make it inaccessible to many of the faithful. The result is a quiet contradiction—one that Catholics sense, even if they struggle to articulate it.
The universality of the Church is not only geographic. It is moral. If the faith is for all, then formation must be possible for all—regardless of income, location, or circumstance.
This is not an argument against Catholic schools. It is a reminder of their original purpose.
Education exists to serve the mission of the Church.
The mission does not exist to sustain an education system.
When cost begins to dictate who receives formation, the order has been reversed.
Recovering the Church’s vision of education does not require abandoning excellence or fidelity. It requires remembering that the faith itself was never meant to be a luxury good.
