Key Points of Education: Individual and Family: from Gravissimum Educationis to Pope Leo XIV

Abstract

The study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the theological, anthropological and social dimensions of Catholic education, examining the historical development from the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Gravissimum educationis (1965) to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education’s note Antiqua et nova (2025) and Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic letter Drawing New Maps of Hope (2025). The study points out that the Church’s understanding of education is fundamentally based on the unity of the conceptual triangle of the individual, the family and education, which has not only retained its validity over the past six decades but has also been enriched with new interpretative horizons amid modern technological and social challenges. The mission of Catholic education—the development of the human person as the image of God—appears in the interpretive framework of the study as an integrated anthropological model that seeks to serve both the human vocation toward transcendence and the building of the common good in society. An analysis of the legal environment in Hungary reveals that national regulations, in the spirit of co-operative secularism, enable Church institutions to carry out their educational activities autonomously while still serving the public good. The study compares the tradition of Catholic education with the materialistic tendencies of modern pedagogical discourse and highlights the shortcomings of approaches based solely on measurability. Drawing on extensive international research findings, the authors present the multifaceted relationship between religiosity and school performance, indicating that modern secularisation theories are unable to fully capture the communal and moral significance of religious socialisation. In the context of the rise of artificial intelligence, the study emphasises that technology cannot replace the essential, deeply human dimensions of education: personality, emotional and spiritual intelligence, community building and the experience of creative discovery. Furthermore, following the interpretation of Antiqua et nova, technology may be integrated into the educational process if it is accompanied by appropriate ethical reflection and if the dignity of the individual remains at the centre of education.