The Pittsburgh diocese this month published a set of guidelines for Catholic homeschoolers, a move believed to be a first and one that could signal a willingness on the part of the wider church to take a closer look at the growing homeschooling movement.

The document, "Faith Education in the Home," calls homeschooling a sign of diversity and a "powerful witness" to the long-affirmed role of parents as "primary educators" of their own children. At the same time, the document reminds parents of the legitimate role of the bishop as chief catechist and his "responsibility to ensure that all materials used in Catholic education are in full conformity with the teachings of the church."

The Pittsburgh guidelines are one indication of the growth of homeschooling and the challenge the phenomenon could pose to structures traditionally entrusted with handing on the faith to new generations of Catholics. They reflect the hope of many dioceses that homeschooling is a sign of life and not a farewell from some of the church's most ardent parents.

The precise character of the young movement, however, is yet to be determined. In Pittsburgh and elsewhere, an attempt is being made to embrace the movement. At the same time, it is clear that many of those engaged m homeschooling are motivated more by a conservative dissatisfaction with what is seen as liberal structures than a desire to find new ways to cooperate with the local bishop.

Fr. Kris Stubna, secretary for education for the Pittsburgh diocese, said the policy there was developed over the past year by a task force made up of pastors, principals, homeschool parents and diocesan authorities. Stubna said the document recognizes the positive aspects of home education, that "some parents are experiencing a kind of vocation to give this kind of time and energy to their children as family educators."

A call for cooperation

The guidelines urge close cooperation between parents and the local church in curriculum development, the selection of approved materials and for sacramental preparation.

Stubna said that despite the media attention given to homeschoolers who are angry with the church, in his experience "the vast majority of Catholics who are homeschooling are positive about the church and just want some help."

The Pittsburgh guidelines try to balance the interests of parents with the role of the bishop in order to promote cooperation and avoid the kind of conflict that sometimes characterizes more traditionalist homeschoolers who withdraw not only from the parochial school but from the parish itself.

The bishop's role in approving homeschool materials and the insistence that homeschoolers work with their parish in sacramental preparation has become the testing ground for that balance and cooperation.

It is hard to identify Catholic homeschooling as a movement. There are no national governing organizations, and the exact numbers, even from fervent advocates, are relatively small -- possibly as high as 70,000 students nationwide, less than 3 percent of the total K-12 Catholic school enrollment of 2.6 million.

Still, this many parents pulling their children out of the local parish school -- both a loss of revenue and a rebuke to Catholic education -- prompted the National Catholic Conference of Bishops to send questionnaires to diocesan school offices to assess the extent and causes of such disaffection.

The result was a 1996 study confirming a small and widely dispersed number of parents opting for home education and cathechesis. Many were prompted to begin homeschooling because they were unhappy with the sex education and religious instruction offered at parish schools.

The Pittsburgh guidelines, which flowed from that initial inquiry, take the view that Catholics caught up in the larger cultural wars over education need not feel they must take their concerns and their children outside the church.

Catholic homeschooling is a recent phenomenon closely linked with the well-established homeschool movement among Protestant evangelicals, who claim over two million loyalists, or approximately 4 percent of America's school-age population. Catholics share some of the demographic characteristics of the larger group, described as predominantly white Christians, middle to upper class in both income and education, with religious or moral at the heart of the decision to homeschool in about 85 percent of cases, according to the 1996 Information Please Almanac.

Dr. Brian Ray, director of the National Homeschool Research Institute in Salem, Ore, just completed a national survey and offers a "soft" estimate of 1.3 million homeschoolers, with Catholics at about 5.3 percent or 67,000 participants. Ray said he has noted a growing presence of Catholics attending national meetings of leaders from state homeschooling organizations. He estimates the movement is growing by about 15 percent a year.

Homeschooling rests heavily on the principle that parents are the primary educators of their children. This right takes precedence over state control and is the basis for the legality of home-schooling in all 50 states. To start schooling at home, some states require only that parents inform the local school district of their intention to keep their children out of the system. A few states require that parents register as "private" schools. Curricula may be submitted but need not be approved, though records must be kept and standard testing usually guides home curricula toward common proficiencies.

What makes homeschooling among Catholics particularly noteworthy is that it is a separatist impulse within a separatist movement. Catholic education has its historical roots in the decision by American bishops at the end the 19th century to push parochial over public schools because of the perceived threat to Catholic children from Protestant and secularist influences in the public system.

The abandonment of public education by Protestants was spurred by racial integration in the 1960s, during which "Christian academies" proliferated across the South, and, more recently, by the issue of prayer in the schools. Homeschooling was a further step apart for Protestants in the 19708, paralleling the rise of evangelical political power and its call for a "Christian revival" in America.

Why some Catholic parents feel they must devote the time, energy and expense to turning their own homes into private schools is a complex question. The answer to that question may determine if homeschooling can be mainstreamed, as the Pittsburgh policy hopes, or if, as others claim, it is yet another sign that social and religious conservatives are finding new ways to separate themselves from the post-Vatican II church.

Traditionalist protest

Gene McCaffrey proudly describes himself as a committed traditionalist Catholic and homeschooler. McCaffrey and his wife have seven children, the oldest now 15, and have been homeschooling since they moved from New York Colorado in 1992.

"My wife does all the nuts and bolts of instruction," McCaffrey said. "I'm the principal of the school. I correct all the papers and I read to the kids every night.

"Our main reason for homeschooling is that we want our children to be educated in their Catholic faith. This was not happening in the local Catholic school. They were not taught the 10 Commandments, the seven sacraments, and not introduced to the 2,000-year old richness of Catholic history and culture.

"The people who were running the Catholic school said they had a better idea, wanted to give the kids a more holistic education, but what they were doing was imitating the public schools. As a friend of mine says, why send your kids to the Catholic school when they can lose their faith for free at the public school?" McCaffrey said.

McCaffrey and his wife maintain a catalog of educational resources they send to 3,000 other homeschoolers. His send of how fast the Catholic homeschooling movement is growing is based on his experience attending national conferences. "The conference in Manassas, Va., this past summer had over 3,000 people at it. Another one in Long Beach, Calif., the same, plus lots of smaller conferences around the country attracting from 200 to 2,000 participants," McCaffrey said.

The McCaffreys drive 65 miles one way to Denver each Sunday to attend a Tridentine Mass conducted by a priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. a traditionalist society that left the breakaway Lefebvre movement to stay in communion with Rome and now operates with permission in some dioceses. (The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, an arch-conservative who opposed the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988.)

McCaffrey said about 200 families now attend the Denver services to avoid what he describes as the "modernism and dilution of doctrine" they find in their local parishes.