The Philosophy of Catholic Education, by

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,

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THE PHILOSOPHY

OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

William J. McGucken, SJ.

Professor of Education, Saint Louis University

Saint Louis, Missouri

I. Introduction

To understand the philosophy of Catholic education it is

necessary to understand—not necessary of course to accept
—the Catholic philosophy1 of life which has its roots deep
in the past. When Christianity came on the world scene,

the revelation of Christ brought a completion of the Old

Law; but not that merely, it also came as a completion, a

correction often, of the thought of Greco-Roman civilization.

The philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, for example, had an

extraordinary influence on early Christian thought and

thinkers. To the making of Christian philosophy many minds

contributed: Aristotle and Plato, Augustine and Aquinas,

and the great galaxy of philosophers and theologians of all

ages aided in clarifying and defining the Christian view of

life.

The essentials of Christian philosophy are found in the

New Testament and the early writings of the Fathers of the
Church. Augustine of Hippo and the American Catholic of

today differ not at all with regard to essentials. Thomas

^‘Catholic” or “Christian” philosophy is not used in M. Gilson’s sense.
(The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, chap. 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1936.) It is used here for convenience to designate all the philosophical-

theological bases of the Catholic outlook on life.



2 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

Aquinas and the other medieval schoolmen, dispute though

they did over the accidentals of that philosophy, were yet as

one in basic principles. Through all the centuries from

Augustine to Aquinas to Suarez and Bellarmine to Newman
and Chesterton and Pius XII there is seen a uniform pattern

of the Christian philosophy of life, startling by reason of its

uniformity. From that philosophy of life is derived the

philosophy of Catholic education.

To many modems it is not an acceptable philosophy. But

even if it be not accepted, the Catholic may ask that a sin-

cere effort be made to understand what it is all about. Idiom

and language may be strange, yet the philosophic mind in-

vestigating, let us say, the strange ideologies of the Aus-

tralian bushmen will find these no barrier to understanding.

Indeed it may well be worth the effort. Here in the United

States Catholics have 273 universities, colleges, and institu-

tions of collegiate rank with 128,844 students; 2,235 high

schools and 350,190 pupils; 7,794 elementary schools with

an enrolment of 2,114,037. It would seem to be desirable

to know why Catholics have these schools, and what

philosophy underlies the education there given.

II. Philosophic Bases of Catholic Position

Scholastic philosophy is theocentric. Catholic life and

thought and education have God as their basis. Arnold Lunn,

the English convert, once said petulantly, “The answer to

the educational problem is a monosyllable—God.” This
cornerstone of scholasticism is apt to prove irritating to the

modern secularist who either ignores God or relegates Him

to lower case. Secularism and naturalism, so characteristic

of many American philosophies of education, make it ex-

ceedingly difficult for the modern mind trained in these

philosophies to understand the Catholic position on this

important matter. It is important to note that God, whose



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 3

existence is proved by human reason, is not the undying

energy of the physicist, not the vague impersonal being

of the deist, but He is a personal God, who has created man,

upon whom man is dependent and to whom, therefore, man

has certain duties and obligations. Without God, the Catholic

maintains there is no ultimate purpose in life, no ultimate

purpose in education. For God made man, according to

the words of the penny catechism, “to know, love, and serve

Him in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next.”

1. God

One of the five proofs 1 that Saint Thomas gives for the

existence of God is based on the argument from contingency,

that is, there are contingent beings in the world about us,

beings that have not the reason for their existence within

themselves; they depend for their existence on some other

force. Eventually we must come to some being upon which

they all depend. Ultimately we come to a noncontingent

or necessary being, a being that is not dependent but inde-

pendent. This necessary, self-existent being we call God.

Since God is the First Cause, He must be infinite and
must contain in Himself in an infinite degree all the quali-

ties and perfections He has caused. Among these are in-
tellect and will. God therefore is infinitely wise and in-

finitely powerful. In other words, He is a personal God.
This fact of facts, the existence of a personal God, is of

supreme importance for any program of education. For

education deals with the formation of the whole man, body

and soul, intellect and will. In the area of character educa-

tion, for example, the Catholic would hold that any character-

training program that left God out of consideration would

be not merely inadequate but utterly false.

^The quinque viae are found in the Summa Contra Gentiles and in the Sutrtma
Theologica. For a further explanation of them cf. E. Gilson, The Philosophy
of Saint Thomas Aquinas, chaps, iv. and v. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co.,
1939.) Also R. P. Phillips, Modem Thomistic Philosophy, Vol. II, chap. ii.
(London: Burnes, Oates, & Washbourne, 1935.)



4 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

2. The Nature of Man

Verbs of teaching govern two accusatives, the person

taught and the thing taught. Now obviously a great deal of
our philosophy of education depends upon our view of the

person taught, in other words, upon the nature of man.

Obviously, those who hold that the child is composed of

a material body and an immortal soul will differ toto coelo

from those who hold that the educand is merely a machine

or a physico-chemical combination, or a bundle of S-R

bonds or a product of the cosmic evolutionary process. That

is the reason why we have philosophies of education, not a

philosophy of education.

Scholastic philosophy, basing its proofs on rational

grounds,
1
holds that:

a) Man was created by God. Since God is infinitely

wise and infinitely good, He must have created man for a
purpose. That purpose is man’s happiness, a happiness to

be realized only perfectly in God.

b) Man is composed of body and soul, united in essential
unity. Thus it is not the mind that thinks, it is the person,

John Smith, that thinks. It is not the body that feels, it

is again John Smith that feels.

c
)
The soul of man is immaterial, spiritual, that is, in-

trinsically independent of matter, although necessarily united

to the body to form a composite.

d
)
Man has an intellect, that is, he is capable of under-

standing, of forming judgments, of drawing conclusions.

e
)
Man has free will, the ability to make a free choice.

I ought, therefore I can, although I need not. Free will does

not imply that we act without a motive. Nor does it imply

that all human acts are free. In an individual’s day there

may be very few fully free acts.

f )
Because of his intellect and free will man is essentially

different from the highest form of brute life. Man is an ani-

^'or these proofs cf. G. J. MacGillivray (editor), Man. (New York: Ben-
ziger Bros., 1932.) Or C. C. Martindale, Man and His Destiny. (London:
Burns, Oates, Washbourne, 1928.)



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 5

mal, but a rational animal. No mere animal thinks or wills.

g ) Since the soul of man is immaterial or spiritual, it can

be destroyed by God alone. Only annihilation can blot it

out of existence; and to annihilate belongs solely to God.

On the other hand there is in human nature everywhere and

at all times a craving for perfect happiness, so universal that

it can only have been put into human nature by the Author

of that nature itself. Since this perfect happiness is unat-

tainable in this life even by those who keep God’s law, we

can have no reasonable doubt of the immortality of man’s

soul. Otherwise, we have a natural human craving that never

can be fulfilled.

h
)
There are certain human acts which are of their very

nature good and deserving of praise, and therefore inde-

pendent of all human law; other actions are of their very

nature, that is, intrinsically, bad and deserving of blame.

The scholastic holds that there is a norm to determine the

good act from the bad act.

If there be no norm to determine what actions are good

and what are bad, then indeed man is a weathercock, carried

now in this direction now in another, according as whim

or the influence of his fellows or his environment is most

prevalent. Even though he desire to be moral, unless he

has a yardstick with which to measure the good and the

bad, morality will be beyond his reach.

Scholastic philosophy teaches that there is such a yard-

stick, such a norm of morality, one eminently usable
;
namely,

man’s rational nature taken in its entirety. Consequently, the

scholastic would hold that those actions that are in conformity

with man’s rational nature are good, those that are not in

conformity with man’s rational nature are bad. What does

reason teach us about man’s nature? First, that it is com-

posite, made up of body and soul. Second, that man’s

nature is social by its very essence, that is, intended by

its Creator to live in society. Third, it is contingent, that

is, not independent, not responsible for its own being and

existence, but dependent on its Creator, God. From this

it follows that man has duties to himself, to his neighbor,



6 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

to his God. He must so live his life that the higher part
of him, the spiritual, be not made subordinate to the or-

ganic. Consequently, drunkenness is in itself evil, because

it is not in conformity with man’s rational nature, rather

it places the soul and its powers in a subordinate position

to the animal appetites. Secondly, he has duties to his

fellowman. Certain of these duties are in conformity with

his social nature, as a member of domestic society, the family

;

as a member of civil society; as a member of world society.

Therefore, assisting one’s neighbor, playing the good Samari-

tan, supporting one’s children, and obeying parents are things

good in themselves because in conformity with man’s social

nature. On the other hand, dishonesty, lying, stealing, and
murder are intrinsically wrong because they run counter

to man’s social nature. Thirdly, man’s contingent nature

indicates clearly man’s duties to God. Therefore blasphemy,

irreverence toward God are things bad in themselves. Wor-

ship and service of God are good because in accord with the

contingent nature of man. Suicide is an evil thing in itself

because man, as a contingent being, has no dominion over

his own life.

Difficult as it may be to indicate all the duties of man to

God, his neighbor, and himself, this is nevertheless simplicity

itself compared to the attempts made by some of the character

educators who put before us a changing norm of morality.

In the scholastic system there is a yardstick, fixed and un-

changing, suitable for all ages and all countries. Granted

that it may be hard in certain circumstances to determine

what is lying, what is dishonesty, the fact remains that in

the scholastic system lying and dishonesty are evil things.

Further, there is a hierarchy of values. If there be a con-

flict between man’s duties to God and to his neighbor, the

inferior right must cede to the superior. First things come

first. Charity is a good thing, but if giving away one’s

possessions means impoverishment of one’s dependents, right

order would show that this was not a good thing. Man’s

duties are first to his own household.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 7

3. Educational Implications of the Foregoing

Quite independently of any dogmas of faith, or any calling

on truths known through revelation, the scholastic can formu-

late a definition of education

:

Education is the organized development and equipment of all the

powers of a human being, moral, intellectual, and physical, by and for

their individual and social uses, directed towards the union of these

activities with their Creator as their final end . 1

Anyone who accepted Aristotle’s or Aquinas’ teaching

about the nature of man would concur in that definition, be

he Catholic or Calvinist, Jew or Gentile. Indeed there was

a time in the history of the world when this was the only

definition of education. Until the nineteenth century, all

education was religious and God-centered, if we except the

brief interlude of the Encyclopedists and the French Revo-

lution which had little immediate influence on school practice.

President Hutchins, in the Higher Learning in America

,

says that in the modern world, theology, the principle of

order in the medieval university, cannot be an integrating

force in education and as a consequence the modern man

is obliged to go to metaphysics to draw education out of

its disorder and chaos. Yet Mr. Hutchins knows very well

that metaphysics necessarily deals with the existence and

nature of God. With the metaphysical principles of which

President Hutchins speaks—which Professor Adler has
clearly enunciated—the Catholic will readily concur. His
only difficulty is that they do not go far enough. For the

Catholic bases his theory of education not merely on meta-

physical principles
;
he must also take into consideration the

facts about man and his destiny made known to him through
revelation. In fact, he would argue that the metaphysics

of Aristotle and Aquinas need completion by the theology of

Aquinas.

It is not merely because President Hutchins rejects

theology that Catholics disagree with him, no matter how

1T. Corcoran, S.J., Private Notes. Dublin, n.d.



8 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

greatly they may admire the lucidity and sanity of his theory.

But even his philosophy or metaphysics can be questioned

—

not because it is false—it is not—but because it has no
roots. In the literal sense of the word it is une philosophic

deracinee. It is a de-Christianized philosophy or metaphysic.

M. Gilson says

:

I call Christian
,
every philosophy which although keeping the two

orders [i.e. the natural and supernatural] formally distinct, neverthe-

less considers the Christian revelation as an indispensable auxiliary to

reason . 1

Mr. Hutchins rejects revelation, not because he wants to,

but because a naturalistic, secular world will have none of it.

When he quotes Aquinas, he quotes an Aquinas that never
existed. For Aquinas did not merely reedit Aristotle, he

added to Aristotle’s metaphysics those corrections made

known to him through Christian revelation. In a Christian

philosophy, the supernatural must descend as a constitutive

element not, of course, into its texture which would be a

contradiction, but into the work of its construction.

In, an article in the Journal of Higher Education discussing

the new program at Saint John’s College, Adam Alles claims

that the restoration of medieval metaphysics is not enough;

there must also be a restoration of medieval theology, which

he sneeringly calls “mythology.”

Our second thought reminds us that medieval metaphysics or

theology [natural theology f] was accompanied by a mythology

[theology] and that whoever wants to reclaim medieval thelogy [he

means metaphysics or natural theology] must also reclaim medieval

mythology [theology!]. On the theoretical [metaphysical] side God

was thought of as the creator and sustainer of the events of nature;

on the mythological [theological] side He was thought of as having
taken on human form. . . . This is the great fact of the incarnation

and God’s supreme revelation to man. Around it centered medieval

thought. Therefore, whoever desires to reclaim medieval metaphysics

must also recapture medieval mythology. [Again, theology.] He

17'he Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, p. 37. Charles Scribner’s Sons: New
York, 1936.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 9

cannot take medieval theology [metaphysics or natural theology] and

leave its mythology [theology], because that theology [natural

theology] makes sense only in the light of the mythology [theology]

on which it is based. . . . The Catholic church has been fully conscious

of this fact; that is the reason why she has kept her mythology

[theology] intact. . . . Under no conditions, therefore, has the Catholic

church ever compromised on that mythology [theology].
1

Despite Mr. Alles’ contemptuous use of the term myth-

ology in speaking of the sacred science of theology, despite

his confusion in applying the term theology to what is evi-

dently metaphysics or that branch of metaphysics known as

natural theology, there is a certain half-truth in what he says,

mutatis mutandis. Not that metaphysics is dependent on

theology. On the contrary, as Mr. Adler said so finely and

truly at the Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Re-

ligion, held in New York, September 10, 1940:

Metaphysics is valid knowledge of both sensible and suprasensible

being. Metaphysics is able to demonstrate the existence of supra-

sensible being, for it can demonstrate the existence of God, by ap-

pealing to the evidence of the senses and the principles of reason,

and without any reliance upon articles of religious faith .
2

Metaphysics is autonomous; it does not stand or fall on

facts discovered by theology. Nevertheless, the truths of

philosophy are made clearer, more certain by revelation.

Certain facts pertaining to man and God would never be

known except for revelation. The scholastic holds that the

candlelight of reason shows us the fact of God's existence

so clearly that only the wilfully blind could fail to see it;

nevertheless to glimpse the richness and fullness of the con-

cept of God, especially the wondrous sweep of the divine

attributes, there was needed the effulgent beaconlight of

revelation. So, too, with regard to man’s nature. Reason

here can tell us much; it can never tell us all about man;

it can never tell us that man was raised to a supernatural life,

^dam Alles, “Whither Education,” Journal of Higher Education, XI (Oc-
tober, 1940), 371-378.

2Mortimer Adler, “God and the Professors,” Vital Speeches, VII (December,
1940), 101.



10 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

that he fell from his high estate and was restored in wondrous

manner by the Son of God.

To quote Mr. Adler again:

What is known by faith about God’s nature and man’s destiny is

knowledge which exceeds the power of the human intellect to attain

without God’s revelation of Himself. . . .

Religious faith, on which sacred theology rests, is itself a super-

natural act of the human intellect and is thus a divine gift.

Because God is its cause, faith is more certain than knowledge

resulting from the purely natural action of the human faculties.

Sacred theology is independent of philosophy, in that its principles

are truths of faith, whereas philosophical principles are truths of

reason, but this does not mean that theology can be speculatively

developed without reason serving faith.

There can be no conflict between philosophical and theological

truths, although theologians may correct the errors of philosophers
who try to answer questions beyond the competence of natural reason,

just as philosophers can correct the errors of theologians who violate

the autonomy of reason.

Sacred theology is superior to philosophy, both theoretically and

practically; theoretically, because it is more perfect knowledge of

God and His creatures
;

practically, because moral philosophy is

insufficient to direct man to God as his last end . 1

It is necessary then to examine the theological postulates

—annoying though it may be to the modern mind that dis-
trusts theology—upon which the Catholic theory of education
rests.

1Loc. cit.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 11

III. Theological Bases of the Catholic Theory of

Education

1. Man has a “Supernature”

Christianity is meaningless without revelation. The Catho-

lic Church teaches that revelation is possible and that a

revelation has taken place. Revelation is the act whereby

God speaks to men through Himself or through His mes-

senger, making a statement the truth of which He guaran-

tees. It is not an interior emotional experience
;
it is a state-

ment of truth made to man in a definite place at a definite

time, by a personal God who is outside and distinct from

the recipient.
1

Among these truths, revealed to man by God, is that of

a supernature, or of a supernatural life of grace, as it is

called. Confusing theological controversies have obscured

the very meaning of the supernatural. Some writers on

education confuse it with “other-worldly.” Yet “other-

worldly” and supernatural are not synonymous. “Other-

worldliness,” it is true, implies a supernatural viewpoint, but

it is by no means identical with supernatural. Neither does

it mean mystical nor magical nor “ghostly.” The reason

for this confusion is largely owing to the fact that the modern

world has lost its interest in its Christian heritage, has

whittled down the meaning of supernatural until it has ceased

to have any clear meaning at all.

The teaching of the Catholic Church is that not only did

God create Adam with his human nature, consisting of a
human body and an immortal soul, but He also gave him
that to which man has no right, a higher kind of life, a
supernature, implying a supernatural life of grace and a des-

tiny of supernatural union with Him. This life is not merely

an improved human nature. It is something distinct from,

superadded to human nature. The natural life, man’s body

and soul with all their faculties, remains intact even when the

supernatural is added. The natural, moreover, would not be

destroyed even if the supernatural life itself should be lost.

1George D. Smith, Faith and Revealed Truth. London: Burns, Oates &
Washbourne, 1929.



12 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

2. The “Fall of Man”

Now the supernatural life of grace was given to Adam
conditionally, namely, on the condition of fidelity to a special

command. This command was disobeyed and therefore God

withdrew His special gift of supernatural life, and left Adam
on the merely natural level. Such is the teaching of the

Church on the “Fall.” The Fall means simply the rejection

and loss of the supernatural life. Adam was the head of the
line; if he had kept his inheritance of supernature, all his

descendants would have come into the world with it. But

he, the responsible representative of the race, rejected the

gift of God; therefore all the sons and daughters of Adam
are born without that special life of grace God intended them

to have. This in brief is the Church's dogma of original

sin. Human nature was not depraved because of Adam's
sin, as Calvin held, but deprived of this supernatural life of

grace.

Calvin believed in the Fall, but unlike the Catholic, he re-

garded man as essentially depraved by reason of the Fall.

Hence, the doctrine of total depravity, which originated with

Calvin, and its fatal consequences to education. Rousseau

did not believe in the dogma of original sin
;

it is doubtful if

he believed in any dogma; he regarded nature as essentially

good. The Calvinistic doctrine of total depravity was too

much for this romantic sensualist. Therefore, he threw out

the whole thing: fall, original sin, redemption, Christianity.

Two men, Calvin and Rousseau, are responsible for the

world's failure to accept the Catholic via media; that nature,

by reason of Adam's sin, is deprived and wounded, but not

depraved; that deprivation is made up for us by a restora-

tion through the second Adam; for “by his wounds we are

healed.”

3. The Restoration of Man

It is the Church's teaching that it was not God's will that

this deprivation should be final. In God's plan this restora-

tion was to take place through a second Adam, one who was

to stand like the first Adam as the representative of the



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 13

human race, with whom we could be incorporated or united

through bonds of solidarity. For this office of Second Adam,

God chose His own Son, the Second Person of the Blessed

Trinity, who took upon Himself our human nature. Through

His Incarnation, Life, Passion, Death, and Resurrection, He

gloriously atoned for Adam’s sin. God’s plan was that all

men should incorporate themselves with the Second Adam,

and thus, united with the very source of supernatural life,

since He is God, be in a state even better than if merely re-

stored to the position lost to them through Adam’s sin.

The liturgy of the Church shows this whole teaching in

striking fashion in the ancient prayer that the priest says at

Mass, as he pours water into the wine which is to be conse-

crated, thus symbolizing the union of our human nature with

the divine nature of Christ

:

O God who through creation has wonderfully ennobled human
nature and still more wonderfully re-created it, grant that by the

mystery of this water and wine we may be made partakers of His

divinity who in our humanity did not disdain to share.

4. Difficulties of Moderns

Nothing is more irritating to the modern than this dogma

of the supernatural, a dogma that cannot be proved by

anthropology, history, psychology, or any other human

science. Yet nothing is more certain than this, that all tra-

ditional historic Christianity is inextricably bound up with it.

It cannot be demonstrated by human reason
;
it requires God’s

revelation to bring to our knowledge this fact that man is

supematuralized. This traditional teaching of Christendom,

which the Catholic Church teaches today as she did in the

fourth century, gives point and focus to the life and practice

of that Church, explains her attitude toward the things of

eternity as opposed to the transient pageant of this world,

brings out in bold relief her hierarchy of values. This may

be far from clear to the modern; indeed, it may sound like
the veriest nonsense. Yet it must be insisted that the

Catholic position is utterly unintelligible unless this primary



14 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

fact of the supernatural life be recognized. The Catholic

takes the existence of the supernatural on the word of God

and the teaching of the Church; it is part of the very air

he breathes. Unacceptable the supernatural may well be

to the ‘'modern mind
,,

;
it may be regarded as the nadir of

irrationality to admit even the possibility, still more the

fact, of a divine revelation of the existence of the supernatural.

Yet once the Catholic starting point of a supernatural life

and man’s supernatural destiny is recognized, then with un-

erring logic follows the Catholic position on the whole educa-

tional question.

5. Christianity Based on the Dogma of “Fair’

It must be evident to one who knows anything about

history that revelation—prescinding for the moment whether
it be true or false—and theological speculations concerning
revelation have played a tremendous part in the theory and

practice of education in the Western world. If there had

been no revelation made to man by God, or if man had not

imagined such a thing, then the whole history of civiliza-

tion and education would have been vastly different from

the present record. Either there was in human history such

an event as is succinctly spoken of in Christian theology

as the “Fall of Man,” or for thousands of years men mis-

takenly believed there was such a fact. Not only does

Christianity base its doctrine and practice upon that fact,

but our whole civilization and, consequently, education depend

upon it.

No reputable historian could deny that the main factor
in the building of our western civilization has been

Christianity. Now, unless this fact of the “Fall of Man”

—or, if you will, the dogma of original sin—be admitted,
Christianity simply collapses like a pricked balloon. It not

only becomes an antiquated superstition; it becomes, in a

very literal sense of the word, nonsense. For without the

Fall, there would be no need of the Incaration and Redemp-

tion, the two cardinal points of Christian belief.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 15

6. Educational Theory Dependent on View of “Fall”

Two moderns of widely different antecedents, with anti-

podal philosophies, Friedrich Foerster, the devout Lutheran

educator, and Bertrand Russell, the modern skeptic, both

have come quite independently to the same conclusion, name-

ly, that in the last analysis all theories of education are de-

pendent on the views taken of the dogma of original sin.

For every theory of education hinges on the precise nature

of the educand. What is the nature of the material with

which we are dealing in our educational work? What is

there inherent in the nature of the child that enables us to

indulge in wild Utopian dreams about the effect of educa-

tion on the human spirit? Or are these dreams as fantastic

as the palaces of Xanadu? Is there some essential obstacle

in human nature that prevents us from even thinking high

thoughts about the possibilities of education?

7. Catholic Attitude toward the “Natural”

With the catholic emphasis on the supernatural, the ques-

tion may well be raised: What is the Catholic attitude to-

ward nature? Does the supernatural exclude the natural?

Saint Thomas gives the answer. God is the beginning and

end of creation; God’s goodness and beauty are the abso-

lutes to which all natural beauty and goodness are relative
1

,

the symmetry Aquinas advocates is the symmetry demanded

by a supernatural end. The supernatural completes the

natural
;
gratia perficit naturam, grace perfects nature. For

the Catholic is neither Manichee nor Puritan.

Nature was not corrupt, even despite the cataclysmic ef-

fects of the Fall; it was merely wounded. Hence in educa-

tion as in life, there was no repression of legitimate human

desires merely for the sake of repression. Marriage was a

good thing as was merriment and song and laughter. The

humanism of the Catholic is the humanism of Christ, a

Christ that suffered the little children gladly, for of such is the

kingdom of Heaven, a Christ that consorted with publicans

1See G. Vann, On Being Human. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1934 .



16 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

and wine-bibbers and attended as an honored guest the

marriage-feast at Cana. All flesh was sanctified, in the

Catholic sense, since the day that the Word was made flesh

and dwelt amongst us.

8. Catholic Theory of Education Unchangeable

There has been acrimonious debate within the Catholic

Church at various periods of history as to what the child

should be taught, but the attitude of the Church in this matter

of the child’s nature has never changed. Every child born

into this world is regarded as a child of Adam. Therefore,

he comes into the world with Adam’s inheritance, a lowlier

estate because deprived of supernatural life than would have

been his had it not been for the fall of Adam. Through the

life, passion, death and resurrection of Christ, the Son of

God, every one of the descendants of Adam can be restored
to his rightful heritage as a child of God. The whole business

of the Church is for this purpose, to give this new life to

all the sons of men, to keep it alive and growing, bringing

forth fruits. So, too, the educational work of the Church

is precisely for that purpose. Her whole educational aim

is to restore the sons of Adam to their high position as
children of God, citizens of the kingdom of God.

The encyclical of Pius XI merely reemphasizes these

ancient truths:

Education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must

do here below in order to attain the sublime end for which he was

created. . . .

It must never be forgotten that the subject of Christian education is

man whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all
his faculties, natural and supernatural, such as right reason and

revelation show him to be
;
man, therefore, fallen from his original

estate, but redeemed by Christ and restored to the supernatural con-

dition of adopted sons of God. . . .

Hence, the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the

supernatural man who thinks, judges, and acts consistently in ac-
cordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of

the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the

current term, the true and finished man of character . 1

1Pius XI, Encyclical on Christian Education.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 17

9. The Supernatural, the Basis of the Catholic System

The key of the Catholic system is the supernatural. Not

only Catholic theology, but Catholic practice, the Catholic

attitude toward life, and most of all, Catholic education are

insoluble mysteries if we exclude an understanding of the

supernatural. The Church holds that she is divinely com-

missioned by Christ to carry on His Work, to do what He

did. “I am come that you may have life, that you may

have it more abundantly.” The Church continues that work,

bringing this supernatural life 'to men who have not yet re-

ceived it, surrounding it with safeguards that it may not be

lost, restoring it once more to those who perversely cast it

aside. The same is true of her educational system. Her

primary purpose in establishing schools, kindergartens or

universities is not merely to teach fractions or logarithms,

biology or seismology, grammar or astronomy—these sub-
jects are subordinate to her main purpose to inculcate the

“eminent knowledge and love of Jesus Christ our Lord,” a

knowledge so intimate, a love so strong that it will lead neces-

sarily to a closer following of Christ. Other-worldly ? Yes,

if you will; for strange as it may seem, the Church con-

siders religion as more important than fractions. If it came

to a point where a choice must be made between endangering

faith by learning fractions or keeping the faith and not know-

ing fractions, there is only one answer.

Not, of course, that there is an essential conflict between

fractions and the supernatural life, but man can create a
factitious conflict. Let us suppose, for example, that the

Nazis should conquer America, should establish a monopoly

of schools, forcing all in its schools to accept the pagan

ideology of Rosenberg with its cult of the state. To such a
school no Catholic child could go, even though it meant that

the child would grow up illiterate.



18 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

10. Catholic Hierarchy of Values

Since so much time has been spent elaborating the Catholic

concept of man's nature, a concept derived from psychological

dualism that man's nature is a unit, though composite, made

up of body and soul, possessing intellect and free will;

derived, too, from ethical theory with regard to man's origin,

nature, and destiny, man's duties to God, his neighbor, and

himself, the unchanging norm of morality based on man's

composite, social and contingent nature; a concept of man's

nature illuminated by revelation to include the supernatural,

with all in theological science that is connoted by that term,

it clearly follows that there is a certain hierarchy of values

in Catholic education. Supernatural values, if the super-

natural exists, are obviously of more importance than the

natural; spiritual values of greater import than the bodily;

and eternal of more significance than temporal.

IV. Objectives of Catholic Education

The ultimate objective of Catholic education can be stated

very simply. In the words of Pius XI

:

The proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate

with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is,

to form Christ Himself in those regenerated by Baptism. . . .

For precisely this reason, Christian education takes in the whole

aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellectual and moral,

individual, domestic, and social, not with a view of reducing it in

any way, but in order to elevate, regulate, and perfect it, in accordance

with the example and teaching of Christ.

Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the

supernatural man who thinks, judges, and acts constantly and con-

sistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural

light of the example and teaching of Christ
;

in other words, to use

the current term, the true and finished man of character. For, it

is not every kind of consistency and firmness of conduct based on

subjective principles that makes true character, but only constancy

in following the eternal principles of justice.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 19

. . . The true Christian does not renounce the activities of this

life, he does not stunt his natural faculties
;

but he develops and

perfects them, by coordinating them with the supernatural. He thus
ennobles what is merely natural in life and secures for it new strength

in the material and temporal order, no less than in the spiritual and

eternal .
1

With this ultimate aim of Catholic education, there never

has been, there can be no change. Given the Church's teach-

ing about man's nature, and supernature, and man's super-

natural destiny, it is impossible to see how there could be

any change. Into this ultimate aim every type of Catholic

educational institution must fit from kindergarten to gradu-

ate school; otherwise it has no right to be called a Catholic

school. For no matter how poor the intellectual training it

imparts, no matter how badly equipped academically the

teachers may be, that school is a Catholic school which holds

fast to its philosophy of supernaturalism. This is not to say

that the school, qua school, must have as its specific concern

the moral virtue as opposed to the intellectual virtues; that

controversy will be referred to later.

Education is not confined to the school. There are other

agencies concerned in the training of the child, the home

and the Church to mention but two. Thus religious educa-

tion, moral education, training in citizenship, courtesy, char-

acter education, even intellectual training, are not exclusively

the perquisites of the school
;
they could not be. But the

Catholic Church insists that each Catholic agency, the

Catholic home, the Catholic school, place first things first,

but that does not necessarily mean that the Church intends
that character training, religious training and the rest should

be the exclusive function of the school. It may well be
doubted, however, whether character training, religious

formation, can be imparted without a solid intellectual foun-

dation. Some element of knowledge, varying in amount with
the stage of development of the child, must enter into the

formation of habit which is the basis of good character educa-

nPius XI, Encyclical on Christian Education.



20 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

tion and even of religious education. Obviously, habits can-

not be properly established in a human being without his

having some intellectual grasp of the motives upon which

habits are based, of the standards by which their value is

judged. Objectives of conduct are not attained by irra-

tional, mechanical drill.

1. Objectives of the American Catholic Elementary School

Dr. George Johnson of the Catholic University has stated

what he regards as the aim of the Catholic elementary school.

The aim of the Catholic elementary school is to provide the child

with those experiences which are calculated to develop in him such

knowledge, appreciation, and habits as will yield a character equal

to the contingencies of fundamental Christian living in American

democratic society . 1

American Catholics believe that America’s tradition of

democracy, her splendid struggle to achieve that democracy

are of right taught every Catholic child in the elementary

school together with his rich, colorful Catholic heritage. In

addition, of course, there must be training in the skills neces-

sary to enable him to take his place as a useful citizen in

America. To prepare the child to lead an intelligent Catholic

life in contemporary American society it is necessary to im-

part training in processes that are needed for American

Catholic citizenship. Further it is necessary to hand on the

tradition of Catholicism and American democracy in such

a fashion that knowledge will develop into an appreciation

of that Catholic and American background. In a word, the

elementary school aims to impart those knowledges and

skills, habits and appreciative attitudes that will fit the child

to be an intelligent practical Catholic, a good citizen, a good

member of society, including the various groups to which he

belongs, family, working group, neighborhood, and the like.

1National Catholic Educational Association Bulletin, XXII (November, 1925),
458



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 21

2. Indoctrination

The Catholic educator does not hesitate to teach the rules

of grammar, the multiplication tables, spelling and the like,

The child is given no choice in these matters. So, too, with

regard to patriotism, love of country—a very noble Chris-
tian virtue—truths about God and God's law, he does not
wait for the child to discover these important truths for

himself, he helps him to discover them. As E. I. Watkin

says,

[This is] the justification of a religious education—no imposition
of ideas upon the unreceptive and recalcitrant, but simply the show-

ing what is actually there and what otherwise they might not see.

For not only are individuals intellectually or spiritually colour-blind

or sufferers from astigmatism
;
entire groups, races or epochs display

particular faults of vision, which require correction by reference to

a complete body of truth handed down through the ages and taught

universally . 1

3. Objectives of the American Catholic Secondary School

The high school in America is a completion of education

for some and a preparation of further education for others.

The theory of universal secondary education, about which

there probably is among Catholics as among other groups wide

divergence of opinion, has brought about a multiplication of

secondary schools and an amazing increase in the secondary-

school population which unquestionably have produced a

lowering of intellectual standards through adaptation of the

curriculum to the needs of the students. Yet taking it as

it is, the Catholic secondary school in America must find

its objectives within the frame of reference that is common
to all Catholic institutions—the supernatural. Therefore,
its aims are a further and richer development of those

knowledges and skills, habits and appreciations that will fit

the pupil to be

a) an intelligent human being according to his capabilities

;

b) an intelligent, practical Catholic, with all that these

terms connote;

I. Watkin, The Bow in the Clouds

,

p. 8. New York: Macmillan Co.,



22 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

c) an intelligent, good American citizen;

d
)

an intelligent, helpful member of society and of those

particular groups of which he is or will be a member—the
family, professions, vocations, etc.

Therefore, the Catholic high school must cultivate in its

pupils an intelligent appreciation of Catholicism and of the

traditions of American democracy so as to bring about these

ends.

It may be noted that “intelligent” is emphasized through-

out in the above statement. This does not mean that the

Catholic school is indifferent to character, or supernatural

virtue, but it must be insisted as the writer has said else-

where that

:

A school is set up by a community to perform certain functions that
it, and it alone, can perform. In addition, it aids other agencies,

notably the family and the Church in other functions that are common

to it and to them. Now those who conduct a secondary school must
have a hierarchy of values. For example, good moral character is

more important than proficiency in grammar; good citizenship of

greater value than ability to appreciate a play of Shakespeare. Fot

the Catholic secondary school, development of the Christian virtues

is obviously of greater worth than learning or anything else. There-

fore it follows that the secondary school cannot be indifferent to

these higher values. Since the pupils in the Catholic secondary

school are not disembodied intellects, still less merely higher types

in the animal kingdom, but children of God, redeemed by Christ our

Lord, a Catholic school would fail wholly if it did not consciously

strive to impart training in Catholic character.

But it must be remembered that these higher values, Christian

citizenship, Christian character, supernatural virtues, are not the

exclusive concern of the school. The school alone cannot secure

them unaided. Surely it is conceivable that virtues can be developed

by young people who never went to high school. Mere literacy of
itself or the possession of a high-school diploma is no guarantee of

either virtue or citizenship. But if the school does not attend to

intellectual training at all, is not concerned with the fact that its

students are not mastering grammar or reading or whatever may
constitute the high-school curriculum, then it is not merely a poor

school
;

it forfeits the right to be called a school at all, even though

it may be successful in developing the virtues of a Christian character.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 23

The Catholic secondary school has the specific function of training

for intellectual virtues. Yet as a Catholic institution it must always

recognize that since it is concerned with the whole pupil, intellectual

training is not enough, nor is it ever the most important thing in

the life of the child. It is even possible that under certain circum-

stances it must forsake or abandon temporarily its specific purpose,

and turn to the more important business of training for the moral

virtues.

Examples may help to clarify this point. The specific purpose of

a shoe factory is to make shoes
;
yet a Christian shoe manufacturer

will necessarily admit that development of Christian virtue is more

important. If shoemaking interfered with Christian virtues, shoe-

making would have to cease. But in that event, he would cease

calling his establishment a shoe factory. A library is a place to
serve readers with books; yet in time of war the librarian and his

staff might have to use the building for housing the wounded. If

this were to be a permanent arrangement, quite obviously it could no

longer be called a library. So, too, with our high schools. If a

great moral or physical disaster were imminent, we might conceiv-

ably have to give up the work of intellectual training of our students

and devote our efforts for the time to the exclusive development of

the moral virtues. But, I maintain, there is no necessary incom-

patibility between virtue and learning. A good secondary school
will use its intellectual training as a means to the well-rounded de-

velopment of the characters of its pupils. One can say that if a sec-

ondary school fails to insist on intellectual training, it fails also in

character training.

The purpose then of the Catholic high school, as I understand it,

is to develop Catholic boys and girls along intellectual lines, to turn

out intelligent Catholic citizens with an appreciative knowledge of

their heritage as American citizens and an appreciative knowledge of

their Catholic heritage. Only in the Catholic school can this ap-

preciative knowledge be fully secured. If it be true—and we know
that it is true—that our concept of democracy is based on the dignity
of man, then it is only in the Catholic school that the proper dignity

of man can be learned, because only there will youth learn that
man has dignity because he is created by God to His image and like-
ness, only there will he learn of the high estate to which he has been

called—a son of God, redeemed by Christ our Lord . 1

^William J. McGucken, “Intelligence and Character/’ The National Catholic
Educational Association Bulletin

,

XXXVI (May, 1940), 10-12.



24 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

4. Objectives of Catholic Higher Education

Higher education in America includes everything from

the college of liberal arts to the graduate school, from a

school of medicine to a college of agriculture. The con-

fusion and bewilderment of aim so characteristic of American

higher education, the utilitarian, anti-intellectual elements

that prevail there, which make Mr. Hutchins despair of

hoping for anything but triviality, mediocrity, and chaos

from the present American educational system, are un-

fortunately all too true of most Catholic institutions. Never-

theless, despite this lack of solidity and standards, the

Catholic college and university have retained their super-

natural viewpoint.

Naturally enough Catholic institutions have imitated the

externals of college and university here in America; per-

haps necessarily so. Nor do they cease by that fact qua

Catholic institution to be any the less Catholic, just so long

as they hold fast to their philosophy of supematuralism, so

long as they realize they are training not merely for time,

but for eternity, although possibly inefficient qua institutions

of higher education.

The traditional purpose of the university is

a) the conservation of knowledge and ideas and values;

b
)

the interpretation and transmission of knowledge and

ideas and values;

c) the quest of truth through scholarly research

;

d
)

the preparation for professions not by mere ad-hoc

training in techniques but by intelligent and thorough training

in the principles underlying the professions.

5. Idea of the University in Its Origins

This was the idea of the university from its origin. True,

historically the character of the university was determined

by the idea of knowledge which its age valued, by the type

of man it intended to produce, and by the economic, social,
political, and religious conditions of the nation and age in

which it found itself. The oneness of learning, which in

an earlier day united all the universities irrespective of



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 25

their accidental differences, no longer exists. In the Middle

Ages, theology or philosophy, rooted in Christianity, was

that principle of unity. The Reformation shattered the

common faith that united Christendom and the universities

of Christendom, without, however, removing theology from

its place at the summit of the tower of learning. But in the

eighteenth century, theology was dismissed as a poor slat-

tern by the men of the Enlightenment. The principle of

unity where such a principle existed now became philosophy,

not indeed the ancient Christian philosophy of the school-

men, but a philosophy that was contemptuous of all revealed

truth, hostile to all supernatural values. In the nineteenth

century, philosophy gave way to naturalism; the experi-

mental method became the ruling spirit in the secular uni-

versity. The scientific method is the sole possession that is

common to all modern universities.

Science, however, and the scientific method—excellent
though they are in their proper sphere—cannot alone help
the university to fulfil that function which is proper to it,

namely, an interpreter and guardian of values. It is be-

cause of this that confusion has overtaken the modern uni-

versity. It has failed properly to guard and hand on the

heritage entrusted to it. Pragmatism has ruled the uni-

versity and in the mad scramble to turn out statisticians, busi-
ness men, social workers, laboratory technicians—all excel-
lent professions, as who shall deny?—the university has for-
gotten that it must train its sons in human values first before
it attempts to impart techniques.

6. A Non-Catholic View

Howard Mumford Jones, a non-Catholic writer, says in
this connection

:

What is the source of this confusion? Let us contrast the Catholic
and the non-Catholic traditions in liberal education. Roughly speaking
the problem of values does not arise in the Catholic educational tradi-
tion, or if it does arise, it does not arise in the same way. The
Catholic university may be objective in matters of pure science, but
in the humanities it is not unpartisan and it does not try to be. The
core of the Catholic system is theology, theology in turn conditions



26 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

Catholic ethics and Catholic philosophy; and the Catholic point of

view in the interpretation of history and literature is unmistakable.

Indeed it is precisely because the church does not desire to intrust

the question of values to irreligious hands that Catholic institutions

of higher learning exist. There is a definite point of view, which

if it avoids dogma, implies doctrine
;
and consequently Catholic edu-

cation in the humanities has a certainty with which one may quarrel,

but which in contrast to the confusion of mind among non-Catholic

professional educational leaders is admirable.^

No doubt many who heard Professor Jones’ lecture at the

University of Chicago misinterpreted his words to mean

that the Catholic university is hampered by Pope and dogma.

Many were perhaps naive enough to believe that Catholic

universities receive bulls from Rome at the beginning of

September mapping out their course of instruction for the

coming year. Unfortunately, no such delightful practice

exists.

7. The Function of the Catholic University

The precise function of the Catholic university was defined

in imperishable prose in Cardinal Newman’s sermon on

“Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training.” All of it

deserves careful reading in the light of the present confusion.

Here then, I conceive, is the object of the Holy See and the

Catholic Church in setting up universities; it is to reunite things

which were in the beginning joined together by God, and have been

put asunder by man. Some persons will say that I am thinking of
confining, distorting, and stunting the growth of intellect by ecclesi-

astical supervision. I have no such thought. Nor have I any thought
of a compromise, as if religion must give up something, and science

something. I wish the intellect to range with the utmost freedom,

and religion to enjoy an equal freedom; but what I am stipulating for
is that they should be found in one and the same place and ex-

emplified in the same persons. I want to destroy that diversity

of centres, which puts everything into confusion by creating con-

trariety of influences. I wish the same spots and the same individuals

to be at once oracles of philosophy and shrines of devotion. It will

not satisfy me, what has satisfied so many, to have two independent

1William S. Gray (editor). General Education : Its Nature, Scope, and Es-
sential Elements, pp. 43-44. Proceedings of the Institute for Administrative

Officers of Higher Institutions, Vol. VI. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1934.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 27

systems, intellectual and religious, going at once side by side, by a

sort of division of labor, and only accidentally brought together. It

will not satisfy me, if religion is here, and science there, and young

men converse with science all day, and lodge with religion in the

evening. It is not touching the evil, to which these remarks have

been directed, if the young man eat and drink and sleep in one place,

and think in another. I want the same roof to contain both the intel-

lectual and moral discipline. Devotion is not a sort of finish given

to the sciences
;
nor is science a sort of feather in the cap, if I

may so express myself, an ornament and set-off to devotion. I

want the intellectual layman to be religious and the devout ecclesiastic

to be intellectual.

This is no matter of terms, nor of subtle distinctions. Sanctity has

its influence
;

intellect has its influence
;
the influence of sanctity is

the greater in the long run
;
the influence of intellect is the greater

at the moment. Therefore, in the case of the young, whose educa-

tion lasts a few years, where the intellect is, there is the influence.

Their literary, their scientific teachers really have the forming of

them. Let both influences act freely. As a general rule, no system
of mere religious guardianship which neglects the reason, will in

matter of fact succeed against the school. Youths need a masculine

religion, if it is to captivate their restless imaginations, and their

wild intellects, as well as to touch their susceptible hearts . 1

The Catholic university can, indeed should, be singularly

free from prejudice, although it may be freely granted that
it was not always so. Catholic and secular educators alike

may be swayed by passion, emotion, prejudice, propaganda.
The Catholic university welcomes research and scientific in-

vestigation
;
the only thing it has to fear is prejudice. A

secular professor trained in naturalism may enter upon his
research with certain definite prejudices. For example, here

is a professor of psychology who is sure there is no spiritual
soul, although he has no evidence for that conviction. His

research is conditioned by blind irrational prejudice. The
Catholic professor, trained in metaphysics, enters his labora-

tory with no such bias. For the materialist, the soul, im-
mortality, spirituality, God are anachronisms. For the
Catholic scientist they are ever present realities. They in no
way hamper the research of the Catholic scientist or historian
or philosopher. On the contrary, the Catholic scholar wel-
comes every scientific discovery wherever found. The ex-
perimental naturalist too often fears the truth, seems domi-

1Sermons on Various Occasions. Sermon I.



28 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

nated by theophobia. If a Catholic is dogmatic—and some
Catholics are dogmatic—so too is the materialist with his
absurd dogma denying the existence of all dogma, refusing

even to consider the possibility of the spiritual.

The Catholic university, as all universities, is devoted to

the pursuit of truth, has an obligation to further and deepen

the intellectual life of its students, to raise the cultural stand-

ards in the community and region wherein it is situated. For

the Catholic university above all, the thing of ultimate im-

portance is not here but hereafter. This world has genuine

value only in so far as it leads to the next.

The university must hold fast to its primary function—the
imparting of wisdom and the discovery of truth. Conserva-

tion and conservative are terms closely allied. The university

should be conservative in the etymological sense; it is the

guardian of the culture of the intellectual world. While in

no wise unfriendly to new discoveries, it should be unwilling

to pick up its academic robes and run pell-mell after every

pedagogical pied piper that pipes in the marketplace. It is

not progress for the university, even in a democracy, to

lower its drawbridge for the howling mobs clamoring for

admittance under the leadership of the apostles of service.

8. Values in a University

The university must have a standard of values. The re-

jection of values has been the great tragedy of the modern

university, as it has been of the modern world. If there

be no standards, if there be no abiding values, then indeed

we must accept the gospel of despair. Material things have

values—bread and circuses, pennies and footballs, jobs and
games, but surely they are not the primary concern of the

university. The university deals with things of the mind;

education is an intellectual and spiritual process which has

to do with the opening of the windows of the human mind,

the enrichment and ennobling of the human soul. Therefore,

the university must place humane values, spiritual values,

above material values
;
training of men in thinking is of more

importance than training in techniques.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 29

For the Catholic university there is another grade in the

hierarchy of values. Above the material, above the spiritual,

there exist supernatural values, values known through revela-

tion. The Catholic university from its coign of vantage in

the ancient Church has a view not merely of the world but

of the superworld as well, not only of the facts in the

natural order but of those in the supernatural order also,

those facts that give meaning and coherence to the whole of

life. And while it is true that it is the province primarily of

the faculty of theology to impart knowledge of the super-

natural, to investigate and promote research on revealed

truth, nevertheless in a Catholic university there should al-

ways be on the part of all the faculties an awareness of these

supernatural facts and values.

A university that is a static institution is bound to decay.
It must give evidence that a life-giving principle is at work.

This will be shown in the men that it sends forth to the

world, intellectual leaders of the generation, to whom the
university has handed on the burning torch of knowledge and

wisdom. The university itself must promote the quest for

truth, advancing the frontiers of knowledge by its research,

its experimentation. The university is not a fortress, not a

mere treasure-house of knowledge; it is in a very real sense

an army in battle array, capturing now this outpost, now

that, from the enemy, ignorance, while breaking new paths

into unexplored fields. A university that simply hands on
its knowledge and does not set its students aflame with en-

thusiasm to spread that knowledge has signally failed in its

mission.

Since the Napoleonic era the principle of integration has

scarcely existed in the university. It is this lack of integra-

tion that President Hutchins and Norman Foerster particu-
larly deplore. Each discipline in the modem university is
virtually autonomous. Philosophy, where it raises" its

trembling head, is sent back to its lair by the lord of the in-

tellectual world, science. But how can this integration be
accomplished in the modern university? Will the Hutchins
solution of metaphysics be satisfactory?



30 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

9. Catholic Principle of Integration

For the Catholic university, there is a principle of integra-

tion—not an eclectic metaphysics, but the metaphysics of
Aristotle and Aquinas. In Newman’s phrase, we are all

Aristotelians, we cannot help being so “for the great Master

does but analyze the thoughts, feelings, views, and opinions

of the human mind. He has told us the meaning of our own
words and ideas, before we were born. In many subject

matters to think correctly is to think like Aristotle; and we

are his disciples whether we will or not.” Nevertheless, for

the Catholic university this principle of integration is not

merely metaphysics, but metaphysics supplemented by the-

ology. In this the Catholic university of today is at one

with the ancient University of Paris, the mother and fountain-

head of all universities.

The Catholic university exists not for the sake of apolo-

getics, not for the purpose of merely training its students

for the “other life.” In the words of Dietrich von Hilde-

brand,

[Catholic Universities are necessary] for the sake of the truly ade-

quate objective knowledge, not by any means merely for the protec-

tion of the religious knowledge of the students. They are needed as

the institutions where Catholic thinkers and men of science, sup-
ported by a truly Catholic environment, informed in their attitude

by the spirit of Christ and of His Church, shall be enabled by a

really unbiased, truly liberated and enlightened intelligence to pene-

trate adequately to reality and to achieve by organized teamwork that

universitas which is nowadays so urgently needed. They must further

be institutions in which young people may be educated to that attitude
which represents an inevitable prerequisite for the learner also. A
Catholic university would have no meaning if it were nothing but a

collection of Catholic men of thought and science, while following the
model of the modern university in its general atmosphere. It re-

quires the conscious production of an atmosphere filled by Christ, an

environment imbued with prayer; as an organism it must in its

structure and in the common life of its teachers among each other
and with their students be thoroughly Catholic. The students must
breathe a Catholic air and Catholic spirit which will make them

into anti-pedantic, humble, faithful, metaphysically courageous men

of winged intelligence and yearning, and therewith capable of truly

adequate and objective knowledge. . . . Only through the existence of

Catholic universities can the labours of Catholic research in the



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 31

other universities be brought to full fruition. Catholic universities

must create the atmosphere in which the Catholic teacher can find

his way back to a true ideal of science and become conscious of the

advantage for adequate knowledge which he enjoys through revela-

tion, and of the responsibility of giving to mankind in the way of

knowledge what by reason of this advantage he is capable of giving

to it .
1

V. Nature of Knowledge

Whether man can know anything, how he comes to know,

and how true is this knowledge are fundamental to the whole

educational question. Saint Thomas begins his treatise De

Magistro with the question: “Whether man can teach

another and be called a teacher or God alone ?”
2

Skeptics,

anti-intellectuals, rationalists, Kantians have answered all

these questions in various ways. The answer given here is

that of moderate intellectualism, the theory of Aristotle and

Saint Thomas.

The Aristotelian-Thomist concept of knowledge is very

simple. Knowledge implies three things, a knower, a thing

known, and the act of knowing. The knower is assumed to

have the capacity to attain to truth with certitude because

his senses and his intellect under certain conditions are in-

fallible means of truth. This supposes, therefore, that truth

exists; that man can attain it under certain conditions. It

does not maintain that all our judgments are veracious, all

our ideas are true, all our sense perceptions are correct
;
only

that some of them can be. Further, it assumes that man
can know when he has attained the truth.

1Walter M. Kotschnig and Elined Prys, The University in a Changing World

,

p. 219 ff. London: Oxford University Press, 1932.
2De Veritate, q. xi.



32 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

1. How We Get Our Ideas

How man comes to know is handled by the scholastics in
this fashion

:

a) With our senses we see, let us say, trees of various

shapes and colors and sizes.

b
)

Imagination and sense-memory keep the concrete

images of the various trees, as they exist in nature, with their

determinate sizes, colors, and shapes.

C) Then the active intellect, by reason of its power of ab-

straction, prescinds from the various differences in the

images of the trees retained in the memory, and attends to

the essential features common to all trees.

d
)

This essence, abstracted from its individuating notes,

immaterialized, so to speak, in the process, is presented to

the cognitive intellect.

e
)
The cognitive intellect, after this action of the active

intellect, expresses the essence of the tree by means of a

concept or immaterial representation of what is common to

all trees.

This is the origin of universal concepts or ideas according

to the scholastics. The abstract idea that we formulate of

beauty, for example, is derived as follows : We see beautiful
things in nature

;
the active intellect abstracts, the cognitive

intellect cognizes and forms the abstract idea of beauty. So

too with patriotism, derived from patriotic deeds or from

patriotic men. When we say “Man is mortal/’ man is a
universal idea, derived from our sense-experience of Tom,

Dick, and Harry
;
of white men, black men, yellow men, red

men
;
of brilliant men and stupid men

;
of kings and beggars

;

of Nordics and Alpines and Mediterranean types; of men

who are our friends and men who are our enemies. By

the power of abstraction in the human mind, we strip off the

“Tomness,” the whiteness, the brilliance, the kingliness, the

“Nordicness,” the “friendness” and reach the universal ab-

stract idea of man. Nor will it do to attempt to reduce all

ideas to sensations or to fusion of sense-images. We can
distinguish our ideas from sensation, although it is undoubt-



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 33

edly true that our ideas are accompanied by sense-images,

more or less vague. Gruender, in his chapter, on “Thought,”

says

:

By an idea we become aware of the nature of any object whatever,

while by a sensation we become aware only of a sensible object as it

appears to our senses here and now. When, therefore, we become

aware of an object which has no sensible qualities, we know by

that very fact that we have an idea and not a sensation .1

The relation between the hypotenuse and the other two

sides of a right-angled triangle is an idea and not a sensa-

tion, because it is “neither hot nor cold, neither black nor

yellow, etc., it simply has no sensible qualities.”

Without universal ideas, science itself would be impossible

;

we cannot formulate a scientific law or scientific hypothesis

without the aid of abstract, universal ideas. When the mathe-
matician says, “In a right-angled triangle the square on the

hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other

two sides,” he is not talking about this right-angled triangle

on the blackboard, not even of an imaginary right-angled

triangle, but he is talking about the “universal” right-angled

triangle, which exists nowhere outside of his mind, but which

has its foundation in reality. Of any right-angled triangle

the statement in the proposition is true.

2. Being—the Object of the Mind

The object of the mind is to know what is—that is, to
know being. The mind must see the universe of being

—

God, man, the cosmos—as a totality, with all its constituent
elements in right relation to one another. Individual things

must be studied, of course, but only as they fit into the total

view; only then is every piece of knowledge enrichment.

This totality of view is the indispensable element. This

view of education is what marks off the Catholic from most

other groups. Catholics still believe that every sphere of

Hubert Gruender, Experimental Psychology, p. 308. Milwaukee, Wisconsin:
Bruce Publishing Co., 1932.



34 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

human life is related essentially to every other. For the

Catholic, the world is ordered on the principle of theocentric

realism. As Sheed says:

For the theist, the matter hardly needs stating. God is not simply

the supreme Being, enthroned at the apex of all that is in such

wise that the universe may be conceived as so many strata of being
from the lowest to the highest and God over all : if that were so,

one might conceive of a true study of the lower strata which should

take no account of God. But the truth is that God is at the very

centre of all things whatsoever. They come into existence only because

He sustains them. To omit God, therefore, from your study of
things is to omit the one being that explains them

:
you begin your

study of things by making them inexplicable! Further all things are

made not only by God but for God, in that lies their purpose and the

relation of each thing to all others. . . .

But the place of God in our view of the totality of things—and so
of education—is not simply a matter of recognizing Him as first
cause and last end and sustained in being more intimate to each

being than it is to itself; there is also His revelation of the purpose

for which He made man—not simply that He made man for Himself
but just what this involves in terms of man’s being and action.

This question of purpose is a point overlooked in most educational

discussion, yet it is quite primary. How can you fit a man’s mind
for living if you do not know what the purpose of man’s life is? You
can have no reasonable understanding of any activity—living as
a totality or any of its departments—if you do not know its pur-
pose. You do not even know what is good or bad for a man till
you know the purpose of his existence, for this is the only test of
goodness or badness—if a thing helps a man in the achievement of
the purpose for which he exists, then it is good for him; if not, it is

bad. And the one quite certain way to find out the purpose of
anything is to ask its maker. Otherwise you can only guess. The

Catholic knows that man has a Maker and that the Maker has said
what he made man for. Therefore—not of himself but by the
revelation of God—the Catholic knows the purpose of human life
and if he be an educator he has the answer to this primary question.

He may be a thoroughly bad educator—perhaps through being like
many of us a born fool—but he has the first requirement . 1

VF. J. Sheed, “A Note on Reading and Education,” Ground Plan for Catholic
Reading, pp. 7-8. New York: Sheed & Ward (n.d.).



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 35

3. “What Knowledge Is of Most Worth ?”

This question the Catholic answers in straightforward

fashion : religious knowledge, knowledge of God and man’s

relations to God as made known through reason and revela-

tion—this is the knowledge that is of most worth. Not that
Catholic schools of any type are concerned merely with

knowledge of Christian doctrine. The point is academic;

it is conceivable that in a more primitive civilization some

Catholic schools might confine themselves almost, if not ex-

clusively, to religious knowledge. The thing to be insisted on

is that religion permeates all Catholic education from arith-

metic to zoology, just as ideally it impregnates all of Catholic

life and living. Naturally, there is no such thing as Catholic

chemistry; yet in a chemistry class taught in a Catholic

school to Catholics by a Catholic there will be an awareness

of and a reverence for God and supernatural values. The

Catholic scientist will never make the mistake of becoming

so absorbed in test-tubes that there is room for no higher

loyalty.

4. The Catholic Theory of a Liberal Education

Catholic education has, generally speaking—it is impossible
to speak with more precision—been sympathetic to the
humanist theory of a liberal education. Terence expressed

the humanist ideal perhaps as well as anyone, Nihil hurnani

a me cdienum puto. All that is human must enter into the
education that is humanistic and liberal. All that is human,

all that belongs to man—the true, the beautiful, the good—all
these constitute the elements of humanism in education. Not
one alone, but a synthesis of all three. Not merely Greek
thought and Roman thought, but Christian thought and
Christian art, and modern thought and modern art and
modern science as well—in so far as they are true, beautiful,
good—these are the elements, often jarring because of false
emphasis oi one over the other, that must be harmonized to
secure a liberal education.



36 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

In the history of the world there have been surprisingly

few great minds. The minds, the thoughts of these great

minds, are preserved in matchless poetry and prose for our

delight and edification. The traditional liberal education puts

man in contact with these great minds. Most Catholics be-

lieve that humanities and those disciplines that prepare for

the understanding and appreciation of the humanities must

always be basic to any adequate theory of a liberal education.

Not any sort of study of the humanities, surely not the

gerund-grinding drudgery of the pedant, not the scientific dis-

section of the masterpieces of literature, but a study of litera-

ture that will show vistas of new worlds and old, that will

unlock magic casements opening on sunlit seas, that will

lift youth out of his narrow parochialism, remove him from

the current barbarism and neopaganism of the day and make

him a world citizen, at home with great minds ancient and

modern. History has its contribution to make to a liberal

education, a history that sees the relationship between our

own age and that of a civilization that has disappeared from

the face of the earth. Science and mathematics will play their

part; they are the language of the contemporary world and

are needed to impart experience in scientific method.

Philosophy is needed, a genuine and strenuous exercise in

the art and science of thinking, a dynamic and fearless in-

vestigation of ideas and facts and things that will color all

of life for the man who undergoes this discipline, and will

enable him to meet problems of a modern changing world un-

afraid, not because he has the solutions ready-solved in a

mental answer-book, but for the reason that his mind and

soul have been steeled for conflict, have been anchored so

sturdily that even a world tottering to ruins would not find

him unprepared.

Religion must play a part in the integral humanistic train-

ing of man. Philosophy and science give only partial answers

to the world riddle. Religion is needed to secure a complete

view of life. If religion be banned from a liberal education,

you have not merely an incomplete education, you have a

maimed and distorted education.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 37

Classical culture, Christian culture, the medieval synthesis

of Thomas Aquinas, and modern science and modern thought

—these are the strands that the Catholic believes must be
combined somehow into unity to provide a liberal education

for the youth of our day, to place him in contact with truth,

and beauty, and goodness. How can integration be secured
for these divergent and sometimes clashing forces ? The meta-

physics that President Hutchins speaks of is a partial solu-

tion
;

it is not a complete solution. The Catholic believes

humbly and sincerely that the answer to this problem of inte-

gration is one word, a monosyllable, Christ. Christianity is

Christ. Christianity is not the history of one nation or race

or people; it is universal history, the history of the human

race, the most human thing in the world. The humanism of

Christ, who is also God, as the Catholic confidently believes,

this is Christian humanism, integral humanism that will make

a marvelous synthesis of old and new. In this framework the

classical theory of a liberal education remains not a relic,

however glorious, of a golden past, not something static, but a

dynamic force, transformed and vivified by all that is of

permanent value in past and present, providing the world

with a liberal education in the truest and finest sense of the

word.

VI. Nature of Society

The idea of society connotes a plurality of persons united

in some form of permanence with a common aim or object.
Thus there are three features common to every society:
plurality of persons, common aim, and authority to ensure
permanence and common aim. Since man is a social being,
society is natural to man, yet it must never be forgotten that

he has an individual personality and dignity of his own.

Therefore, education is hard put to it at times to keep a nice

balance between individual and social aims.



38 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

1. State and Family

On the purely natural level there are two societies of educa-
tional import—the state and the family.

The family [was] instituted directly by God for its peculiar pur-
pose, the generation and formation of offspring; for this reason it

has priority of nature and therefore of rights over civil society. 1

It is on this point that Aquinas, and other scholastic phi-

losophers, part company with Aristotle. Aristotle2 and pagan

civilization generally regarded the individual as subordinate

to the state. The important thing was to be a good citizen.

Aristotle had said in his Politics
,
“A citizen does not belong

to himself but to the state
;
he should be educated for it and

by it.”3 Christianity changed this emphasis on the state by

indicating man’s supernatural end. This explains the im-

portance of the individual man in scholastic thought, the

reason why the state exists for man and not man for the state.

This would be true even in the merely natural order. For

the state exists for the common good. Although the common

good, the good of society, is in general more important than

the good of an individual, this does not hold when the private

good is of a higher order
4

. So, too, with the rights of the

family. The state may think it for the common good to re-

quire all children to attend state schools. This conflicts with

the higher right of the family over the education of its

children.

Part of the Supreme Court decision regarding the Oregon

Act of 1922 indicates clearly that American opinion is in

perfect accord with Catholic principles.

We think it entirely plain that the Act of 1922 unreasonably inter-
feres with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbring-

ing and education of children under their control. . . . Rights guaran-

teed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which
has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of

the state. The fundamental theory upon which all governments in

1Pius XI, Encyclical on Christian Education.
2Nicomachean Ethics, I, ii, 8. See also Charles A. Hart, Philosophy of So-

ciety, especially Clare Riedl, “The Social Theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas,”

pp. 11 ff. Philadelphia: Dolphin Press, 1934.
37hid, c. viii.
4
Cf. Summa Theologica II-II, q. 39, a. 2 ad 2um.



39PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

this union repose excludes any general power of the state to standard-

ize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public

teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state;

those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled

with the high duty to recognize and prepare him for additional obliga-

tions .
1

2. The Church

In the supernatural order, there is a third society con-

cerned with education, the church. Since education, in the

Catholic view, has a necessary connection with man’s super-

natural destiny, the Catholic Church rightly claims that the

education of her children belongs to her preeminently. Hers

it is to decide what may help or harm Christian education.

It is worth noting, in view of the widespread misunderstand-

ing of the Church’s position on her educational rights, that

the Church has no jurisdiction over those that are not bap-

tized, nor does she exercise any authority in matters of educa-

tion over those not of her fold.

Again if the Church’s position be true, her social objective

in education is higher, nobler than any other. Humanity alone

is not its aim, still less a humanity without God; a realiza-

tion of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God,

good as far as it goes, is too vague for her
;
citizenship and

patriotism are noble objectives and are worthy of cultivation

in every school system, yet citizenship and patriotism are not

enough. The objective of the Church is to realize the conse-

quences of a child’s incorporation with Christ through bap-

tism, a realization that Christ and the Church of which he

is a member are one thing—the Mystical Body of Christ

—

Christ the Head, and we the members. In the light of this

doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ the social end of

Christian education stands in bold relief. Information is not

its aim, but formation of the whole man; better still trans-

formation of Christians into other Christs. And Catholic

schools, no matter of what type, no matter of what nature

their material of instruction, all of them are engaged in this

1Charles N. Lischka, Private Schools and State Laws

,

p. 292. Washington:

National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1926.



40 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

one aim, so startling because of its unity “of building up the

body of Christ . . . till all attain to the full measure of the

stature of Christ.
,,

/
#

3. Democracy and Education : the Catholic View

It is well to recall Jacques Maritain’s three meanings of

democracy in his The Things That Are Not Caesar's . As his

third meaning is the one most commonly used when Ameri-

can educators speak of democracy and education, that mean-

ing had better be examined first. The third meaning of

democracy, Maritain styles democratism:

Democracy as conceived by Rousseau, the religious myth of

democracy, an entirely different thing from the legitimate democratic

regime. . . . Democracy in this sense becomes confused with the

dogma of the Sovereign People, which combined with the dogma of

the General Will and Law as the expression of Number, constitutes
in the extreme, the error of political pantheism (the multitude

—

God ). 1

It is precisely this type of Rousseauistic democracy or

democratism that is being urged on schools by an influential

minority. For them democracy is a religion
;
democracy is the

only absolute. And this new religion is creating a new school

and a new education. Democratism is the standard by which

to judge every phase of the school, methods and techniques,

administration, and curriculum. If other educators insist that

discipline and authority and traditional subjects still have a

place in the training of American youth, the label of Fascist

is attached to them. With this type of democracy, it is hardly

necessary to state, Catholic education will have no traffic.

Democracy, however, has other meanings as Maritain

points out. Democracy may mean a social tendency to pro-

cure social justice for the working classes. It is only neces-

sary to point to the Encyclical letters from Leo XIII to

Pius XII to be certain that this sort of democracy is sound

Catholic doctrine, since it is based on the essential dignity

of man.

^Jacques Maritain, The Things That Are Not Caesar's, p. 227. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 41

Political democracy as conceived by Aristotle and Saint

Thomas is that form of government exemplified in the old

Swiss democracy, consecrated by Lincoln's phrase “govern-

ment of the people, by the people, and for the people." This

is considered by the Church and scholastics as a legally pos-

sible form of government. Not, however, the only possible

form. The Church can adapt itself to any form of govern-

ment, except the totalitarian state where the rights of the

individual, the family, and the Church are all flouted.

Political democracy such as Americans enjoy is of primary

concern to American Catholics. In 1938 the American Cath-

olic Bishops issued a joint pastoral calling for a Catholic

crusade for Christian democracy.

It is necessary that our people, from childhood to mature age, be

ever better instructed in the true nature of Christian democracy. A
precise definition must be given to them both of democracy in the

light of Catholic truth and tradition and of the rights and duties of

citizens in a representative republic such as our own. They must

be held to the conviction that love of country is a virtue and that

disloyalty is a sin .1

Experience, common sense, the sad results seen in other

lands in the present critical hour for Christian civilization

where political democracy has disappeared, as well as the

Christian virtue of patriotism, urge Catholics in the Bishops'

words “to the defense of our democratic form of government,

framed in a constitution that safeguards the inalienable rights

of man." This is in accord “with the American hierarchy’s

traditional position of unswerving allegiance to our free

American institutions."

1Pustoral Letter of the American Bishops, 1938 .



42 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

VII. Conclusion

This then represents, the writer hopes, an adequate presen-

tation of the theory of Catholic education, of the philosophical

and theological bases upon which the Catholic theory of edu-

cation rests. Despite the difficulty, perhaps the irritation, in-

herent in bringing in ideas such as supernatural, Incarnation,

Mystical Body, the Fall of Man, it was felt essential that

these ideas had to be clear if one would understand the

Catholic position on education.

1. Essentials in the Philosophy of Catholic Education

It is quite clear that Catholics regard certain things as

essential to the Catholic theory of education, certain things

as accidental. To put it in other words, a Catholic as a

Catholic is not free to accept or reject the essential postulates

of Catholic education
;
on the other hand as an individual he

may disagree—violently if need be—over the accidentals of
Catholic education.

a . Nature of Man. The whole theory of Catholic educa-

tion depends on the Catholic doctrine regarding man, his na-

ture and supernatural destiny. From the Catholic concept

of the nature of man follows the primary objective of Cath-

olic education, its theory of values. Everything else is subor-

dinate to this ultimate aim of Catholic education. Every de-

mand that the Church makes, every disciplinary regulation

is based on her supernatural viewpoint. The whole history

and theory of Catholic education is unintelligible unless the

Church’s teaching on the supernatural be grasped.

b. Nature of Truth. Truth exists and the human mind

can attain truth. Reason is capable of reaching with com-

plete certainty the most sublime truths of the natural order,

but with difficulty and only when duly trained. Therefore,

the school or teachers have a right and a duty to aid the

pupil to attain these truths. There are also truths of the

supernatural order which the mind can never know unaided.

For this, revelation is needed. The Catholic school again has

the right and duty to present these truths to the child since

he could never learn them unaided.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 43

c. Agencies of Education. The school, the family, and the

Church all have the right and the duty to educate in the

Catholic system. Since man has a supernatural destiny, any

educational system that fails to impart religious instruction

is not acceptable to the Catholic. For the Catholic believes

that religion is an essential part of education, since it is indis-

pensable for right living here and for eternal life hereafter.

2. Accidentals in the Philosophy of Catholic Education

a. Curriculum. The Catholic as a Catholic is not concerned

with curriculum. As a humanist he may demand training in

the liberal arts; as an essentialist he may insist on a cur-

riculum made up of traditional subjects, a curriculum that

is not a "rope of sand”
;
as a "utilitarian” he may insist on

training in practical subjects. The one thing the Catholic

will insist on is that, whatever type the curriculum may be,

the first place must be assigned to religion.

b. Method. Still less is the Catholic as a Catholic con-

cerned with method. He may advocate the outmoded method
of drill; he may believe that the project method or the prob-

lem method has a place in his schools; he may insist on

interest as the keystone of all educational progress; he may

employ the methods of "progressive” education, while neces-

sarily rejecting their underlying philosophy of naturalism;

and there is no one to say him nay. Every acceptable method

of learning must be based on the theory that all education

is self-education. Consequently method, as distinct from tech-

niques or mere tricks of the educational profession, must

have as its aim the teaching of the child to think for himself,

to express adequately his own thoughts, and to appreciate in

a humane way the true, the beautiful, and the good.

c. Freedom vs. Discipline. The Catholic school, even those

conducted along "progressive” lines, believes in discipline,

but that discipline must eventually be self-discipline. Un-

doubtedly, Catholic schools differ among themselves in exter-

nal discipline from the progressive type to the ultraconserva-

tive type that is perilously close to regimentation. Yet every



44 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

Catholic school would admit that discipline is necessary. Dis-

cipline means right order. And every Catholic teacher knows
that his charges are not angels, but very human beings, with

all the limitations of human nature. Not a depraved nature

certainly, but deprived and with the “wounds of nature” that

need watchful guidance in order to lead him on to his last

end. Regimentation may accomplish this externally, but self-

discipline is the real answer, a self-discipline based on sound

principles. Interest is the secret. A child will be good if
he wants to be good. A child will learn fractions if he wants
to learn fractions. It is the teacher's business to make him

want it. That is the essence of good method, however it may

be applied.

3. A Final Word

The main difficulty for the reader of all the foregoing will

be his inability to see what may be called the architectonic

structure of Catholicism and Catholic education. The reason

is that Catholics and non-Catholics have come to talk two

different languages. The background of their thought is not

the same. This is true not merely in the religious sphere but

in the whole of life. Hence, the difficulty of understanding

the Catholic theory of education.

There are two things particularly which set off the Catholic

from the non-Catholic world. There is in the Catholic a

singular unity of thought that springs from his totality of

outlook that is particularly irritating to the non-Catholic. The

Catholic never forgets at any time or place the totality of

being—God, man, and cosmos. The other provocative fea-
ture of Catholic thought may be styled other-worldliness.

This is not to imply that Catholics are necessarily holier

than other people; still less that they are the only people

who believe in the world to come. The modern non-Catholic

feels sure of what he has; he is not sure—not so sure at all
events—of what is to come. Therefore, quite logically he
emphasizes living in this world. Probably, he reasons, there

is another world, but let us make this one that we are sure

about a better place to live in. For the Catholic on the other



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 45

hand, the idea of the world to come looms large
;

it makes its

presence felt in a greater number of spheres. To him the

thing of ultimate importance is not here but hereafter. Not,

of course, that the Catholic does not recognize values in this

world
;
he enjoys, as any other, natural truth and beauty and

goodness; the glory of this world, of mountain and sea and

plain
;
the glow that comes from family life and human friend-

ship finds an echo in his heart; they are good and true and

beautiful but they lead him on to the Creator of all these

manifold delights made for him. “The heavens announce the

glory of God.”

With his philosophy of supernaturalism, the Catholic rests

his case for education and for everything else in the world.

Reactionary he may be, even dangerous to modern life, but

at least in the light of his first principles he believes that he

is consistent.



46 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

References by the Author

Castiello, Jaime, S. J. A Humane Psychology of Education. New
York: Sheed & Ward, 1936. Pp. 254.

Charmot, F. Uhumanisme et Vhumain. Paris : Edition Spes, 1934.

Pp. 524.

Cohausz, Otto, S.J. The Pope and Christian Education. New
York: Benziger Bros., 1933. Pp. 131.

Cunningham, W. F. Pivotal Problems of Education. New York:
Macmillan Co., 1940. Pp. 588.

DeHovre, Frank. Catholicism in Education. New York: Benziger
Bros., 1934. Pp. 501.

. Philosophy and Education. New York: Benziger Bros., 1931.
Pp. 443.

Fitzpatrick, Edward A. I Believe in Education. New York: Sheed
& Ward, 1938. Pp. 218.

James, Fr. Life and Religion. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder

Book Co., 1932. Pp. 260.

Kane, W. T. Some Principles of Education. Chicago : Loyola Uni-
versity Press, 1938. Pp. 215.

McGucken, William J., S.J. The Catholic Way in Education.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Bruce Publishing Co., 1934. Pp. 131.

Mercier, Louis. The Challenge of Humanism. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1933. Pp. 288.

Ryan, James H. A Catechism of Catholic Education. Washington,
D. C. : National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1922. Pp. 98.

Shields, T. E. Philosophy of Education. Washington, D. C. : Catholic

Education Press, 1917. Pp. 446.



PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION 47

The Catholic Mind

The following references are given to the Catholic Mind (1936-

1943).

Parish School Miracle of Generous Faith

.

Most Rev. Amleto G.

Cicognani. November 8, 1937.

Place of the Catholic College Graduate in Education. J. A. Fitzgerald.

March 22, 1938.

Christian Education. Most Rev. J. A. Duffy. September 8, 1938.

Ethical Standards in High School Instruction. Edmund A. Walsh,

SJ. September 8, 1939.

A Creed and a Culture. George Bull, S .J. September 8, 1939.

Prime Obligation of a Catholic College. Thomas J. Higgins, S.J.

September 8, 1939.

Intellectual and Spiritual Stimulation of Students. D. A. Keane, S.J.

September 8, 1939.

Mexican Bishops Pastoral Opposing New Education Law. March 22,
1940.

What the Catholic Colleges Contribute to America. Senator David I.
Walsh. April 8, 1940.

Civic Education. Robert H. Connery. July 8, 1940.

Ends and Aims of Christian Education. L. A. Fenn, S.S. September

22, 1941.

An Old Tradition in a New Day. Dom J. Diman, O.S.B. September
22, 1941.

Character and Aim in Education. William A. Kelly. April 22, 1942.

Education for Total Life. Most Rev. J. T. McNicholas, O. P. August

8, 1942.

Catholic Education and the War. Rev. Arthur H. Chandler, O.P.
March 1943.

Education Pact (Ed.) May 1943.

American Education Must Right About Face. Louis J. Mercier.
May 1943.



48 PHILOSOPHY OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

America

The following references are given to issues of America (1936-

1943), wherein over 1,000 articles on Education may he found.

Catholic Collegians and Constructive Activity. I. W. Cox, S. J.
October 10, 1936— (56/9)*.

Gentle Plea for Doctors of Philosophy. F. X. Connolly. October

24, 1936— (56/54).

Our Colleges: Is Knowledge Well Ordered? A. C. Pegis. March

12, 1938— (58/536).

St. Johns Experiment to Reclaim a Lost Heritage. C. Bull, S.J. July

9, 1938— (59/54).
Christian Democracy Pledges Our Liberties. J. LaFarge, S.J. De-

cember 10, 1938— (60/226).
Foolish Freshman But a Wise Sophomore. M. Von Driska. June 3,

1939— (61/177).
Progressive Education or Educational Progress: What It Really

Means When Stripped of Finery. W. J. McGucken, S.J. July 15,
1939— (61/316).

Barely Tolerable: Should Catholics Matriculate at Secular Colleges?

P. L. Blakely, S.J. September 2, 1939— (61/489).

Progressive Education or Educational Progress: A Rejoinder. W. J.
McGucken, S.J. September 9* 1939— (61/522).

Democracy. We Teach It but Do not Ballyhoo It. H. C. Gardiner,
S.J. October 19, 1930— (64/32).

Academic Freedom Is not a Reckless Grant. Ruth Byrns. November

23, 1940— (64/172).

Our Colleges Look on Wider Horizons. Mother Thomas Aquinas,

O.S.U. March 29, 1941— (64/683).

Symbol for Education, Compass or Carousel. H. C. (Gardiner, S.J.
April 26, 1941— (65/61).

Catholic Schools Are Esteemed in Egypt. P. Crabites. June 21, 1941

— (65/291).
First University. Rt. Rev. J. L. Belford. September 6, 1941

—

(65/605).

Christian Philosophy. (Ed.) September 27, 1941— (65/674).
Open Letter to a Priest from a Jewish College Girl. F. Gorelick.

December 27, 1941— (66/316).

Women's Colleges, Two Kinds. M. S. Giordano. August 22, 1942

—

(67/557).

What Is the Church Doing About It? Our Schools Have not Been
Productive of lay leaders. Brother Justin. October 23, 1943

—

(70/68).

*Figures in parentheses refer to volume and page, thus: (56/9) indicates
Vol. 56, p. 9.



THIS PAMPHLET CAN BE USED

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TEXT BOOK
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Religious Devoted to Teaching

•

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The Encyclical

DIVINI 1LLIUS MAGISTRI

of

Pope Pius XI

(December 31, 1929)

Issued in pamphlet form . . . under the title

—

The Christian Education of Youth . . . arranged

for study clubs with questions and references.

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