CATHOLIC

EDUCATION

ITS PHILOSOPHY

ITS FUNDAMENTALS

ITS OBJECTIVES

by

William J. McGucken, S.J.

THE America PRESS

4



The Philosophy of Catholic Education, by William
J

McGucken, S.J., is a reprint of Chapter VI, Philosophies

of Education, Part I, of the forty-first Yearbook of the

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THE PHILOSOPHY

OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION

I. Introduction

To understand the philosophy of Catholic education, it is neces-

sary to understand—not necessary, of course, to accept—the Cath-

olic philosophy
1
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 ex-

ample, had an extraordinary influence on early Christian thought

arid 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 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 Bellar-

mine to Newman and Chesterton and Pius XII, there is seen a uni-

form pattern of the Christian philosophy of life, startling by reason

of its uniformity. From that philosophy of life is derived the phi-

losophy 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 sincere effort be

1 “Catholic” or “Christian” philosophy is not used in M. Gilson’s sense. ( The

Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, chap. 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953.)
It is used here for convenience to designate all the philosophical-theological bases

of the Catholic outlook on life.

l



made to understand what it is all about. Idiom and language may

be strange, yet the philosophic mind investigating, let us say, the

strange ideologies of the Australian 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 institutions 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.

2



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 exceedingly difficult for the modern mind trained in these phi-

losophies to understand the Catholic position on this important

matter. It is important to note that God, who 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 ulti-

mate 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 independent. This necessary, self-existent being we call God.
Since God is the First Cause, He must be infinite and must con-

tain in Himself in an infinite degree all the qualities and perfections

1 The quinque viae are found in the Summa Contra Gentiles and in the Summa
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. (Westminster:
Newman, 1945.)

3



He has caused. Among these are intellect and will. God therefore

is infinitely wise and infinitely 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 edu-

cation deals with the formation of the whole man, body and soul,

intellect and will. In the area of character education, 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.

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 in-

finitely good, He must have created man for a purpose. That pur-

pose 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, intrinsically

independent of matter, although necessarily united to the body to

form a composite.

d) Man has an intellect; that is, he is capable of understanding,

of forming judgments, of drawing conclusions.

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

1 For these proofs cf. G. J. MacGillivray (editor), Man. (New York: Benziger

Bros., 1932.) Or C. C. Martindale, Man and His Destiny. (London: Bums, Oates,
Washboume, 1928.)

4



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 dif-

ferent from the highest form of brute life. Man is an animal, 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 ex-

istence; 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 unattainable in this life even by those who

keep God’s law, we can have no reasonable doubt of the immor-

tality 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 independent of all

human law; other actions are of their very nature, that is, intrinsi-

cally, 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 meas-

ure the good and the bad, morality will be beyond his reach.

Scholastic philosophy teaches that there is such a yardstick, 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 ra-

tional nature are bad. What does reason teach us about man’s

nature? First, that it is composite, made up of body and soul. Sec-

ond, 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, to his God. He must so five his

life that the higher part of him, the spiritual, be not made subor-

dinate to the organic. Consequently, drunkenness is in itself evil be-

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

5



places the soul and its powers in a subordinate position to the ani-

mal appetites. Secondly, he has duties to his fellowman. Certain

of these duties are in conformity with his social nature, as a mem-

ber 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 Samaritan, 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 to-

ward God are things bad in themselves. Worship 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 be-

ing, 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 com-

pared 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 unchanging, suitable for all

ages and all countries. Granted that it may be hard in certain cir-

cumstances 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 conflict

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.

3. Educational Implications of the Foregoing

Quite independently of any dogmas of faith or any calling

on truths known through revelation, the scholastic can formulate

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

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

6



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-cen-

tered, if we except the brief interlude of the Encyclopedists and

the French Revolution, which had little immediate influence on

school practice. President Hutchins, in the Higher Learning in

America
,
says that, in the modem 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 metaphysical prin-

ciples; 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 greatly they may ad-

mire 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

philosophie deracinee. It is a de-Christianized philosophy or meta-

physic. Mr. Gilson says:

I call Christian every philosophy which
,
although keeping the two

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

considers the Christian revelation as an indispensable auxiliary to reason

}

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 Chris-

tian revelation. In a Christian philosophy, the supernatural must

1 The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, p. 37. Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York,
1936.

7



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?] was accompanied by a mythology [theology ] and

that whoever wants to reclaim medieval theology [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 de-

sires to reclaim medieval metaphysics must also recapture medieval

mythology. [Again, theology. ] He cannot take medieval theology [meta-

physics 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 mythology in

speaking of the sacred science of theology, despite his confusion in

applying the term theology to what is evidently metaphysics or

that branch of metaphysics known as natural theology, there is a

certain half-truth in what he says, mutatis mutandis. Not that meta-

physics is dependent on theology. On the contrary, as Mr. Adler

said so finely and truly at the Conference on Science, Philosophy

and Religion, 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 suprasensible

being, for it can demonstrate the existence of God, by appealing to the

evidence of the senses and the principles of reason, and without any

reliance upon articles of religious faith.
2

1 Adam Alles, ‘‘Whither Education,” Journal of Higher Education, XI ( October,
1940 ), 371-378 .

2 Mortimer Adler, “God and the Professors,” Vital Speeches, VII ( December,

1949 ), 101 .

8



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, 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 supernatural

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

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

ing 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 prac-

tically; 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—annoy-

ing though it may be to the modern mind that distrusts theology—

upon which the Catholic theory of education rests.

1 Loc. cit.

9



III. Theological Bases of the Catholic

Theory of Education

1. Man Has a “Supemature”

Christianity is meaningless without revelation. The Catholic

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 messenger, making a statement

the truth of which He guarantees. It is not an interior emotional

experience; it is a statement of truth made to man in a definite

place at a definite time, by a personal God who is outside and dis-

tinct from the recipient .
1

Among these truths revealed to man by God is that of a super-

nature, 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 con-

fusion is largely owing to the fact that the modem 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 supernat-

ural fife of grace and a destiny 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.

2. The “Fall of Man”

Now the supernatural life of grace was given to Adam condi-

tionally; namely, on the condition of fidelity to a special command.

This command was disobeyed and therefore God withdrew His

1 George D. Smith, Faith and Revealed Truth. London: Bums, Oates & Wash-

bourne, 1929.

10



special gift of supernatural life, and left Adam on the merely nat-

ural 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 de-

prived of this supernatural life of grace.

Calvin believed in the Fall, but, unlike the Catholic, he regarded

man as essentially depraved by reason of the Fall. Hence the doc-

trine 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 re-

garded 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, Christi-

anity. 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 restoration 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 restoration was to

take place through a second Adam, one who was to stand like the

first Adam as the representative of the 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 Sec-

ond Person of the Blessed Trinity, who took upon Himself our hu-

man 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 restored to the

position lost to them through Adam's sin.

The liturgy of the Church shows this whole teaching in striking

fashion in die ancient prayer that the priest says at Mass, as he

11



pours water into the wine which is to be consecrated, thus sym-

bolizing 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 Modems

Nothing is more irritating to the modem 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 traditional historic Christianity is

inextricably bound up with it. It cannot be demonstrated by hu-

man 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 fact of the supernatural life be recognized. The Cath-

olic 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 ‘modem 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 super-

natural life and man s supernatural destiny is recognized, then with

unerring logic follows the Catholic position on Hie whole educa-

tional question.

5. Christianity Based on the Dogma of “Fall”

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

12



history of civilization and education would have been vastly dif-

ferent 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 mistakenly believed

there was such a fact. Not only does Christianity base its doctrine

and practice upon that fact, but our whole civilization and, con-

sequently, 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 Incarnation and Redemp-

tion, the two cardinal points of Christian belief.

6. Educational Theory Dependent on View of “Fall”

Two moderns of widely different antecedents, with antipodal

philosophies, Friedrich Foerster, the devout Lutheran educator,

and Bertrand Russell, the modern skeptic, both have come quite

independently to the same conclusion; namely, that in the last

analysis all theories of education are dependent 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 education 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 question

may well be raised: What is the Catholic attitude toward 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 absolutes to which all natural beauty and

goodness are relative
,

1
the symmetry Aquinas advocates is the sym-

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

13



metry demanded by a supernatural end. The supernatural com-

pletes the natural; gratia perficit naturam, grace perfects nature.

For the Catholic is neither Manichee nor Puritan.

Nature was not corrupt, even despite the cataclysmic effects of

the Fall; it was merely wounded. Hence, in education 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 hu-

manism of Christ, a Christ that suffered the little children gladly,

for of such is the kingdom of Heaven, a Christ that consorted with

publicans 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 bom 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 super-

natural 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 revela-

tion show him to be; man, therefore, fallen from his original estate, but

14



redeemed by Christ and restored to the supernatural condition of

adopted sons of God . . .

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

supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts consistently 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 .
1

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 to-

ward life, and most of all, Catholic education are insoluble mys-

teries if we exclude an understanding of the supernatural. The

Church holds that she is divinely commissioned 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

received 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 subjects 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

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

you will; for, strange as it may seem, the Church considers religion

as more important than fractions. If it came to a point where a

choice must be made between endangering faith by learning frac-

tions or keeping the faith and not knowing fractions, there is only

one answer.

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

tions and the supernatural life, but man can create a fictitious con-

flict. Let us suppose, for example, that the Nazis had conquered

America, had established 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.

1 Pius XI, Encyclical on Christian Education.

15



10. Catholic Hierarchy of Values

Since so much time has been spent elaborating the Catholic con-

cept 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 in-

clude the supernatural, with all that is connoted in theological

science by that term, it clearly follows that there is a certain hier-

archy of values in Catholic education. Supernatural values are ob-

viously of more importance than the natural; spiritual values of

greater import than the bodily; and eternal of more significance

than temporal.

16



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 co-operate

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 ag-

gregate 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 super-

natural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently

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.

. . . 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 teaching about

man s nature and supemature, and man’s supernatural destiny, it

is impossible to see how there could be any change. Into this ulti-

mate aim every type of Catholic educational institution must fit,

from kindergarten to graduate school; otherwise it has no right to

be called a Catholic school. For no matter how poor the intellec-

tual training it imparts, no matter how badly equipped academical-

ly 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 vir-

tues 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 education, moral education,

1 Pius XI, Encyclical on Christian Education.

17



training in citizenship, courtesy, character education, even intellec-

tual training, are not exclusively the prerequisites of the school;

they could not be. But the Catholic Church insists that each Cath-

olic 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 foundation. 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 education and even of religious education. Ob-

viously* habits cannot 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 irrational, 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 democ-

racy, 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 necessary 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 impart training in processes that are needed for Amer-

ican 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 atti-

1 National Catholic Educational Association Bulletin, XXII (Nov., 1925), 458 ff.

18



tudes 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.

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 patriot-

ism, love of country—a very noble Christian virtue—truths about

God and Gods 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 showing

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

only are individuals intellectually or spiritually color-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 com-

mon 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;

c) an intelligent, good American citizen;

1 E. I. Watkin, The Bow in the Clouds, p. 7. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1954.

19



d) an intelligent, helpful member of society and of those par-

ticular groups of which he is or will be a member—the family, pro-

fessions, 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 throughout 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 elsewhere, 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 im-

portant than proficiency in grammar; good citizenship of greater value

than ability to appreciate a play of Shakespeare. For the Catholic

secondary school, development of the Christian virtues is obviously of

greater worth than learning or anything else. Therefore it follows that

the secondary school cannot be indifferent to these higher values. Since

the pupils in the Catholic secondary school are not disembodied in-

tellects, 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 citizen-

ship, 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.

The Catholic secondary school has the specific function of train-

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

always recognize that since it is concerned with the whole pupil, in-

tellectual training is not enough, nor is it even 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.

20



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 im-

portant. If shoemaking interfered with Christian virtues, shoemaking

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 conceivably have to give up the work of intellectual

training of our students and devote our efforts for the time to the ex-

clusive development of the moral virtues. But, I maintain, there is no

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

development of the characters of its pupils. One can say that if a

secondary 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 appreciative

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 be-

cause he is created oy God to His image and likeness, 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

4. Objectives of Catholic Higher Education

Higher education in America includes everything from the col-

lege of liberal arts to the graduate school, from a school of medi-

cine to a college of agriculture. The confusion 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. Nevertheless,

despite this lack of solidity and standards, the Catholic college and

university have retained their supernatural viewpoint.

1 William J. McGucken, “Intelligence and Character,” The National Catholic Edu-
cational Association Bulletin, XXXVI (May, 1940), 10-12.

21



Naturally enough, Catholic institutions have imitated the ex-

ternals of college and university here in America; perhaps neces-

sarily 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 supematurahsm, so long as they realize they are

training not merely for time, but for eternity, although possibly in-

efficient 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 prin-

ciples underlying the professions.

5. Idea of the University in Its Origins

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

torically 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 one-

ness of learning, which in an earlier day united all the universities

irrespective of 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 slattern 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

schoolmen, 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 experimental method be-

came the ruling spirit in the secular university. The scientific meth-

od 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 fulfill that function which is proper to it, i.e., to be an interpreter

and guardian of values. It is because of this that confusion has

22



overtaken the modern university. It has failed properly to guard

and hand on the heritage entrusted to it. Pragmatism has ruled the

university and in the mad scramble to turn out statisticians, busi-

ness men, social workers, laboratory technicians—all excellent pro-

fessions, as who shall deny?—the university has forgotten that it

must train its sons in human values first before it attempts to im-

part 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 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, im-

plies doctrine; and consequently Catholic education 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 .
1

No doubt many who heard Professor Jones’ lecture at the Uni-

versity 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

1 William S. Gray (editor). General Education: Its Nature, Scope, and Essential

Elements, pp. 43-44. Proceedings of the Institute for Administrative Officers of Higher

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

23



Instrument of Religious Training.” All of it deserves careful read-

ing 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 ecclesiastical 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 is that they should be
found in one and the same place and exemplified in the same persons.

I want to destroy that diversity of centres, which puts everything into

confusion by creating contrariety 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 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

intellectual 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 intellec-

tual 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 rim; the influence of intellect is the greater at the

moment. Therefore, in the case of the young, whose education 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 in-

fluences act freely. As a general rule, no system of mere religious guar-

dianship 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

1 Sermons on Various Occasions. Sermon I.

24



welcomes research and scientific investigation; 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 laboratory

with no such bias. For the materialist, the soul, immortality, spiri-

tuality, 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 welcomes every scientific discovery, wherever

found. The experimental naturalist too often fears the truth, seems

dominated 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 con-

sider 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 intel-

lectual life of its students, to raise the cultural standards in the

community and region wherein it is situated. For the Catholic uni-

versity above all, die thing of ultimate importance 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 im-

parting of wisdom and the discovery of truth. Conservation and

conservative are terms closely allied. The university should be con-

servative in the etymological sense; it is the guardian of the culture

of the intellectual world. While in no wise unfriendly to new dis-

coveries, it should be unwilling to pick up its academic robes and

run pell-mell after every pedagogical pied piper that pipes in the

market-place. It is not progress for the university, even in a de-

mocracy, to lower its drawbridge for the howling mobs clamoring

for admittance under the leadership of the aposdes of service.

8. Values in a University

The university must have a standard of values. The rejection of

values has been the great tragedy of the modern university, as it

has been of the modem 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

25



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 uni-

versity must place humane values, spiritual values, above material

values; training of men in thinking is of more importance than

training in techniques.

For the Catholic university there is another grade in the hier-

archy of values. Above the material, above the spiritual, there exist

supernatural values, values known through revelation. 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 super-

natural order also, those facts that give meaning and coherence to

the whole of life. And while it is true that it is the province pri-

marily 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 always 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 knowl-

edge 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 knowl-
edge and does not set its students aflame with enthusiasm 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 integration that President

Hutchins and Norman Foerster particularly deplore. Each dis-

cipline 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 intellectual world, science. But how can this integration be

accomplished in the modern university? Will the Hutchins solution

of metaphysics be satisfactory?

26



9. Catholic Principles of Integration

For the Catholic university, there is a principle of integration—

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 bom. 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 mere-

ly metaphysics, but metaphysics supplemented by theology. In this

the Catholic university of today is at one with the ancient Univer-

sity of Paris, the mother and fountainhead of all universities.

The Catholic university exists not for the sake of apologetics,

not for the purpose of merely training its students for the “other

life.” In the words of Dietrich von Hildebrand,

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

quate objective knowledge, not by any means merely for the protection

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

institutions where Catholic thinkers and men of science, supported 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 penetrate adequately to reality

and to achieve by organized teamwork that universitas which is nowa-

days 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 modem

university in its general atmosphere. It requires 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, metaphysical-

ly courageous men of winged intelligence and learning, and therewith

capable of truly adequate and objective knowledge . . . 1

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

p. 219 ff. London: Oxford University Press, 1932.

27



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 educa-

tional question. Saint Thomas begins his treatise De Magistro with

the question: “Whether man can teach another and be called a

teacher or God alone?” 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 at-

tain to truth with certitude because his senses and his intellect

under certain conditions are infallible means of truth. This sup-

poses, 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 cor-

rect; only that some of them can be. Further, it assumes that man

can know when he has attained the truth.

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 abstrac-

tion, 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, imma-

terialized, so to speak, in the process, is presented to the cognitive

intellect.

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

expresses the essence of the tree by means of a concept or immate-

rial 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 ex-

28



ample, is derived as fallows: 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 abstract 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 undoubtedly

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 sensation, 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 mathematician 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 “uni-

versal” 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.

1 Hubert Gruender, Experimental Psychology
, p. 308. Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

Bruce Publishing Co., 1932.

29



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 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 ac-

count 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 in-

volves 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 purpose. 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

30



—perhaps through being like many of us a born fool—but he has the

first requirement .
1

3. “What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?”

This question the Catholic answers in straightforward fashion:

religious knowledge, knowledge of God and mans relations to

God as made known through reason and revelation—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 exclusively, 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 humani a me alienum 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 die elements of hu-

manism 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 modem thought and modem art
and modem science as well—in so far as they are true, beautiful,
good—these are the elements, often jarring because of false em-

phasis of one over the other, that must be harmonized to secure

a liberal education.

In the history of the world there have been surprisingly few

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

1 F. J. Sheed, “A Note on Reading and Education,” Ground Plan for Catholic
Reading

, pp. 7-8, New York: Sheed & Ward (n.d.).

31



preserved in matchless poetry and prose for our delight and edifica-

tion. The traditional liberal education puts man in contact with

these great minds. Most Catholics believe that humanities and

those disciplines that prepare for the understanding and apprecia-

tion 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 dissection of the masterpieces of literature, but a study

of literature 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 bar-

barism and neopaganism of the day and make him a world citizen,

at home with great minds ancient and modem. 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 mathe-

matics will play their part; they are the language of the contem-

porary 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 investigation

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 modem changing world unafraid, 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 training

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.

Classical culture, Christian culture, the medieval synthesis of

Thomas Aquinas, and modem science and modem thought—these
are the strands that the Catholic believes must be combined some-

how 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 metaphysics that President Hutchins speaks

of is a partial solution; it is not a complete solution. The Catholic

32



believes humbly and sincerely that the answer to this problem of

integration 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.

33



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.

1. State and Family

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

The family [was] instituted directly by God for its peculiar purpose,

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 philoso-

phers, part company with Aristotle. Aristotle

2

and pagan civiliza-

tion 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.”
8
Christianity changed

this emphasis on the state by indicating man’s supernatural end.

This explains the importance 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/ So, too, with the rights of the family. The state may

think it for the common good to require all children to attend

1 Pius XI, Encyclical on Christian Education.

* Nicomachean Ethics, I, ii, 8. See also Charles A. Hart, Philosophy of Society

,

especially Clare Riedl, “The Social Theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas,” pp. 11 ff.

Philadelphia; Dolphin Press, 1934.

8 Ibid, c. viii.

4 Cf. Summa Theologica n-II, q. 39, a. 2 ad 2um.

34



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 interferes
with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and

education of children under their control . . . Rights guaranteed by the

Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable

relation to some purpose within the competency of the state. The funda-

mental theory upon which all governments in this union repose excludes

any general power of the state to standardize 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 pre-

pare for additional obligations.
1

2. The Church

In the supernatural order, there is a third society concerned

with education, the Church. Since education, in the Catholic view,

has a necessary connection with man’s supernatural 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 misunderstanding of the Church’s position on her edu-

cational rights, that the Church has no jurisdiction over those that

are not baptized, nor does she exercise any authority in matters

of education 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 realization 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 consequences of a child’s incorporation

with Christ through baptism, 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

1 Charles N. Lischka, Private Schools and State Laws, p. 292. Washington:

National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1926.

35



this doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ the social end of Chris-

tian education stands in bold relief. Information is not its aim, but

formation of the whole man; better still, transformation of Chris-

tians 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 one aim, so startling because of its unity

“of building up the body of Christ ... till all attain to the full mea-

sure of the stature of Christ.”

3. Democracy and Education: the Catholic View

It is well to recall Jacques Maritain s three meanings of democ-

racy in his The Things That Are Not Caesars. As his third meaning

is the one most commonly used when American educators speak

of democracy and education, that meaning had better be examined

first. The third meaning of democracy, Maritain styles democratism:

Democracy as conceived by Rousseau, the religious myth of democ-

racy, 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 demo-

cratism 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 procure social

justice for the working classes. It is only necessary to point to the

Encyclical letters from Leo XIII to Pius XII to be certain that

this sort of democracy is sound Catholic doctrine.

Political democracy as conceived by Aristotle and Saint Thomas

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

36



is that form of government exemplified in the old Swiss democracy,

consecrated by Lincolns phrase “government of the people, by

the people, and for the people.” This is considered by the Church

and scholastics as a legally possible form of government. Not, how-

ever, the only possible form. The Church can adapt itself to any

form of government 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 con-

cern to American Catholics. In 1938 the American Catholic 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 al-

legiance to our free American institutions.”

1 Pastoral Letter of the American Bishops, 1938.

37



VII. Conclusion

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

tion of the theory of Catholic education, of the philosophical and

theological bases upon which the Catholic theory of education

rests. Despite the difficulty, perhaps the irritation, inherent in

bringing in ideas such as supernatural, Incarnation, Mystical Body,

the Fall of Man, it was felt essential that all these ideas 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 education de-

pends on the Catholic doctrine regarding man, his nature and

supernatural destiny. From the Catholic concept of the nature of

man follows the primary objective of Catholic education, its theory

of values. Everything else is subordinate to this ultimate aim of

Catholic education. Every demand 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 complete 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.

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 Cath-

olic. For the Catholic believes that religion is an essential part of

38



education, since it is indispensable 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 curriculum 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 cur-

riculum may be, the first place must be assigned to religion.

b. Method. Still less is the Catholic as a Catholic concerned with

method. He may advocate the outmoded method of drill; he may

believe that the project method or the problem method has a place

in his schools; he may insist on interest as the keystone of all edu-

cational progress; he may employ the methods of “progressive”

education, while necessarily 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 techniques

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 con-

ducted along “progressive” fines, believes in discipline, but that

discipline must eventually be self-discipline. Undoubtedly, Catholic

schools differ among themselves in external discipline from the

progressive type to the ultraconservative type that is perilously

close to regimentation. Yet every Catholic school would admit that

discipline is necessary. Discipline 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 prin-

ciples. 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.

39



3. A Final Word

to

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 Catho-

lics 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 for-

gets at any time or place the totality of being—God, man and

cosmos. The other provocative feature 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 modem 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 em-

phasizes 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 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 im-

portance 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; die glow that comes from family life

and human friendship 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 modem life, but at least in the
light of his first principles he believes that he is consistent.

40



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