Teacher Witness Inspires Conversion

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Holy Rosary Academy in Anchorage, Alaska, is recognized in The Newman Guide for its faithful Catholic education from Pre-K through 12th grade. All teachers make a Profession of Faith to the Catholic Church upon hiring. And the fruits are many: in the last year alone, five students came into full communion with the Catholic Church.

While there are many elements of a strong Catholic education, students at Holy Rosary Academy have clearly benefitted from the faithful witness of their teachers. Below are the personal testimonies of Anabelle Pearson, a 10th-grade student who plans to enter the Catholic Church, and two high school teachers at the Academy: Dr. Laura Walters and Kevin Quain.

 

Anabelle Pearson

I had been an atheist for my entire childhood leading up to my years at Holy Rosary Academy…

Many wonderful people took part in my conversion; however, it was Dr. Walters and Mr. Quain, my Church history and medieval seminar teachers, respectively, who guided and strengthened me in faith. In these two classes specifically, I was able to reflect on my past as we studied the history of the Church and the lives of many saints and sinners.

I look up to Dr. Walters as a role model; she is incredibly talented in numerous skills, languages, and academics. Dr. Walters has accomplished a plethora of extraordinary things in all areas from science to art, yet she is the humblest person I’ve ever met. Most importantly, despite all that she has achieved and still strives for in her free time, Dr. Walters dedicates her time to come and teach us teenagers. Dr. Walters cares deeply about her students and guides us toward spiritual and academic success. Dr. Walters has never judged me for asking any questions about Catholicism and the Church, and her responses are always helpful. Her teachings in history allow me to have a firm foundation in Church knowledge, which has proved useful in many situations, including medieval seminar class.

Mr. Quain, my medieval seminar teacher, has greatly contributed to solidifying me in my faith. Mr. Quain is humorous and uplifting and can always brighten the day. In the seminar, he helps our class reflect on our lives as we analyze books containing stories of growth in character and faith such as The Confessions of St. Augustine. He is an excellent role model in Catholicism and has helped me see that believing in God is not a crutch to get through life, rather, God is the reason I have life.

Faith is a path with many twists, turns, and bumps, and rarely is it easy. This spring, Holy Rosary is organizing a trip to Assisi and Rome for Holy Week. We will be walking the pilgrimage that St. Francis completed to ask the Pope to start his order of Franciscans. In years to come, I hope to be baptized and confirmed into the Catholic Church.

 

Dr. Laura Walters

I view my vocation of teaching as something definitely from God.

I am a naturally shy person, and while I was completing my Ph.D., I always thought that I would spend my professional life with paintings, drawings, and manuscripts in quiet corners of archives and museums. However, when I began teaching at the University of St. Andrews [in Scotland], I ended up loving it, and when I began teaching at Holy Rosary Academy, I felt very clearly that this was something more than my will.

Teaching is a great privilege: to be able to help form students, especially in those crucial upper school years when they are becoming adults. I see my vocation of teaching as a way for me to serve others through love and charity, and thus to serve God.

The ideas of service and charity are incorporated into all I do. I always try to help students understand concepts (whether they’re in Calculus, Biology, Church, History, Art, etc.) to truly teach them and help them learn how to think, rather than what to think. I approach each student as having such great value, as he or she is made in the image and likeness of God, and is a unique and beautiful person.

Students are always learning (and so are teachers!), and I try to remind them of this, and that it’s okay to make a mistake, it’s okay to have questions on things, and that it’s how we respond to that which matters… We strive to find the truth and the heart of a matter together, students and teachers, which is a beautiful model for them to follow as they graduate and leave our halls.

 

Kevin Quain

I strive to give my students an example of strong character both in the classroom and on the court as a middle school basketball coach. Fundamental traits of a strong character are self-discipline and perseverance. These two traits should guide students in every aspect of their lives, whether in faith, academics, sports, etc. Embodying these traits and encouraging students are the best ways to help them build strong character and an indomitable spirit.

The beauty of Catholicism includes the belief that God created all things, and that creation will help us to know and love Him more. With this perspective, everything in the classroom is more meaningful and tangible because all the subjects, when integrated with our final end in mind, lead us closer to God.

When Teacher Witness Goes Wrong

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The Catholic University of America recently taught students a tough but valuable lesson about witness and responsibility. It’s a lesson the students—as well as the faculty—are unlikely to forget.

On January 30, university president Dr. Peter Kilpatrick announced the firing of a psychology lecturer following a scandalous incident in her classroom. The lecturer, teaching a course titled “Lifespan Development,” had invited an “abortion doula” to speak to the students. An abortion doula is someone who accompanies women as they undergo abortions. Reports claim that the guest not only advocated abortion but also celebrated “childbirth” by “trans” men.

Critics later accused the university of violating academic freedom by firing the lecturer, and no doubt some students and faculty members agree. But by acting swiftly and decisively—and by publicly explaining the necessity of upholding the university’s mission—the Catholic University of America set an important example for Catholic educators.

“In our rigorous pursuit of truth and justice, we engage at times with arguments or ideologies contrary to reason or to the Gospel,” Dr. Kilpatrick acknowledged in a letter to students. “But we do so fully confident in the clarity given by the combined lights of reason and faith, and we commit to never advocate for sin or to give moral equivalence to error.”

It was an excellent letter. When leaders so clearly articulate the mission of Catholic education and moral expectations for faculty members, consequences for bad behavior and false teaching no longer appear harsh. Instead, it is out of concern for truth and the formation of students that Catholic education leaders must discipline and sometimes even remove teachers when they lead students astray. False witness is contrary to the truth that is foundational to Catholic education.

“Our studies aim at producing wisdom, which includes excellence in living and sharing the truth with others,” explained Dr. Kilpatrick. “May our common study help us to understand life, to love goodness, and to promote and protect the dignity of the human person.”

 

Responding with heroism

In a culture increasingly hostile to Catholic morality, Catholic schools and colleges are likely to face more conflicts with employees who resist moral expectations. But if teachers uphold the faith, their witness can be all the more influential with students—lights in the darkness. And if leaders remain steadfast in the truth when conflicts arise, their heroic witness can be a valuable education for students and the broader public.

Consider the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Hermosa Beach, Calif. In 2012, the school announced that teachers must obtain catechist certification to ensure the integration of Catholic teaching across all disciplines. One non-Catholic teacher, whose duties included teaching all subjects including religion, failed to get the certification and was fired.

The school’s courageous act of dismissing the teacher, rather than compromising its mission and thereby harming its students, led to a lawsuit claiming age discrimination. On the face of it, this seemed exactly the outcome that school leaders want to avoid to protect their schools. But the lawsuit eventually led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2020, upholding the ministerial exception and protecting the right of Catholic schools to choose teachers according to religious criteria without court interference.

Sadly, Gordon College lost the opportunity to obtain a similar landmark ruling for Christian higher education. The Evangelical Christian college faced a hostile Massachusetts court, when a fired sociology professor claimed that she had been unfairly denied tenure because of her public attacks on the college’s Christian views of sexuality and marriage. Gordon’s leaders asked the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent the case from proceeding under the ministerial exception, but when the Court declined, Gordon settled the case.

It would be unfair to judge Gordon College’s choice to settle, but standing firm for religious freedom and insisting on the moral witness of all employees is a necessary line in the sand—even if it causes some degree of martyrdom. The ultimate goal of Catholic education is evangelization, bringing students to God by reason and faith. While avoiding lawsuits may keep a school or college going for the short term, defending appropriate personnel policies is necessary to protecting Catholic education for the long term and shows students a powerful witness to fidelity.

In the amicus brief joined by The Cardinal Newman Society, urging the Supreme Court to take up the Gordon case, we attested:

“Faculty are the life-blood of every college and university, without which teaching and scholarship cannot occur. For faithful Catholic and protestant institutions, teaching and scholarship is not an end in itself. Without recognizing the ‘Word’ through whom ‘all things were made’ (John 1: 1-3), teaching and scholarship on any subject is incomplete.”

 

Leading dioceses

Today many dioceses across the U.S. are instituting personnel guidelines and morality clauses in employee contracts, so that the Church’s expectations are clear to employees. These also help to invite educators to more faithful witness inside and outside the classroom. Still, some employees are unwilling to abide by them.

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis has made a significant effort to strengthen the Catholic mission of its schools, only to face four separate cases of employees entering into civil same-sex marriages. Two dismissed counselors at Roncalli High School filed lawsuits claiming discrimination, as did a teacher at Cathedral Catholic High School. After a difficult legal fight, the archdiocese triumphed in all three cases.

In the Diocese of Charlotte, a substitute teacher’s contract was not renewed after he declared a same-sex marriage and publicly opposed Church teaching. The ACLU is helping the teacher pursue a lawsuit against Charlotte Catholic High School and the diocese, and a ruling is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

These dioceses know that teacher witness is at the heart of Catholic education. In Ex corde Ecclesiae, St. John Paul II declared, “If need be, a Catholic university must have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion, but which are necessary to safeguard the authentic good of society.” This is true of all Catholic education, which “speaks” as much by the witness of its employees as by classroom instruction. Speaking, however, sometimes requires courage to uphold the truth for the good of the students and all who listen.

Achieving Teacher Witness in a Virtual World

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In one of her last letters, written to a former student, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton did what all teachers are called to do: she pointed to the Truth in love.

“God bless you, my loved child,” she wrote. “Remember Mother’s first and last lesson to you: seek God in all things… If you do this, you will live in his presence and will preserve the graces of your first communion.”

As a teacher, Mother Seton kept a large correspondence that demonstrated a wide capacity for friendship with others and friendship with the Truth, an affectionate relationality that extended to students, parents, and former students. Letter by letter, she continued to encourage, exhort, form, and instruct them far and wide, even though they were no longer together. Mother Seton understood that it is by way of the heart that a teacher reaches a student’s mind, and that all good teaching, whether in person, by letter, or online, is always first personal and relational.

Thus, it is the personal influence of the teacher, rooted in their intellectual, moral, and spiritual excellence, that can move students to desire to know, love, and serve Truth, Who is a Person. Saintly teachers, from  Augustine to John Henry Newman to Elizabeth Ann Seton, have provided the teaching, example, and inspiration as to how teachers today can draw students into deeper friendship with the Truth.

Each educational mode or setting, whether a traditional school setting or a nontraditional one such as a home school, a continuing education program, a night school, or an online program, faces challenges in witnessing to the transformative power of Truth. Some of these challenges are shared by all teachers regardless of setting, but some are specific to the nature of the particular mode or setting. St. Augustine noted the challenge of teaching night classes on doctrine to tired adults at the end of a long working day; Newman noted the opportunities and challenges in offering continuing education classes at his proposed university.

 

Nonetheless, the substance of good teaching remains the same, even as the accidents of mode or setting change. What is true about good teaching in a traditional setting is also true about good teaching in a nontraditional setting. Non-exhaustively:

  • A good teacher witnesses to the Truth through relationship, or what Newman called “catching force” of personal influence.
  • A good teacher doesn’t simply communicate information, they are engaged in the formation of students’ vision of reality by revealing an aspect of the Truth through a particular discipline or text.
  • A good teacher fosters growth in wisdom, or the ability to see the relations between things in order to grasp the whole of reality, and a desire to conform oneself to that reality.
  • A good teacher inspires students to love and delight in the Truth through their own obvious affection for it.

 

In order to do all these things, a teacher must first be all these things.

 

For those teaching in an online or nontraditional setting, the challenge is to first be all of these things that Seton, Augustine, and Newman exhort, and then to communicate it in a virtual mode. This means that teachers must be highly intentional about things that might naturally occur in a traditional classroom. I suggest seven basic habits of intentional (online) teaching:

  1. Smile. In videos or synchronous meetings, the teacher should convey visually their gaudium in veritate (joy in the Truth), the truth about the goodness of existence, and the goodness of knowledge pursued together. St. Augustine called this disposition hilaritas, or cheerfulness.  What we do as teachers comes from the heart of the Church, and there is deep joy in that!
  2. Growth in Intellectual Friendship. A classroom, whether physical or online, is a place where intellectual friendship in pursuit of the true, good, and beautiful ought to be fostered. For appropriate friendships to flourish, teachers need to provide a space for students to share who they are—their interests and questions—and to be received by the teacher and their classmates. At the beginning of the semester, ask students to record a video introducing themselves. Touch back on those interests frequently throughout the semester. Just as in a seminar, encourage students to ask questions of one another and to respond directly rather than to or through the teacher.
  3. Growth in Friendship with the Truth. Teachers should share and model evident love for the Truth as it is expressed in each discipline. Demonstrate to students how a particular course helps them understand the whole of reality by making connections with other disciplines and courses. This places a special responsibility on the teacher to know what is being taught in other courses. Get to know the other faculty and their interests and refer to them in class. Students want to be welcomed into a community of scholars who are friends in the Truth, and to do that, teachers must be friends with their colleagues.
  4. Be present, be responsive. Whenever possible, encourage synchronous meetings. Make time for office hours, open discussion in class, and calling out the good seen in a student intervention or in a discussion board. This communicates to students that their teacher is taking them and their work seriously and that they aren’t communicating into a void. Don’t be afraid to redirect a discussion, but do so cheerfully and with generosity of spirit.
  5. Encourage students to grow in wisdom. Ask them to make connections to other disciplines in order to help them “see the whole.” In discussion or assignments, ask students to make connections and/or integrate what they’ve learned in one course with what they’ve learned in other courses and with their experience in real life. Help them see that what they are learning matters for how they see themselves, the world, God, and others, and that it matters for how they live and for their sense of purpose.
  6. Encouraging students in virtue. Help them understand why timeliness, courtesy, and treating others with respect, honesty, and integrity matter not only in class but for relationships outside of class. Help them understand that education isn’t just about information but is ultimately a formation in becoming more human.
  7. Prayer for and with students. Open and close synchronous meetings with a short prayer like St. Thomas Aquinas’s Prayer Before Study or Prayer for Wisdom. Place this prayer in a prominent place in the online “classroom” and on the course syllabus. Let students know that their teacher is praying for them and for their needs. Pray that the human and intellectual formation provided by Catholic education leads to an inner transformation of vision so that students can understand Who and what they are made for.

 

Mother Seton, St. John Henry Newman, and St. Augustine are three shining examples among a vast number of spiritual and educational witnesses who have repeatedly taught through the ages that it is through the cheerful, generous, and friendly heart of the teacher that students are drawn into friendship with Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Faithful witness can be accomplished in a nontraditional and virtual setting through thoughtful and intentional teaching practices that reinforce the personal and relational dimensions of education. In this way, teachers in any setting can witness to the catching force of the Truth.

Making Sense of Parents as ‘Primary Educators’

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Parents are the first and foremost educators of their children.

Catholic educators can sometimes ignore this fact, especially when students appear to lack solid formation and even basic care in the home. Trained to be experts in pedagogy and curriculum, teachers and especially college professors may not think much about what parents want and may regard even simple communications from them as interference and undue distrust of professionals.

Parents, too, can forget or refuse their key role in the formation of their children, for whom they are accountable to God. Generations of parents have been told to take a hands-off approach to child-rearing. And many Catholic adults do not receive the sacraments and deny Catholic teachings, while failing to form their children in the faith.

Still, the Church is clear: “Since parents have given children their life, they are bound by the most serious obligation to educate their offspring and therefore must be recognized as the primary and principal educators” (Gravissiumum Educationis, 3).

So how does this work? Within the rapidly growing field of homeschooling, there is no parent-school relationship—but parents still must collaborate with homeschool curriculum providers, publishers, tutors, priests, and collaborating parents. In schools and colleges, a “parent as primary educator” policy can be difficult to navigate. Yet respecting parents’ primary role is necessary, even essential, to Catholic education.

Sources of parents’ role

Some have misread Vatican documents to imply that a parent’s role as “first” educator refers only to early, pre-school learning, and the role of primary educator must later be given over to professional teachers. But the Vatican speaks many times of the parents’ role in formation throughout a child’s life, and despite objections arising from our culture’s insistence that an 18-year-old no longer needs parents, I think today the job continues through college.

As for whether only professionals should direct education, there’s the obvious fact that, throughout much of Christian history until the last couple centuries, most parents partly or wholly handled the education of their younger children.

Parenthood, practiced rightly with due respect for the rights of the child, is a natural aspect of the vocation of marriage. It follows from the lifelong love and commitment of a man and a woman, producing offspring for whom the parents are primarily responsible in the graced bond of matrimony. If a child’s guardian is not a natural parent in a loving marriage, still the guardian assumes responsibility for providing an upbringing that attempts, as much as possible, to fulfill the nature and obligations of parenthood within marriage.

Education is a key obligation of parents. Vatican documents that reference parents’ primary role in education often cite the natural and divine status of the family.

Parents are the ones who must create a family atmosphere animated by love and respect for God and man… It is particularly in the Christian family, enriched by the grace and office of the sacrament of matrimony, that children should be taught from their early years to have a knowledge of God according to the faith received in Baptism, to worship Him, and to love their neighbor. (Gravissimum Educationis, 3)

Here it is clear that the Church’s foremost concern for children is their integration into the life of the Church and their relationship with Christ. The family is vital to the moral and social formation of young people. However, does this suggest that intellectual formation belongs primarily to professionals and is not included in parents’ primary role? The Vatican documents repeatedly speak of parents’ primary role even when their children are enrolled in schools—even Catholic schools—and so parents must be responsible for intellectual as well as moral and social formation.

We can also find a foundation for parents’ educational role in the rite of Baptism. Parents affirm that they will raise their child in the Catholic faith. Many interpret this to mean catechesis only, but baptism begins the Christian’s journey to salvation, which implies more than knowledge of the tenets and practices of the faith—as important as these are. The human gift of intellect is key to human dignity and our ability to know, love, and serve God and others. Surely the full work of Catholic education—forming the intellect integrally with one’s physical and moral development, so that a young person is healthy, knowledgeable, wise, and virtuous—is entailed in Catholic formation. Therefore, it can be said that a Catholic child has a baptismal right to Catholic education from the parents.

A health analogy

St. Thomas Aquinas employs an analogy of bodily health when explaining how people learn. I think the analogy can also be applied to the question of a parent’s role in education.

Consider this: aside from education, parents are responsible for ensuring a child’s physical health. They do this by providing food and shelter, teaching healthy habits, and caring for illnesses and injuries. If a parent must seek the professional help of a doctor—and invariably this will be necessary in today’s world—the parent never considers simply handing over primary responsibility for the child’s health. The doctor provides much-needed expertise, and the parent yields to that expertise to the extent necessary, but ultimately the parent must decide what is best for the child, including the choice of whether to get help for the child and which doctor should provide it.

Why is education perceived to be any different? One reason may be that schools require more waking hours with a child than even the parents have at home—and that’s something I believe deserves some reflection. But regardless, ultimately it is the parent’s primary responsibility to ensure that a child is educated, and that includes the choice of educator. Yet so few parents today take up this responsibility, blindly accepting or even ignoring what happens in school.

Catholic educators may chafe at substantial parent involvement with a school or college’s day-to-day activities. And it’s right that Catholic schools limit such direct engagement, if it interferes with education. But parents must at least have the information needed to assess whether a school is serving the parent’s needs and objectives for their child, so the parent can enter into dialogue with the school or choose to withdraw. The parent can also choose to take on a child’s education entirely.

On the all-important matter of monitoring fidelity to Church teaching and fulfillment of the mission of Catholic education, “This responsibility applies chiefly to Christian parents who confide their children to the school. Having chosen it does not relieve them of a personal duty to give their children a Christian upbringing” (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 73). By “utilizing the structures offered for parental involvement,” parents must “make certain that the school remains faithful to Christian principles of education.”

Ultimately it comes down to this: parents must take full responsibility for the education of their children and the choice whether to employ professionals in that task—and which ones. Catholic educators, in service to parents, should fully support this role and help parents know and choose the special value of faithful Catholic education. In all, the complete Catholic formation of the student must be paramount.

The Call to Teach: Facilitator’s Guide

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PowerPoint of The Call to Teach

 

The Call to Teach: Facilitator’s Guide
Questions for Reflection

Denise L. Donohue, Ed.D., and Daniel P. Guernsey, Ed.D.

 

Directions for Use

This facilitator’s guide for The Call to Teach assists in leading discussions about the ministry of teaching in Catholic education. It provides suggested answers to the “Questions for Reflection” located in the text, structured around five themes: The Teacher and the Mission of Catholic Education, The Teacher and Vocation, The Teacher and Faith Formation, The Teacher and Lived Witness, and The Teacher and Catholic Culture. 

There are many ways to lead professional group discussions. As you reflect upon the needs and dispositions of the faculty toward these topics, you can decide whether you want them to read the texts beforehand or together as a group, how much you want them to write, whether you want them to submit what they write, and how to elicit participation from all faculty assigned to partners or targeted groups. Mixing them up from their normal social groupings is a good way to facilitate faculty bonding. Completion of the full document question sets should provide between 4-6 hours of continuing professional education.

Have participants annotate the text, then use their own annotations to facilitate discussion. If you like, you can provide them with guidelines for annotation, such as:

As you read, highlight what strikes you most (use explanation points or an underline). What is new to you? Use a money sign. For what is unclear or puzzles you, use a question mark. Star a quote or section you like the most. Put a happy face near a passage that screams, “This is us! This is our school!” Write an “O” (for opportunity) near a passage that makes you think, “I wish I/we did even more of this at our school.”

Ask them to be prepared to discuss these annotations with a partner or small group, and then have the partners or small groups share their primary reflections or highlights with the whole faculty.  Move about the room, engaging with the participants.

The “Questions for Reflection” are provided at the end of each theme in The Call to Teach. These consist of three types: comprehension, discussion, and teacher application. 

Comprehension  

Answers to these questions are found in selected quotes from Church documents or the narrative summaries. Encourage your teachers to go back into the quotes and slowly re-read them, even calling up actual source material if additional context is desired. This is an opportunity to form your teachers in the heart and mind of the Church as it views education, so take the time to slowly walk through each section to ensure clarity and understanding on the part of the faculty.

Discussion

These questions are written for open group discussion. Allow teachers to read and reflect on their written responses first and then call on volunteers to begin the discussion. Encourage participation by all teachers. 

Application

These questions are designed for personal reflection and are not necessarily for public discussion. Give teachers sufficient time to reflect upon each question and write a response. Invite participants to voluntarily share their thoughts. 

I. The Teacher and the Mission of Catholic Education

Comprehension

1. From where does a Catholic school derive its mission? 

The mission of the Catholic Church is derived from:

  • Jesus Christ, in the Great Commission given before His ascension into Heaven.

    “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

  • From the Church, whose schools are a “privileged means of promoting the formation of the whole man, since the school is a center in which a specific concept of the world, of man, and of history is developed and conveyed.” (The Catholic School, 5-9)

2. What are the aspects of a Catholic school’s mission? 

Aspects of a Catholic school’s mission include:

  • “complete formation” that looks toward the student’s “final end” (Code of Canon Law, 795);
  • “integral formation” that forms the student intellectually, morally, emotionally, physically and spiritually;
  • personal sanctification; 
  • encounter with God in His transforming love and truth (Pope Benedict XVI, Meeting With Catholic Educators, 2008); 
  • service to the common good; and
  • fostering a Catholic worldview.

See The Cardinal Newman Society’s Principles of Catholic Identity in Education for key themes from the Church’s magisterial guidance. 

3. Who is involved in fulfilling the mission of Catholic education? 

Those involved in the mission of Catholic education include:

  • “All members of the school community” (The Catholic School, 34), and 
  • especially teachers, who must be “grounded in the principles of Catholic doctrine” and should exhibit “integrity of life” (Code of Canon Law, 803 §2).

Discussion

1. How is the mission of Catholic education different from that of public education? 

In public education

  • the mission focuses primarily on preparing students with skills and knowledge and to be sound citizens; and
  • faith is removed as an interpretive framework, and de facto a secular, relativistic, and materialist interpretive framework is applied instead.

In Catholic education  

  • faith is the interpretive framework, especially the transcendent;
  • an emphasis is placed on rising above knowledge to universal truths and virtuous living;
  • teachers lead students toward wisdom and sainthood—in this life and the next; and
  • the school community relies on the grace of God through prayer and the Sacraments. 

2. Which aspects of the mission do we accomplish well? Which aspects can we improve upon? 

Answers here will vary. 

Application

1. How does the mission of Catholic education affect me, specifically as a Catholic school teacher? 

Answers will vary. Help teachers see how their personal formation—both spiritual and professional—as well as their modeling of Christian witness, is vital in fulfilling the Church’s mission and helping students develop their talents and grow in holiness.

2. How can I, as a teacher, better understand, communicate, and support this mission? 

Answers will vary. The point here is to guide teachers in listing specific ways they can enhance their formation and evangelize students.

II. The Teacher and Vocation

Comprehension

1. What is the difference between a vocation and a profession? 

  • The difference between a vocation and a profession is that:
  • a vocation is how God calls one to serve Him in this world; 
  • a vocation usually involves a strong feeling or commitment, because it is rooted deeply in one’s unique personality, talents, and calling;
  • a profession is a paid occupation, which may have no direct connection to a spiritual response from a higher calling; and
  • professional activity is fundamentally transformed by vocation into a unique participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, carried on through one’s teaching.

2. What specific commitment is asked of Catholic educators and why is this important? 

The commitment is to teaching truth—including that revealed truth known to us through Christ and His Church—and to guiding students in the pursuit of truth, for in finding that truth they will find Truth Himself. Teachers are called to lead students to the truth in this most profound way (Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, 16).

Discussion

1. What are the characteristics of “possessing special qualities of mind and heart?” 

Answers might include: 

  • love and compassion;
  • passion for learning and the truth; 
  • patience; 
  • a Christian vision of the human person; 
  • confidence in a student’s ability to grow in a healthy and virtuous manner as a child of God; 
  • self-sacrifice, loyalty, devotion, and dedication; 
  • willingness to grow personally; 
  • willingness to be led by the Holy Spirit to work for the sanctification of this world; 
  • evangelization; and
  • joy.

2. How is being a Catholic educator different from other teaching professions?

Being a Catholic educator includes:

  • teaching to the transcendent (to see the wisdom in God’s creation in all content knowledge); 
  • incorporating God’s word, which is efficacious, into content taught; 
  • participating in Mass, retreats, prayer, and devotions with students and colleagues; 
  • building a Catholic community; 
  • remaining in communion with the Catholic Church through a personal life of virtuous and moral living; 
  • attentiveness to continued spiritual formation; and
  • a commitment to the Truth—seeking it, communicating it, living it, and associating with it.

Application

1. What does it mean to me to be a Catholic school teacher? 

Answers will vary.

2. How does teaching change when viewed not just as a profession, but as a vocation?

Answers will vary, but they should include answers to the discussion questions above.

III. The Teacher and Faith Formation

Comprehension

1. What is the importance of solid spiritual and professional development for teachers?

Solid spiritual and professional development help establish within teachers:

  • a personal life of faith and holiness according to the moral demands of the Gospel;
  • the necessity of being continuously open to learning about both subject matter and faith;
  • knowledge and the understanding of the importance of witness; 
  • the integration of religious truths with daily life and being able to share that experience; and
  • the use of pedagogical techniques that are grounded in a search for truth and the eternal, and not just the effects of the here and now.

2. How does a teacher provide integral formation for students? 

Catholic schoolteachers:

  • embrace the unity of knowledge across all disciplines and the foundational importance of theological truths to every study, beginning with awareness of one Creator and one fount of all knowledge;
  • ensure that students are aware of the first principles of each discipline—simple truths for which there is no argument except for their certainty and their origin in God;
  • teach wonder, respect, and admiration for the mind and heart of God displayed in His creation, especially in human dignity and man’s final end in full communion with God through Jesus Christ;
  • understand that they are not just teaching skills and knowledge but also integrating values and religious truth into all content material;
  • form the intellect together with the moral, emotional, physical, and spiritual faculties of the human person; 
  • understand that there is no separation between a time for learning and for formation; and 
  • live lives of personal witness and integrity.

Discussion

1. Why is spiritual formation important for teachers? 

  • Spiritual formation is important because:
  • teachers are charged with attending to the spiritual lives of the students in their care; 
  • personal witness and example are important methods of passing on the faith;
  • a deeply lived and experienced spiritual life will be evident not just to the students in a teacher’s care but also to their colleagues, who are on a similar quest to a life of holiness; and
  • a rich prayer life—including meditative silence, a frequent reception of the sacraments, and growth in spiritual knowledge—are hallmarks of a vibrant Catholic spiritual life.

2. Are all professional development programs applicable for Catholic education? Are some programs better than others? How so? 

This is a great opportunity to read The Cardinal Newman Society’s Policy Standards on Secular Academic Materials and Programs in Catholic Education and the Procedure and Checklist for the Evaluation and Use of Secular Materials and Programs in Catholic Education.

Teachers should:

  • beware of programs that promote atheism, agnosticism, scientific materialism, or a false ideology about the human person; 
  • look for programs that unite faith and reason, in fidelity to Catholic teaching; and
  • understand that most programs do not attend to the broader mission and needs of Catholic schools and educators and that teachers must seek to address those needs, not just accept a program as is.

Application

1. How do I attend to my own personal spiritual formation so that I can then help form my students?

Answers will vary. Ideas might include:

  • commitment to daily Mass and Confession;
  • daily scripture reading and reflection;
  • additional catechetical training and certifications; and
  • retreats, spiritual devotions, and opportunities for meditative silence.

2. In what ways do I work at improving my professional instruction? Am I intimidated or insulted by being required to attend professional development? Why?

Answers will vary. Administrators might ask here about opportunities for personalized professional development for teachers.

3. In what ways do I engage parents in the educational process? Can I do more? Do I have any fears about parents that might keep them at a distance?

Answers will vary. Some ideas for more parent engagement are:

  • notes or emails to parents on a more frequent basis, especially for those students who need additional attention; and 
  • formation programs for parents on a host of subjects.

IV. The Teacher and Lived Witness

Comprehension

1. What does the Church say about the witness of the teacher in Catholic education?

The Church says:

  • By their life as much as by their instruction, they should bear witness to Christ, the unique Teacher. (Gravissimum Educationis, 8)
  • It is through this witness and their personal relationship with students that the teacher helps the Church fulfill her mission of evangelization and salvation.
  • The integration of culture and faith is mediated by the integration of faith and life in the person of the teacher.

2. Is this witness only expected during school hours? Only from Catholics? 

All those working in Catholic education are called to Christian witness:

  • “Teachers reveal the Christian message not only by word but also by every gesture of their behavior.” (The Catholic School, 43)
  • “Students should see in their teachers the Christian attitude and behavior that is often so conspicuously absent from the secular atmosphere in which they live. Without this witness, living in such an atmosphere, they may begin to regard Christian behavior as an impossible ideal.” (The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School, 96)
  • Those who are not Catholic and who are working in Catholic education are called to “recognize and respect the Catholic character of the school from the moment of their employment.” (The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue, 47)
  • 3. What does “the service of the teacher as an ecclesiastical munus and office” mean? 

The definition of munus in Latin means “duty, office, or function.” Teachers are called by God to “fulfill a special responsibility of education. Through their teaching-pedagogical skills, as well as by bearing witness through their lives, they allow the Catholic school to realize its formative project” (The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue, 45).

Discussion

1. What conduct of the teacher is considered “moral behavior”? 

Refer or remind your teachers of language from their employment agreements.

2. How does the importance of sound moral witness extend to all Catholic school employees, including coaches, counselors, librarians, and support staff? 

The most recent document from the Vatican, The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue (20, 38, 39), states:

“Therefore, for all the members of the school community, the ‘principles of the Gospel in this manner become the educational norms since the school then has them as its internal motivation and final goal’… The whole school community is responsible for implementing the school’s Catholic educational project as an expression of its ecclesiality and its being a part of the community of the Church… Everyone has the obligation to recognize, respect and bear witness to the Catholic identity of the school, officially set out in the educational project. This applies to the teaching staff, the non-teaching personnel, and the pupils and their families.”

Sound moral witness extends to everyone within the Catholic school. 

Application

1. Recall a time when what you did was inconsistent with what students are taught in Catholic education. How did this affect you as a teacher? How did this affect your students? Is there anything you would do differently, if the situation presented itself again?

Answers will vary.

V. The Teacher and Catholic Culture

Comprehension

1. How should we understand the task of “critical, systematic transmission of culture in the light of faith”?

The transmission of culture is passed along to the student through the choice of curated curricular materials and instructional approaches that present Church history, tradition, and scripture as well as human language, history, politics, literature, arts, leisure, customs, and accumulated wisdom. Teachers form students to think with a philosophical and Christian mindset that looks to the integration of knowledge and the higher causes of things that find their source and fulfillment in God. 

2. What pedagogy is appropriate to teaching culture in Catholic education?

The pedagogy advocated in the readings directs the teacher, as witness, to:

  • communicate truth and a value-oriented culture, not missing the opportunity of integrating culture and faith;
  • integrate “all the different aspects of human knowledge through the subjects taught, in the light of the Gospel; the second in the growth of the virtues characteristic of the Christian;” and  
  • have personal, direct relationships and openness to dialogue with students that “will facilitate an understanding of the witness to faith that is revealed through [their] behavior.” (Lay Catholic in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #21).

3.What is the intended effect of using this type of pedagogy?

The intended effect of the dialogue and the building of a relationship between the student and teacher is to give the student a deeper understanding of what it means to live a life of faith through the witness of the teacher.

Discussion

1. What is culture? What is a Catholic culture? 

Culture:

  • includes the values and meanings used to interpret and make sense of the world around us; 
  • is the lived experience we receive and develop from interaction with others that forms the way we integrate, make sense of, and place value upon our experiences and the world around us;
  • provides a framework/worldview we naturally use as children and then adopt as our own through adolescence and adulthood as we learn, make choices, and make our way through the world; and 
  • is the “common culture” that surrounds us in the life of the world: movies, arts, politics, social media, advertising, sports, etc. It is currently in many ways antithetical and hostile to Catholic culture, which is imbued with faith and differs in the values and meanings ascribed to life’s purpose and events.

Catholic culture involves all that composes the Catholic religion: dogmas, doctrines, teaching, sacraments, etc.

2. How is culture transmitted in Catholic education?

Culture is transmitted by:

  • the choices, actions, and example of the teacher who lives out faith as a witness and model of truth and goodness for students; 
  • students’ encounters with literature and the arts, including the best works that have stood the test of time and allow for a rich and complete discussion of humanity, human nature, human destiny, and our relationships with God and each other, all as designed by God and redeemed by Christ;
  • a curriculum that includes opportunities to integrate faith and grow in virtue, with rich and beautiful selections from history and literature that pass along the Catholic cultural heritage through a variety of pedagogies that reach all children;
  • the use of academic standards such as The Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards, which focus on the transmission of values and beliefs of the community; and
  • the practices of families who pointedly and purposefully live the Catholic heritage, traditions, and symbols fully aside from a world that constantly fights against them.

3. What are critical elements of a Catholic worldview? 

Critical elements of a Catholic worldview are elements that define the beliefs and values of the Catholic faith. Examples include: 

  • God created the world good and with a plan.
  • He loves us, redeems us, and guides us as Father, Son, and Spirit.
  • He has revealed a plan for us through scripture and tradition that involves us loving Him and each other in this life and being with Him for eternity.
  • We are created as body/soul unities, with innate dignity and freedom, and with the responsibility to seek the Truth and act upon it.
  • Essential truths are knowable by faith and reason. 

Application

1. How can I better transmit culture in light of the Catholic faith to my students?

Answers will vary but should include some of the guidance above.

2. What is the predominate worldview of my students, and how can I successfully help them adopt a richer Catholic worldview?

Answers will vary. See various resources from The Cardinal Newman Society that might address some of the responses you receive: Why Critical Race Theory is Contrary to Catholic Education; Protecting the Human Person: Gender Issues in Catholic School and College Sports; Policy Standards on Human Sexuality in Catholic Education; Getting it Right: Witness and Teaching on Sexuality in Catholic Education.

 

 

The Call to Teach: Church Guidance for Catholic Teachers

 

The Core of a Catholic Curriculum

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As the lead evaluator of institutions applying for Newman Guide recognition, I often get asked what makes a “Newman Guide” academic program. I want to highlight here some of the most important aspects, drawing from our resources on the K-12 school with principles relevant to all levels of education.

Traditionally, the curricula of Catholic schools and colleges were much more uniform, often guided by systems developed over centuries by the Jesuits, Benedictines, Dominicans, and other teaching orders and saints. With the rise of public secular education and emphasis on student choice, curricula in the United States have generally became disintegrated with a wider selection of courses, including core liberal arts and sciences but also a variety of electives. The Catholic faith is taught in catechesis and theology courses, but its relevance to other subjects is often tenuous.

So what meaning does “Catholic education” still have today? Can we identify key elements for every faithful school or college?

The Cardinal Newman Society’s answer to these questions begins with our Catholic Curriculum Standards. First developed in response to the Common Core Curriculum Standards—which were intended for public secular education but were adopted by many Catholic dioceses—our Catholic standards help shape school curricula for English, history, math, and science and are part of the criteria for school recognition in The Newman Guide.

But there are also broader principles for Catholic education. These are found in the Church’s many documents on education and in the experience of exemplary institutions.

Rooted in mission

When evaluating an institution’s application for The Newman Guide, the first thing I look at is its mission statement and philosophy of education. What is the purpose or goal of education and what does the school believe about the human person? Do its foundational documents describe what education is for and how a student learns best? These are important, because all curricular offerings should flow from the school’s mission and what it hopes to achieve.

Key aspects of the mission of Catholic education are articulated in Church documents: “To make disciples of all nations”; to assist the Church in her salvific mission and to evangelize and proclaim the good news; to provide a “critical, systematic transmission of culture in the light of faith”; integral formation of each student’s physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual faculties; teaching responsibility and the right use of freedom; and preparing students to fulfill God’s calling in this world, so as to attain the eternal kingdom for which they were created.

More than preparing students for college and career, Catholic education aims for a deeper incorporation into the heart of the Church and the even higher calling of an eternal destiny with God in Heaven. Man was made to worship God in this world to live with Him in the next, and that is what Catholic education is called to help do.

This point should be evident in an institution’s documents and programming. School leaders should hold firmly to an eternal telos when deciding courses, activities, and events for the institution. Bringing this into programs and courses brings students closer to their full human flourishing and helps them be leaven in this world and joyful apostles for the Lord.

Human education

Schools and colleges included in The Newman Guide hold an educational philosophy based on a clearly articulated Christian anthropology. If they don’t understand the human person, they won’t get their educational programming right. It’s important first to articulate what beliefs the school holds about the human person and how students learn best, and to see how these beliefs align with Church teaching and proven educational practice.

Is each student valued as a person for their inherent worth, made in the image and likeness of God and invited into communion with Him? How is this lived out daily in the school or college? A fallible nature, elevated by God’s grace and personal fortitude, should be the starting point for student formation. Each student should be viewed as a unified body, mind, and spirit with an intellect and a will capable of improvement and growth. Other questions to consider:

  • Are there activities and programming that address all the faculties of the human person: the emotional, physical, spiritual, moral, as well as the intellectual?
  • Does the school or college employ habituation of rules for both behavior and academics to aid student learning and the development of virtue?
  • Does the school or college reject learning theories that disregard the complexities of the human person’s abilities?
  • Does the school embrace theories with underlying metaphysical premises that deny objective reality?

Catholic education should embrace learning theories that attend to the abilities of students as creative, imaginative, logical, emotional, adaptable, and spiritual human beings capable of finding and entering into the truths about reality. Students should also be taught that that faith is a valid way of knowing.

Thinking with faith

St. John Paul II taught that:

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”

Catholic education looks to both faith and reason to attain understanding beyond simple knowledge. “What does our faith have to teach us about this or that?” should be an instructional methodology included in all academic disciplines, which still retain their own particular methods of inquiry. The pursuit of truth is a hallmark of Catholic education, and contemporary educational methodologies designed to confine students to only thinking about an author’s position and not how that position relates to Church social and moral teaching, or how it makes us feel, or contrary positions, or personal experience are to be avoided.

As students in Catholic education are taught to think with the certainty of faith, they are also being formed in the acquisition of moral and intellectual virtue, even at the college level. Some Catholic schools choose to incorporate virtue programs as separate curricular offerings, while others incorporate virtue through content-rich literature including the Good and Great Books—texts that have stood the test of time, because of their consideration of the perennial triumphs and foibles of man. Catholic colleges include virtue formation in student life programming, such as holding Theology of the Body seminars or promoting households that exemplify saints and their qualities.

In whatever way, the moral virtues taught to students stem from the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance as elevated by God’s grace and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. These are distinctively different from the qualities and characteristics of the learner taught in public education. For instance, the International Baccalaureate program’s learner profile is designed to make students “inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflective.” There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but it’s insufficient for Catholic education’s purpose of training students in virtue so as to attain the eternal kingdom and not just maintain amiable relationships in the here and now.

Catholic education also cultivates the intellectual virtues, including art, prudence, understanding, science, and wisdom. This is what makes a Catholic education unique—it reaches toward the transcendent, especially in teaching wisdom and asking life’s deepest questions. All courses can employ philosophical questioning, such as, “Why is man the only rational creature? What is man’s place in the universe? Why is this or that the way it is?” These help students grasp the relationship between humanity and existential realities. Methodologies should provide opportunities for students to wonder about higher things, and philosophical questioning helps with this. It fosters student engagement and, to paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas, the water of philosophy brings out the wine in theology. Philosophical questioning leads us to the truth of a thing, and that ultimately leads us to Truth Himself, Jesus Christ.

Integrated curriculum

All courses should be taught, as much as possible, in an interdisciplinary fashion. This means that when a subject or concept under discussion moves beyond the confines of the discipline, it is not tossed aside as inconsequential but explored for the understanding it can bring to the subject at hand. St. John Henry Cardinal Newman stated in Idea of a University, “All branches of knowledge are connected together, because the subject-matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and the work of the Creator.” Being open to transcendent truth and objective reality allows each discipline to bear on others for comparison, correction, completeness, and adjustment. Catholic education should include the humanities such as drama, music, and the arts to lift artificial silos of learning and satisfy the aesthetic sense of the human soul.

Academic disciplines within Newman Guide-recognized schools include specific content standards unique to Catholic education and laid out in The Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards, such as “Describe the importance of thinking with images informed by classic Christian and Western symbols and archetypes” and “Explain the history of the Catholic Church and its impact in human events.” These curricular standards are derived from Church teaching and the expectations of exemplary Catholic colleges. When examining Church documents for aspects of curricular design, we noted that many documents looked to the formation of the student more than specific Catholic content.

For example, mathematics should help a student develop the acuity of precision, determination, inquiry, reasoning, and an appreciation of beauty and God’s orderly design. Science standards include, “To exhibit a primacy of care and concern about all stages of life” and to “display a deep sense of wonder and delight about the natural universe.”

Of course, a curriculum cannot be delivered without a prepared and spiritually formed teacher, who is faithful to the teachings of the Church and practices those teachings daily. Many teachers in the exceptional Newman Guide institutions see teaching as a personal means of sanctification and an answer to a call, not just a profession. They are willing to build a relationship with students and to journey with them as they discover life’s many challenges and delights. It is through a face-to-face, “incarnate education” in an environment that is simple yet beautiful that these relationships are best forged. With a successful curriculum, students are encouraged to wonder, gain wisdom, and worship the one true God.

The Call to Teach: Church Guidance for Catholic Teachers

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The Call to Teach
Church Guidance for Catholic Teachers

Denise L. Donohue, Ed.D., and Daniel P. Guernsey, Ed.D.

 

About The Call to Teach

The original version of The Call to Teach was written in 2015 by Dr. Jamie F. Arthur. This significantly revised version was written by Dr. Daniel Guernsey, senior fellow and education policy editor at The Cardinal Newman Society, and Dr. Denise Donohue, vice president for educator resources and evaluation at The Cardinal Newman Society. This edition adds quotes from the most recent documents from the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education and sets of reflective questions. A facilitator guide and PowerPoint slides are available at cardinalnewmansociety.org.

 

Summary: The Church has always encouraged her teachers to view their teaching position as a vocation of service, and its essential role is lived as a witness to the faith in both word and deed. This booklet presents selections from Church documents to offer guidance and encouragement to educators, in a readily accessible format. The selections are organized around five themes: The Teacher and Mission of Catholic Education, The Teacher and Vocation, The Teacher and Faith Formation, The Teacher and Lived Witness, and The Teacher and Catholic Culture.

 

Introduction

In recent years, efforts to strengthen the Catholic identity of schools have focused Church guidance on the important fact that all teachers—lay, clerical, or religious—have an essential function in Catholic education as role models of the faith, in both word and deed. A review of these Church teachings provides an understanding of the importance of the Catholic teacher and the teacher’s role in fulfilling the mission of the Church—preparing students to fulfill God’s calling in this world and attaining the eternal kingdom for which they were created.

The Church has issued many important documents on Catholic education in the last 60 years. The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis (1965), outlines the basic principles of Catholic education, acknowledging the Church’s reliance on Catholic educators and the importance of preparation in “secular and religious knowledge.”[1]  Twelve years later, the penetrating impact of social-cultural pluralism in Catholic education was addressed by the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education in The Catholic School (1977). The Church expressed concern that teachers embrace the Catholic school’s unique identity and display “the courage to follow all the consequences of [this] uniqueness.”[2] This concern was repeated in the Congregation’s 2022 document, The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue.[3]

In 1982, due to growing reliance on the laity to lead and staff Catholic schools, the Sacred Congregation focused particular attention on teachers in its document Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith. The document details the “specific character of their vocation” and presents “a true picture of the laity as an active element, accomplishing an important task for the entire Church through their labour.”[4] The Congregation expanded on the distinctive characteristics of Catholic education in 1988 in The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School, restating, “Prime responsibility for creating this unique Christian school climate rests with the teachers.”[5] Fewer than ten years later, to address the “crisis of values” in contemporary society, the Congregation issued The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997). The document includes the fundamental characteristics of schools necessary to be effective agents for the Church and the need to recruit “competent, convinced, and coherent educators” who serve as a reflection of the one Teacher, Jesus Christ.[6]

As America entered the twenty-first century, the bishops’ concerns over Catholic school closures and waning Catholic identity in the United States spurred the Conference of Catholic Bishops to issue Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium. Noting that ninety-five percent of those working in Catholic schools were laity, the bishops stated, “The formation of personnel will allow the Gospel message and the living presence of Jesus to permeate the entire life of the school community and thus be faithful to the evangelizing mission.”[7] The criteria they presented for personnel in a Catholic school include being grounded in a faith-based culture, being bonded to Christ and the Church, and being witnesses to the faith in both words and actions.

Catholic schools continue to struggle against secularization and moral relativism in every aspect of society. Laying out plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis, the Congregation for Catholic Education issued Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewing Passion, which describes the impact of contemporary culture as an “educational emergency.” Along with the many issues facing Catholic education—identity, limited means and resources, protection of religious freedom, and pastoral concerns—the document discusses the challenges associated with training of teachers, noting that educators need unity and a willingness to embrace and share a “specific evangelical identity” and “consistent lifestyle.”[8]

These qualifications were evident in the Congregation’s 2019 document “Male and Female He Created Them”: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education. The document states that teachers (called “formators”) who possess personal maturity and balance in addition to preparation can have a strong positive effect on students. Going beyond professional training, the document calls for knowledge in the “more intimate aspects of the personality, including the religious and the spiritual,”[9] so that teachers can accompany students who are facing the challenges associated with the culture’s insistence upon the separation between gender and biological sex. Catholic educators are also advised to be aware of current local legislation regarding this issue.

The Congregation issued The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue (2022) out of concern that some Catholic educators lack understanding of the unique identity of a Catholic school and the educator’s role in contributing to that identity. This lack of understanding can cause employment conflicts and concerns, necessitating formation regarding the Church’s moral expectations for them. Once again, the Congregation stressed that educators should see their employment as answering the call to a vocation (24).

 

I. The Teacher and Mission of Catholic Education

The mission of Catholic education is articulated by the Church and her magisterial documents. Catholic educators need to understand, appreciate, and fully support this mission, because its fulfillment depends on them. The more teachers reflect upon this mission, the more powerful protagonists they will be in leading schools to success. Catholic education is an expression of the Church’s mission of salvation and an instrument of evangelization. Through Catholic education, and especially through its teachers, students encounter God, who in Jesus Christ reveals His transforming love and truth. As a faith community, students, parents, and educators, in unity with the Church, give witness to Christ’s loving communion in the Holy Trinity. With this Christian vision, Catholic education fulfills its purpose of transmitting culture in the light of faith; integrally forming the human person by developing each student’s physical, moral, spiritual, and intellectual gifts; teaching responsibility and the right use of freedom; preparing students to fulfill God’s calling in this world; and attaining the eternal kingdom for which they were created:

Since true education must strive for complete formation of the human person that looks to his or her final end as well as to the common good of societies, children and youth are to be nurtured in such a way that they are able to develop their physical, moral, and intellectual talents harmoniously, acquire a more perfect sense of responsibility and right use of freedom, and are formed to participate actively in social life. (Code of Canon Law, #795)

Catholic teachers are on mission when they situate their efforts within Christ’s salvific plan:

Catholic education is an expression of the mission entrusted by Jesus to the Church He founded. Through education, the Church seeks to prepare its members to proclaim the Good News and to translate this proclamation into action. Since the Christian vocation is a call to transform oneself and society with God’s help, the educational efforts of the Church must encompass the twin purposes of personal sanctification and the social reform in light of Christian values. (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, To Teach as Jesus Did, 1972, #7)

Teachers are partners in the Church’s mission to form free and fully integrated students holistically:

She establishes her own schools because she considers them as a privileged means of promoting the formation of the whole man, since the school is a centre in which a specific concept of the world, of man, and of history is developed and conveyed. It is precisely in the Gospel of Christ, taking root in the minds and lives of the faithful, that the Catholic school finds its definition as it comes to terms with the cultural conditions of the times. It must never be forgotten that the purpose of instruction at school is education, that is, the development of man from within, freeing him from that conditioning which would prevent him from becoming a fully integrated human being. The school must begin with the principle that its educational program is intentionally directed to the growth of the whole person. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 1977, #5-9)

Education today is a complex task, which is made more difficult by rapid social, economic, and cultural changes. Its specific mission remains the integral formation of the human person. Children and young people must be guaranteed the possibility of developing harmoniously their own physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual gifts, and they must also be helped to develop their sense of responsibility, learn the correct use of freedom, and participate actively in social life (cf. can. #795 Code of Canon Law [CIC].; can. #629 Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches [CCEO]). A form of education that ignores or marginalizes the moral and religious dimension of the person is a hindrance to full education, because “children and young people have a right to be motivated to appraise moral values with a right conscience, to embrace them with a personal adherence, together with a deeper knowledge and love of God.” That is why the Second Vatican Council asked and recommended “all those who hold a position of public authority or who are in charge of education to see to it that youth is never deprived of this sacred right.” (Congregation for Catholic Education, Circular Letter to the Presidents of Bishops’ Conferences on Religious Education in Schools, 2009, #1)

The educator’s mission is to help students encounter God and His transforming love and truth:

Education is integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News. First and foremost every Catholic educational institution is a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth (cf. Spe Salvi, #4). (Pope Benedict, XVI, Meeting with Catholic Educators, 2008, Washington, DC)

Teachers find this part of their mission in the person of Christ:

Christ is the foundation of the whole educational enterprise in a Catholic school. His revelation gives new meaning to life and helps man to direct his thought, action, and will according to the Gospel, making the beatitudes his norm of life. The fact that in their own individual ways all members of the school community share this Christian vision, makes the school “Catholic”; principles of the Gospel in this manner become the educational norms since the school then has them as its internal motivation and final goal. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 1977, #34)

Teachers assist in mission success by ensuring that,

From the first moment that a student sets foot in a Catholic school, he or she ought to have the impression of entering a new environment, one illumined by the light of faith, and having its own unique characteristics… The Gospel spirit should be evident in a Christian way of thought and life which permeates all facets of the educational climate. (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School, 1988, #25)

Teachers enact the school mission to build an ecclesial and educational community through love and the shared values and vision of Catholic belief.

The implementation of a real educational community, built on the foundation of shared projected values, represents a serious task that must be carried out by the Catholic school… The preparation of a shared project acts as a stimulus that should force the Catholic school to be a place of ecclesial experience. Its binding force and potential for relationships derive from a set of values and a communion of life that is rooted in our common belonging to Christ. When Christians say communion, they refer to the eternal mystery, revealed in Christ, of the communion of love that is the very life of God-Trinity. At the same time, we also say that Christians share in this communion in the Body of Christ which is the Church (cf. Phil 1: 7; Rev 1: 9). Communion is, therefore, the “essence” of the Church, the foundation and source of its mission of being in the world “the home and the school of communion,” to lead all men and women to enter ever more profoundly into the mystery of Trinitarian communion and, at the same time, to extend and strengthen internal relations within the human community. (Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Together in Catholic Schools, A Shared Mission Between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful, 2007, #10)

As the mission of Catholic education clearly entails teaching theology, teachers must be sound and faithful transmitters of Catholic doctrine.

The instruction and education in a Catholic school must be grounded in the principles of Catholic doctrine; teachers are to be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life. (Code of Canon Law, 803, §2)

It is important for Catholic schools to be aware of the risks that arise should they lose sight of the reasons why they exist… Catholic schools are called to give dutiful witness, by their pedagogy that is clearly inspired by the Gospel… Catholic schools, being Catholic, are not limited to a vague Christian inspiration or one based on human values. They have the responsibility for offering Catholic students, over and above, a sound knowledge of religion, the possibility to grow in personal closeness to Christ in the Church. (Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating in Intercultural Dialogue in the Catholic School: Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love, 2013, #56)

The mission of Catholic education involves ensuring that sound theology and thinking inspire all areas of study. Teachers further this when they ensure:

that the doctrine imparted be deep and solid, especially in sound philosophy, avoiding the muddled superficiality of those “who perhaps would have found the necessary, had they not gone in search of the superfluous.” In this connection Christian teachers should keep in mind what Leo XIII says in a pithy sentence: “Greater stress must be laid on the employment of apt and solid methods of teaching, and, what is still more important, on bringing into full conformity with the Catholic faith, what is taught in literature, in the sciences, and above all in philosophy, on which depends in great part the right orientation of the other branches of knowledge.” (Divini Illius Magistri, 1929, #87)

Evangelization and integral human development are intertwined in the Church’s educational work. In fact, the Church’s work of education “aims not only to ensure the maturity proper to the human person, but above all to ensure that the baptized, gradually initiated into the knowledge of the mystery of salvation, become ever more aware of the gift of faith.” (The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue, 2022, #13)

Questions for Reflection

Comprehension

  1. From where does a Catholic school derive its mission?
  2. What are the aspects of a Catholic school’s mission?
  3. Who is involved in fulfilling the mission of Catholic
    education?

Discussion

  1. How is the mission of Catholic education different from that of public education?
  2. Which aspects of the mission do we accomplish well in our school? Which aspects can we improve upon?

Application

  1. How does the mission of Catholic education affect me, specifically as a Catholic school teacher?
  2. How can I, as a teacher, better understand, communicate, and support this mission?

Action Items:

 

II. The Teacher and Vocation

The Catholic teacher’s call to participate in the saving mission of the Church and to assist in the building of the Body of Christ is more than a profession. It’s a vocation. All teachers in Catholic education agree to work for the sanctification of the world and to pursue and communicate truth wherever it might lie. The Catholic educator possesses unique qualities of mind and heart and is led by the Spirit and the Gospel to make Christ known to others through a life filled with faith, hope, and charity.

The Church knows that good and loving teachers are the key to an excellent Catholic education, much more so than programs or materials:

Perfect schools are the result not so much of good methods as of good teachers, teachers who are thoroughly prepared and well-grounded in the matter they have to teach; who possess the intellectual and moral qualifications required by their important office; who cherish a pure and holy love for the youths confided to them, because they love Jesus Christ and His Church, of which these are the children of predilection; and who have therefore sincerely at heart the true good of family and country. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, 1929, #88)

The Church appreciates that this critical educational vocation is unique and needs constant nurture:

Beautiful indeed and of great importance is the vocation of all those who aid parents in fulfilling their duties and who, as representatives of the human community, undertake the task of education in schools. This vocation demands special qualities of mind and heart, very careful preparation, and continuing readiness to renew and to adapt. (Pope Saint Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis, Declaration on Christian Education, 1965, #5)

For, “they share a common dignity from their rebirth in Christ. They have the same filial grace and the same vocation to perfection. They possess in common one salvation, one hope, and one undivided charity.” Although it is true that, in the Church, “by the will of Christ, some are made teachers, dispensers of mysteries, and shepherds on behalf of others, yet all share a true equality with regard to the dignity and to the activity common to all the faithful for the building up of the Body of Christ.” Every Christian, and therefore also every lay person, has been made a sharer in “the priestly, prophetic, and kingly functions of Christ,” and their apostolate “is a participation in the saving mission of the Church itself… All are commissioned to that apostolate by the Lord Himself.” (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #6)

The vocation of teaching requires a specific commitment and fidelity to Truth. Teachers must be truth seekers, truth tellers, and truth enactors no matter the personal cost. All people, but especially teachers, due to their vocation, are “bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth” (CCC, #2467). For teachers, the transmission of truth is part of living their vocation:

One specific characteristic of the educational profession assumes its most profound significance in the Catholic educator: the communication of truth. For the Catholic educator, whatever is true is a participation in Him who is the Truth; the communication of truth, therefore, as a professional activity, is thus fundamentally transformed into a unique participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, carried on through one’s teaching. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #16)

Teachers must witness this lived truth in the context of faith, hope, and charity. The Church also uses the metaphor of such witness acting as a “leaven” to communicate the effect of the teaching vocation:

They live in the midst of the world’s activities and professions, and in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life; and there they are called by God so that by exercising their proper function and being led by the spirit of the Gospel they can work for the sanctification of the world from within, in the manner of leaven. In this way they can make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope, and charity. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #7)

The aim of teaching is not about acquiring affluence, but it is about generously lifting everything up: students, culture, hearts, minds, everything. Teachers are laborers of the Holy Spirit and esteemed and encouraged by the Church:

When it considers the tremendous evangelical resource embodied in the millions of lay Catholics who devote their lives to schools, it recalls the words with which the Second Vatican Council ended its Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, and “earnestly entreats in the Lord that all lay persons give a glad, generous, and prompt response to the voice of Christ, who is giving them an especially urgent invitation at this moment; …they should respond to it eagerly and magnanimously …and, recognizing that what is His is also their own (Phil 2, 5), to associate themselves with Him in His saving mission… Thus they can show that they are His co-workers in the various forms and methods of the Church’s one apostolate, which must be constantly adapted to the new needs of the times. May they always abound in the works of God, knowing that they will not labour in vain when their labour is for Him (cf. 1 Cor 15, 58).” (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #82)

Most teachers in a Catholic school are competent and professional educators. Still, they are much more—they are professionals on the path of personal sanctification through living their vocations with faith and passion.

The work of the lay Catholic educator in schools, and particularly in Catholic schools, “has an undeniably professional aspect; but it cannot be reduced to professionalism alone. Professionalism is marked by, and raised to, a super-natural Christian vocation. The life of the Catholic teacher must be marked by the exercise of a personal vocation in the Church, and not simply by the exercise of a profession. (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue, 2022, #24)

Questions for Reflection

Comprehension

  1. What is the difference between a vocation and a
    profession?
  2. What specific commitment is asked of Catholic educators and why is this important?

Discussion

  1. What are the characteristics of “possessing special
    qualities of mind and heart”?
  2. How is being a Catholic educator different from other teaching professions?

Application

  1. What does it mean to me to be a Catholic school teacher?
  2. How does teaching change when viewed not just as a
    profession, but as a vocation?

Action Items:

 

III. The Teacher and Faith Formation

The Catholic Church recognizes its dependence on teachers to fulfill the goals and programs of Catholic education. Forming students in faith is one of its most critical goals. Such formation is not a part of most teacher training programs. Therefore, it is essential for Catholic school teachers to be aware that they have this responsibility (no matter the subject or age they teach!) and to make sure they are taking professional responsibility for their faith formation and the formation of the students they teach.

In Catholic education, there is never a time when teachers are not forming their students:

In the Catholic school’s educational project there is no separation between time for learning and time for formation, between acquiring notions and growing in wisdom. The various school subjects do not present only knowledge to be attained, but also values to be acquired and truths to be discovered. All of which demands an atmosphere characterized by the search for truth, in which competent, convinced, and coherent educators, teachers of learning and of life, may be a reflection, albeit imperfect but still vivid, of the one Teacher. (The Catholic School on the Threshold of The Third Millennium, 1997, #14)

The Spiritual Dimension

One cannot give what one does not possess, so all Catholic school teachers must be striving for a personal life of faith and holiness in accord with the moral demands of the Gospel. Teachers must be “open also to spiritual and religious formation and sharing.” (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue, 2022, #26)

Participation and active engagement in prayer and sacrament provide a visible manifestation of faith and witness for students to emulate:

As a visible manifestation of the faith they profess and the life witness they are supposed to manifest, it is important that lay Catholics who work in a Catholic school participate simply and actively in the liturgical and sacramental life of the school. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #40)

The Catholic educator’s challenge is to integrate religious truths and values into daily life, both public and private, and to personally guide and inspire students into a deeper faith and more profound levels of human knowledge.

Since the educative mission of the Catholic school is so wide, the teacher is in an excellent position to guide the pupil to a deepening of his faith and to enrich and enlighten his human knowledge with the data of the faith… The teacher can form the mind and heart of his pupils and guide them to develop a total commitment to Christ, with their whole personality enriched by human culture. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #40)

Again, the teacher’s role is to bring the whole truth of a situation, including spiritual truths, to bear:

A teacher who is full of Christian wisdom, well prepared in his own subject, does more than convey the sense of what he is teaching to his pupils. Over and above what he says, he guides his pupils beyond his mere words to the heart of total Truth. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 1977, #41)

The integration of religious truth and values with the rest of life is brought about in the Catholic school not only by its unique curriculum, but, more important, by the presence of teachers who express an integrated approach to learning and living in their private and professional lives. (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, To Teach as Jesus Did, 1972, #104)

As spiritual formators and teachers of the faith, educators must provide lived witness to an integrated life of faith:

Most of all, students should be able to recognize authentic human qualities in their teachers. They are teachers of the faith; however, like Christ, they must also be teachers of what it means to be human… A teacher who has a clear vision of the Christian milieu and lives in accord with it will be able to help young people develop a similar vision, and will give them the inspiration they need to put it into practice. (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School, 1988, #96)

The Professional Dimension

A Catholic educator commits to making the Christian integral human formation of mind, body, and spirit the focus of all efforts. This calling is enhanced by adequate preparation in both secular and religious knowledge and pedagogical skills. Qualifications for the classroom include creativity, management skills, and the ability to design an effective learning environment where the gifts and talents of each student are nourished. Through the synthesis of faith, culture, and life, the teacher integrates Gospel values into all aspects of the curriculum to demonstrate the relationship between knowledge and truth. Professionalism is an important quality for teachers to possess in living out an “ecclesial vocation.” It includes preparation and ongoing development in knowledge and skills necessary to form students’ hearts and minds. Professionalism includes creating honest and healthy relationships of mutual trust, respect, and friendliness with parents, students, and colleagues.

Because Catholic education does more and attempts more than a secular education in the formation of students from within an authentic Catholic community, the importance of teacher preparation is even greater:

The task of a teacher goes well beyond transmission of knowledge, although that is not excluded. Therefore, if adequate professional preparation is required in order to transmit knowledge, then adequate professional preparation is even more necessary in order to fulfill the role of a genuine teacher. It is an indispensable human formation, and without it, it would be foolish to undertake any educational work. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #16)

Catholic teachers need more and different preparation than their public-school counterparts. Like all schools and teachers,

Professional competence is the necessary condition for openness to unleash its educational potential. A lot is being required of teachers and managers: they should have the ability to create, invent, and manage learning environments that provide plentiful opportunities; they should be able to respect students’ different intelligences and guide them towards significant and profound learning; they should be able to accompany their students towards lofty and challenging goals, cherish high expectations for them, involve and connect students to each other and the world. Teachers must be able to pursue different goals simultaneously and face problem situations that require a high level of professionalism and preparation. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewing Passion, 2014, #7)

A solid professional formation,

includes competency in a wide range of cultural, psychological, and pedagogical areas. However, it is not enough that the initial training be at a good level; this must be maintained and deepened, always bringing it up to date. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #27)

For the Catholic educator, the integral formation of students is key:

The integral formation of the human person, which is the purpose of education, includes the development of all the human faculties of the students, together with preparation for professional life, formation of ethical and social awareness, becoming aware of the transcendental, and religious education. Every school, and every educator in the school, ought to be striving “to form strong and responsible individuals, who are capable of making free and correct choices,” thus preparing young people “to open themselves more and more to reality, and to form in themselves a clear idea of the meaning of life.” (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #17)

Professional training in integral formation involves not just teaching the mind-body-spirit unity of the students but also integrating the Catholic faith into various subjects, and ultimately integrating the subjects themselves. The Church reminds her teachers that,

In teaching the various academic disciplines, teachers share and promote a methodological viewpoint in which the various branches of knowledge are dynamically correlated, in a wisdom perspective. The epistemological framework of every branch of knowledge has its own identity, both in content and methodology. However, this framework does not relate merely to “internal” questions, touching upon the correct realization of each discipline. Each discipline is not an island inhabited by a form of knowledge that is distinct and ring-fenced; rather, it is in a dynamic relationship with all other forms of knowledge, each of which expresses something about the human person and touches upon some truth. (Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating in Intercultural Dialogue in the Catholic School: Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love, 2013, #64-67)

The synthesis between faith, culture, and life that educators of the Catholic school are called to achieve is, in fact, reached “by integrating all the different aspects of human knowledge through the subjects taught, in the light of the Gospel […and] in the growth of the virtues characteristic of the Christian.” This means that Catholic educators must attain a special sensitivity with regard to the person to be educated in order to grasp not only the request for growth in knowledge and skills, but also the need for growth in humanity. Thus educators must dedicate themselves “to others with heartfelt concern, enabling them to experience the richness of their humanity.” (Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Together in Catholic Schools, A Shared Mission Between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful, 2007, #24)

While retaining professional expectations, the Catholic teacher always seeks a deeper human relationship with students and colleagues. It is at this level of connection that Catholic education finds much of its effect:

Teaching and learning are the two terms in a relationship that does not only involve the subject to be studied and the learning mind, but also persons: this relationship cannot be based exclusively on technical and professional relations, but must be nourished by mutual esteem, trust, respect, and friendliness. When learning takes place in a context where the subjects who are involved feel a sense of belonging, it is quite different from a situation in which learning occurs in a climate of individualism, antagonism, and mutual coldness. (Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewing Passion, 2014, #3)

Active participation in the activities of colleagues, in relationships with other members of the educational community; and especially in relationships with parents of the students, is extremely important. In this way the objectives, programs, and teaching methods of the school in which the lay Catholic is working can be gradually impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #51)

In summary, the vocation of Catholic education requires more than professional qualifications from teachers. It requires a deepening of the teacher’s spiritual knowledge and commitment.

When the ‘formation of formators’ is undertaken on the basis of the Christian principles, it has as its objective not only the formation of individual teachers but the building up and consolidation of an entire educational community through a fruitful exchange between all involved, one that has both didactic and emotional dimensions. Theus dynamic relationships grow between educators, and professional development is enriched by well-rounded personal growth, so that the work of teaching is carried out at the service of humanization. (Congregation for Catholic Education, “Male and Female He Created Them”: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education, 2019, #49)

In 2005, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium stated,

“The preparation and ongoing formation of teachers is vital if our schools are to remain truly Catholic in all aspects of school life… [to] allow the Gospel message and the living presence of Jesus to permeate the entire life of the school community and thus be faithful to the school’s evangelizing mission.” (11)

Questions for Reflection

Comprehension

  1. What is the importance of solid spiritual and professional development for teachers?
  2. How does the teacher provide integral formation of students?

Discussion

  1. Why is spiritual formation important for teachers?
  2. Are all professional development programs applicable to Catholic education? Are some programs better than others? How so?

Application

  1. How do I attend to my own personal spiritual formation, so that I can then help form my students?
  2. In what ways do I work at improving my professional instruction? Am I intimidated or insulted by being required to attend professional development? Why?
  3. In what ways do I engage parents in the educational process? Can I do more? Do I have any fears about parents that might keep them at a distance?

Action Items:

 

IV. The Teacher and Lived Witness

The Church relies on teachers to fulfill the mission of Catholic education and serve the complex and varied needs of students entrusted to their care. In a special way, teachers make Christ and His Church present and operative in the life of students. Most significantly by their lived witness, teachers accomplish the school’s primary religious mission and impart the distinctive character of Catholic education. They must be deeply motivated to witness to a living encounter with Christ, the unique Teacher, and then live out that encounter in word and action so that students might eventually do the same. Such teachers write on the “very spirits of human beings.” forming relationships that assume enormous importance. They give a concrete example of what it is to be faithful Christians living in a troubled and lost secular world. Living with integrity in a pluralistic society, teachers provide a “living mirror” by which others in the school community can see a reflected image of a life inspired by the Gospel. Vatican II gives teachers this prayerful encouragement:

Intimately linked in charity to one another and to their students, and endowed with an apostolic spirit, may teachers, by their life as much as by their instruction, bear witness to Christ, the unique Teacher. (Pope Saint Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis, Declaration on Christian Education, 1965, #8)

This call to personal witness of faith, belief, and morals rings throughout several Church documents:

The project of the Catholic school is convincing only if carried out by people who are deeply motivated, because they witness to a living encounter with Christ, in whom alone “the mystery of man truly becomes clear.” These persons, therefore, acknowledge a personal and communal adherence with the Lord, assumed as the basis and constant reference of the inter-personal relationship and mutual cooperation between educator and student. (Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Together in Catholic Schools, A Shared Mission Between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful, 2007, #4)

By their witness and their behavior teachers are of the first importance to impart a distinctive character to Catholic schools… This must aim to animate them as witnesses of Christ in the classroom and tackle the problems of their particular apostolate, especially regarding a Christian vision of the world and of education, problems also connected with the art of teaching in accordance with the principles of the Gospel. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 1977, #78)

The extent to which the Christian message is transmitted through education depends to a very great extent on the teachers. The integration of culture and faith is mediated by the other integration of faith and life in the person of the teacher. The nobility of the task to which teachers are called demands that, in imitation of Christ, the only Teacher, they reveal the Christian message not only by word but also by every gesture of their behaviour. This is what makes the difference between a school whose education is permeated by the Christian spirit and one in which religion is only regarded as an academic subject like any other. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 1977, #43)

Catholic schools require people not only to know how to teach or direct an organization; they also require them, using the skills of their profession, to know how to bear authentic witness to the school’s values, as well as to their own continuing efforts to live out ever more deeply, in thought and deed, the ideals that are stated publicly in words. (Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating in Intercultural Dialogue in the Catholic School: Living in Harmony for a Civilization of Love, 2013, #80)

Thus, Catholic educators can be certain that they make human beings more human. Moreover, the special task of those educators who are lay persons is to offer to their students a concrete example of the fact that people deeply immersed in the world, living fully the same secular life as the vast majority of the human family, possess this same exalted dignity. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #18)

Conduct is always much more important than speech; this fact becomes especially important in the formation period of students. The more completely an educator can give concrete witness to the model of the ideal person that is being presented to the students, the more this ideal will be believed and imitated… Students should see in their teachers the Christian attitude and behaviour that is often so conspicuously absent from the secular atmosphere in which they live. Without this witness, living in such an atmosphere, they may begin to regard Christian behavior as an impossible ideal. It must never be forgotten that, in the crises “which have their greatest effect on the younger generations,” the most important element in the educational endeavor is “always the individual person: the person, and the moral dignity of that person which is the result of his or her principles, and the conformity of actions with those principles.” (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #32-33)

Professional commitment; support of truth, justice and freedom; openness to the point of view of others, combined with an habitual attitude of service; personal commitment to the students, and fraternal solidarity with everyone; a life that is integrally moral in all its aspects. The lay Catholic who brings all of this to his or her work in a pluralist school becomes a living mirror, in whom every individual in the educational community will see reflected an image of one inspired by the Gospel. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #52)

Teaching has an extraordinary moral depth and is one of man’s most excellent and creative activities, for the teacher does not write on inanimate material, but on the very spirits of human beings. The personal relations between the teacher and the students, therefore, assume an enormous importance and are not limited simply to giving and taking. Moreover, we must remember that teachers and educators fulfill a specific Christian vocation and share an equally specific participation in the mission of the Church, to the extent that “it depends chiefly on them whether the Catholic school achieves its purpose.” (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium, 1997, #19)

Among all the members of the school community, teachers stand out as having a special responsibility for education. Through their teaching-pedagogical skills, as well as by bearing witness through their lives, they allow the Catholic school to realize its formative project. In a Catholic school, in fact, the service of the teacher is an ecclesiastical munus and office (cf. can. #145 [CIC] and can. #936, Sections 1 and 2 [CCEO]). (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue, 2022, #45)

The teacher’s personal witness is not restricted to Catholics only. The Church requires that non-Catholic teachers and other employees in a Catholic school also give positive witness, especially moral witness, and assist in advancing the school’s religious mission:

Teachers and other administrative personnel who belong to other Churches, ecclesial communities, or religions, as well as those who do not profess any religious belief, have the obligation to recognize and respect the Catholic character of the school from the moment of their employment. However, it should be borne in mind that the predominant presence of a group of Catholic teachers can ensure the successful implementation of the education plan developed in keeping with the Catholic identity of the schools. (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue, 2022, #47)

Questions for Reflection

Comprehension

  1. What does the Church say about the witness of the teacher in Catholic education?
  2. Is this witness only expected during school hours? Only from Catholics?
  3. What does “the service of the teacher as an ecclesiastical munus and office” mean?

Discussion

  1. What conduct of the teacher is considered “moral
    behavior”?
  2. How does the importance of sound moral witness extend to all Catholic school employees, including coaches, counselors, librarians, and support staff?

Application

  1. Recall a time when what you did was inconsistent with what students are taught in Catholic education. How did this affect you as a teacher? How did this affect your
    students? Is there anything you would do differently, if the situation presented itself again?

Action Items:

 

V. The Teacher and Catholic Culture

The Catholic educator aims at transmitting a specifically Catholic culture that guides the student by word and example so they can see and experience a complete synthesis of culture and faith, as well as of faith and life. All subjects in Catholic education are integrated and explored in a Christian worldview and from a Christian concept of the human person. Through Catholic education, students grasp, appreciate, and assimilate the values that will guide them toward eternal realities.

Teachers need to teach in a way that is specifically Catholic, embracing the fullness of reality and God’s presence and plan for humanity and the world. The world and reality find their unity, perfection, and end in God:

The specific mission of the school, then, is a critical, systematic transmission of culture in the light of faith and the bringing forth of the power of Christian virtue by the integration of culture with faith and of faith with living. Consequently, the Catholic school is aware of the importance of the Gospel teaching as transmitted through the Catholic Church. It is, indeed, the fundamental element in the educative process as it helps the pupil towards his conscious choice of living a responsible and coherent way of life. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 1977, #49)

For the accomplishment of this vast undertaking, many different educational elements must converge; in each of them, the lay Catholic must appear as a witness to faith. An organic, critical, and value oriented communication of culture clearly includes the communication of truth and knowledge; while doing this, a Catholic teacher should always be alert for opportunities to initiate the appropriate dialogue between culture and faith—two things which are intimately related—in order to bring the interior synthesis of the student to this deeper level. It is, of course, a synthesis which should already exist in the teacher. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #29)

These premises indicate the duties and the content of the Catholic school. Its task is fundamentally a synthesis of culture and faith, and a synthesis of faith and life: the first is reached by integrating all the different aspects of human knowledge through the subjects taught, in the light of the Gospel; the second in the growth of the virtues characteristic of the Christian. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 1977, #37)

Throughout the ages, Catholicism has shouldered and nurtured culture. Catholic teachers should teach to and about the highest aims and impact of culture on the human experience:

The cultural heritage of mankind includes other values apart from the specific ambient of truth. When the Christian teacher helps a pupil to grasp, appreciate, and assimilate these values, he is guiding him towards eternal realities. This movement towards the Uncreated Source of all knowledge highlights the importance of teaching for the growth of faith. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School, 1977, #42)

The communication of culture in an educational context involves a methodology, whose principles and techniques are collected together into a consistent pedagogy. A variety of pedagogical theories exist; the choice of the Catholic educator, based on a Christian concept of the human person, should be the practice of a pedagogy which gives special emphasis to direct and personal contact with the students. If the teacher undertakes this contact with the conviction that students are already in possession of fundamentally positive values, the relationship will allow for an openness and a dialogue which will facilitate an understanding of the witness to faith that is revealed through the behavior of the teacher. (Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, 1982, #21)

Questions for Reflection

Comprehension

  1. How should we understand the task of “critical,
    systematic transmission of culture in the light of faith”?
  2. What pedagogy is appropriate to teaching culture in
    Catholic education?
  3. What is the intended effect of using this type of
    pedagogy?

Discussion

  1. What is culture? What is Catholic culture?
  2. How is culture transmitted in Catholic education?
  3. What are some critical elements of a Catholic worldview?

Application

  1. How can I better transmit culture in the light of the
    Catholic faith to my students?
  2. What is the predominate worldview of my students, and how can I successfully help them adopt a richer
    Catholic worldview?

Action Items:

 

Conclusion

The Church’s guidance to her teachers conveys the immense responsibility they assume in the ministry of Catholic education. In addition to professional qualifications, a Catholic school teacher must understand and commit to the Church and be a “living mirror” of Christ by modeling a life inspired by the Gospel. In contemporary society, the challenge is to impart a Christian vision of the world, which is often counter-cultural and requires faithful Christian role models.

Notably, the entire vocation of Catholic teachers is lived out in the context of love: love for Christ, love for the true, good, and beautiful, and love for the students. St. John Bosco reminds Catholic educators that “the youngsters should not only be loved, but that they themselves should know that they are loved.”[10] And the Church asks the same:

The teachers love their students, and they show this love in the way they interact with them. They take advantage of every opportunity to encourage and strengthen them in those areas which will help to achieve the goals of the educational process. Their words, their witness, their encouragement and help, their advice, and friendly correction are all important in achieving these goals, which must always be understood to include academic achievement, moral behaviour, and a religious dimension. When students feel loved, they will love in return. Their questioning, their trust, their critical observations, and suggestions for improvement in the classroom and the school milieu will enrich the teachers and also help to facilitate a shared commitment to the formation process. (Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School, 1988, #1)

 

 

The Call to Teach: Facilitator’s Guide

 

 

[1] Pope Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis (1965), #8.

[2] Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977), #10.

[3] Congregation for Catholic Education, 2022. The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue. Retrievable at https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_20220125_istruzione-identita-scuola-cattolica_en.htm

[4] Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith (1982), #5.

[5] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988), #26.

[6] Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997), #14.

[7] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium (2005).

[8] Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewing Passion (2014), III,1,j.

[9] Congregation for Catholic education, “Male and Female He Created Them”: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education (2019), 47.

[10] Bosco, John. Letter from Rome (1884). Eds. G Williams and P. Braido, trans. by P. Laws, accessed Dec. 9, 2013, salesianstudies.org/resources/ses-2013-resources.

Guide for the Catholic Reader: Selected Reading List, Rubric, and Rationale for Catholic Education

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Guide for the Catholic Reader

Selected Reading List, Rubric, and Rationale for Catholic Education

Denise L. Donohue, Ed.D., and Daniel P. Guernsey, Ed.D. 

 

Preface This guide is designed especially for Catholic education broadly—including parents, diocesan and school leaders, teachers, librarians, homeschool curriculum publishers, and textbook publishers—and draws upon The Cardinal Newman Society’s Policy Standards on Literature and the Arts in Catholic Education. The guide focuses first on the purpose and goals of literature in Catholic elementary and secondary education. It then provides guidance for readers on how to approach a text. This is followed by a rubric to help determine which texts are best suited for Catholic education and to ensure that selection criteria are clear, understood by all, and targeted to the integral Christian formation of students.   The final section is a limited recommended reading list, which is mostly confined to better-known, time-tested works. These have been selected for a variety of reasons including their beauty, their cultural and historical significance, their suitability for examining the human condition in light of Catholic sensibilities, their capability to inspire virtue or warn against vice, their ability to elucidate other times and cultures to better understand our own, their capacity to entertain and inspire, and their fitness to guide the moral imagination. The list is not exhaustive but represents some reading selections used by schools recognized by The Cardinal Newman Society for their exemplary Catholic identity.   There is a limited amount of time in one childhood to read literature, so selections should come from the best books. These books should be read “fruitfully,” doing more than finding the main points so as to answer computer-based or multiple- choice questions. Students should enjoy the experience of reading, understand and identify with characters, grow in virtue, and expand their imagination, empathy, and creativity.  

Rationale for the Selection of Literature in Catholic Education

Catholic education seeks to “bring human wisdom into an encounter with divine wisdom,”1 cultivate “in students the intellectual, creative, and aesthetic faculties of the human person,” prepare them for professional life and to take on the duties of society and the Church, and introduce a cultural heritage.2 Literature is an essential tool in Catholic education, helping impart “a Christian vision of the world, of life, of culture, and of history” and an ordering of “the whole of human culture to the news of salvation.”3  

Literature “strive[s] to make known the proper nature of man, his problems and his experiences in trying to know and perfect both himself and the world.”4  

Because Catholic education strives for the perfection of its students and the world, literature is a natural and important part of that mission. At its best, it invites truthful exploration of the human condition and development of the aesthetic sense of the soul.   Catholic education does not teach reading simply for reading’s sake or for its utility. Catholic educators teach reading so students can access, evaluate, and experience the knowledge, wisdom, beauty, and insights of others. Truths distilled from this information can then be applied to their individual quest for truth, holiness, and salvation and shared with others in pursuit of the common good.   Literature provides rich material for reflection on essential questions such as: “What is the meaning of life?” “What is the nature of my relationship, rights, and duties to God and to others?” “Is this a thing of beauty or value?” “Is this representative of good or evil?” In this way, literature is foundational to Catholic education’s culture and faith-based mission.  

Literature is selected to advance the mission of Catholic education through a “critical, systematic transmission of culture”5 guided by a Christian vision of reality.6  

Catholic education seeks to critically and systematically transmit culture, and so it turns to works of literature and the arts that explicitly or implicitly transmit and form culture and values. The academic community, inspired by a Catholic vision of reality, must thoughtfully and deliberately craft a complete program that provides the right literature, music, art, and drama at the developmentally right time and integrate it with the cultural and idea-shaping materials students encounter in all academic areas, moving students to see the beauty and inner harmony of all knowledge as ultimately coming from the one transcendent Truth, God Himself. Additionally, in Catholic education the critical and systematic transmission of culture occurs “in the light of faith.”7 This requirement precludes simply presenting a wide variety of literature, arts, and music based simply on individual faculty or staff training or preference. Catholic educators should not simply expose students to random popular works in hopes these might attract immature fancy or spark debate. Careful curation and guidance are needed to avoid possible confusion, error, indifference, or despair. Young people encountering weighty issues antithetical to the faith and without proper guidance may be manipulated by outside forces or their own youthful presumption, impertinence, or prejudice.   It is the role of a Catholic educator to suggest and model a response to the critical questions provoked in carefully chosen works in order to provide a coherent and consistent Catholic understanding to help youth manage their shifting viewpoints and come to a mature and freely-chosen understanding of reality and its faith-based moorings.8 The Catholic teacher is model and mentor, not an aloof and uncommitted purveyor of unevaluated content. All literature must be critically and systematically evaluated and transmitted in the light of faith.  

Because Catholic education’s mission is different from that of secular schools, its libraries and its selection and use of literature should reflect these differences and serve the higher aims of Catholic education.  

The mission of Catholic education is uniquely focused on the integral formation of students’ minds, hearts, and bodies in truth, health, and holiness. Catholic education is committed to the pursuit of truth and seeks to explore the harmony between truth and beauty. Catholic education is also concerned with the eternal salvation of its students and Christian service to promote the good.9 Catholic educators should approach literature with an eye toward the impact it has on this mission and the right ordering of the intellect, will, imagination, and spirit.   The exploration of literature in Catholic education must never work against the mission by leading students into sin, driving them to despair, or impairing their ability to understand and serve the common good. This concern is greatest in the youngest ages, while older students can be carefully assisted to make right choices and judgments through reading works that present increasingly complex and even mistaken material. Care should always be taken to avoid confusion and scandal. Catholic educators should place priority on publications of substantial quality and educational value, including Catholic spiritual formation. Great care must be exercised as older students grow in their awareness and exposure to man in his fallen state. Such knowledge can then be used to better serve the redemptive and evangelical role that Catholic education also serves.10   In Catholic education, curricular programs and school libraries ought not simply replicate their secular counterparts. Their mission is not to present uncritically all possible human thought and viewpoints, but to present the best literature critically and in the context of a Catholic worldview. Students, in a developmentally appropriate way, need to be exposed to seminal works of literature, drama, and poetry.11 Catholic educators can make use of non-Christian sources and of books which present non-Catholic understandings of critical human issues, but these should not remain unchallenged or leave students spiritually or humanly damaged in the process. Accounts of the human experience that are opposed to a Christian understanding of the world can be appropriate for older students who are well-formed and have a good foundation.

Such accounts may at times be edgy and uncomfortable but must not be extreme, they should not be left unchallenged, and they should not put a student at spiritual or emotional risk. A Christian humanism, founded in the Catholic intellectual tradition that focuses on the best in literature and the arts, can provide for a balanced approach in forming students to critically examine their contemporary experiences.   Finally, it must also be remembered that literature, and especially Western literature, is not just a tool for personal and spiritual formation but a field of study in itself. Especially at the upper high school level, works of literature need to be considered as distinct elements in particular academic fields, with its own specific logic and methodology of design, study, and evaluation. Students should learn to appreciate the works’ historical development and interactions. Great works of literature are not only tools of human formation and artifacts helpful in the development of academic knowledge but also works of artistic merit. Students should also be taught to interpret and value a work of literature on its own terms.

Checklist for the Selection of Literature

The following is a checklist that may be helpful to educators choosing literature for courses and general reading. The selection of literature in Catholic education should:

  • support the mission of Catholic education;
  • have enduring value and educational significance and be more for intellectual, moral, inspirational, and artistic weight than for entertainment, popularity, appearance on reading or award lists, or enticing students to read;
  • assist the student to a right ordering of the intellect, will, imagination, and emotions in the pursuit and understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness;
  • include evaluation of themes and events in terms of Catholic norms, values, and worldview so as to provide insight into a Catholic understanding of the human person in his redeemed and unredeemed state and in his relationship to God, family, and others;
  • be free of significant and shocking profanity;
  • be free of explicit discussion, presentation, or description of sexuality, sexual activity, or sexual fantasy;
  • not be a proximate cause of sinful thoughts or actions, or a pathway to the occult;
  • not be contrary to truth;
  • not be a temptation to despair or diminish faith; and
  • be read under the guidance of a knowledgeable and spiritually formed adult particularly when controversial, emotional, or otherwise sensitive material is If assigned for summer reading, parents are made aware of any sensitive material and agree to take on this role.

Because a student is generally not able to opt out of major literature assignments, and because there is a myriad of possible materials that can meet a Catholic school’s literature goals, there are many selections that satisfy educational objectives. If exceptions are made, they should be limited to extraordinary circumstances, with primary concern for the student’s purity and formation and with approval from top administrators.  

Addressing Possible Questions

Question: We want our library holdings to be broad and varied, not limited by Catholic sensitivities or by only weighty content. Shouldn’t we let students read and view what interests them, not what we pre-determine for them?


Response: Educators do not take this view when a school provides lunch or snacks. We give students a choice of healthy options suited to the conditions. If the goal is just to get kids to put something in their mouths, then cotton candy and soda will undoubtedly serve this end better than carrots and grapes. But if the goal is to teach them to appreciate healthy, natural food and build their physical well-being and strength, then candy and chips (which are not bad in and of themselves) may get in the way of something better like juice and crackers. In the same way, we want rich and varied literature and art which will help build the health of students’ minds, souls, and imaginations. Cynical, dark, titillating, disordered, vain, bitter, or completely frivolous fiction may get in the way of an encounter with more difficult but meaningful and formative materials, which serve a higher end. There are more good and great books and art to experience than any one student can handle, so there is no shortage of material to take the place of the mediocre, meaningless, or malformed material flooding much of the market today.

 

Question: Shouldn’t we let the English teachers decide for their classrooms and the librarian decide for the library? They are the content experts, after all.

 

Response: Curriculum and library holdings should be driven by the mission of Catholic education, not by varied teacher strengths and interests or a librarian who may or may not be intensely knowledgeable of the curriculum and mission. The curriculum transcends departments and teachers. It is a function of the whole academic community, in service to the school’s Catholic mission. The administration and faculty must work together to ensure mission integrity and the complete Catholic nature of the institution. They must also ensure that it is effectively imparting a Christian vision of the world, of life, of culture, and of history, which transcends all departments and individual disciplines. They cannot in false humility assert lack of competence or vision but must engage both the academic and faith communities in open discussion about the curriculum and library holdings in light of the Catholic mission. The administration and faculty must also ensure the necessary integration among the various academic disciplines which, because they all seek knowledge and truth, comes from God and finds perfection and truth in their unified source. As St. John Henry Newman observed, the various disciplines “have multiplied bearings one on another, and an internal sympathy, and admit, or rather demand, comparison and adjustment. They complete, correct, and balance each other.”12



Question: Shouldn’t teachers design their own courses and teach books they like and are familiar with? This will help make teaching stronger and more engaging.

 

Response: Teachers should model the “life-long learning” that is the goal of all schools. As discipline experts they are well-trained to examine and deliver new content (whether
of their choosing or not) within the discipline. This content should be set by the school as a whole in line with its Catholic mission. Most Catholic English teachers were trained in secular English departments and are most familiar with works encountered there. The Catholic school must not shy away from asking teachers to master and skillfully teach works that are outside of the purview of modern, secular English departments. They must be trained and prepared to deliver rich works from the Catholic cultural and intellectual tradition and ensure that classic works from outside that tradition are critically examined from a Catholic worldview. The Catholic intellectual tradition includes works of literature and art (e.g., The Illiad, The Aeneid, the works of Milton and C.S. Lewis) that, while not Catholic and even containing problematic elements, have been found to foster authentic cultural, spiritual, and social development for Catholics and indeed all of humanity.

 

Question: Many schools stock library books that are recommended by major library associations, have won Newberry awards, or are very popular right now according to
major publishers. Don’t the kids need to read these?

 

Response: No, they do not. Each of these sources of influence have their own agendas, viewpoints, and cultures that they are advancing—some even in direct opposition to
the Church’s goals. Especially in young adult fiction, book awards are given to works promoting abortion and homosexuality (e.g., Skim and This One Summer by Mariko
Tamaki). To advance the Catholic mission, librarians can carefully select among thousands of books. They should do so thoughtfully with mission in mind, not slavishly based on fashion, popularity, or dubious authority. Catholic librarians’ criteria are how well the holdings serve the Catholic mission, knowing that students have access to virtually all these books on their own through the internet or public library, should they be so inclined to actively seek them out. Catholic education should develop in students a Catholic sensibility, so that they can make good judgments about what is worthwhile. But it takes time and focus to do so.

Guidance in Approaching a Text

Before students begin a text, it is helpful that teachers provide a list of questions, items, or concepts to identify as they read. These might be guided by essential questions, or they might come from the Transcendental Taxonomy13 created by The Cardinal Newman Society to draw out the truth, goodness, and beauty (or their opposites) in any text or study. They might also focus on basic questions such as:  

  • Are there acts of virtue and vice presented in the text, and how does the author portray these acts throughout the text?
  • What are the assumptions or propositions the author makes about the nature of man, God, family, society, and creation?
  • What major emotions do you feel while reading certain sections of the text, especially the end?
  • How does the author approach God’s graciousness, presence, and transcendence?
  • Is there a deeper meaning the author is trying to convey here?
  • Is there anything in this text that elevates my soul to God?

Instruct the students in how to annotate the text. Have them always read with a pencil or pen in hand and liberally highlight, underline, mark, or make comments in the margins about:

  • things that delight them;
  • things they find discomforting or confusing;
  • phrases or descriptions they find striking or beautiful;
  • significant passages they believe seem to capture the main themes of the text/author; and
  • passages which might help them identify any focus concepts or essential

These highlights can help them anchor their later class discussions and writings in the text and provide points to develop deeper exploration. Other questions to consider:

  • Imagine your favorite saint just read this What would be the points of conversation between the two of you?
  • What characters attracted you/repulsed you, and why?
  • How does this measure up in terms of a Catholic worldview, values, and human redemption?
  • Sum up “the moral of the story” in one sentence from the author’s point of view, and, if different, your own.
  • Did reading the text reveal to you anything new about yourself or help you grow in any way?

 

Holistic Rubric for Selecting Literature in Catholic Education

Compare the literature selection to the description provided in each box and circle the score that most closely applies to your selection. A compelling reason must be given for a score of 2 along with supports to mitigate areas of concern. Should the selection fall in the ‘1’ category, another choice needs to be made.    

Score Description
    4 Excellent Choice There are multiple or significant timeless themes presented which: transcend culture and poli- tics, allow for a richer and deeper understanding of humanity, and lend themselves to profound discussion about authentic truth and reality from a Catholic worldview. The work powerfully provokes a deeper understanding of virtue (or the destructive consequences of the lack thereof) and its effects on human flourishing. The work is uniquely suited to assist the student to a right ordering of the imagination, passions, and emotions. The work has significant artistic weight and strong intellectual merit. The writing is very well crafted and can serve as a model for student emulation. The work has been read for generations. There is no profanity. There is no blasphemy. There is no description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy. The content does not diminish the student’s faith or innocence or lead the student to sin or despair. The instructor is expertly equipped to provide a Catholic perspective on content and themes.
    3 Good Choice There are themes presented which: transcend culture and politics, allow for a deeper under- standing of humanity, and lend themselves to discussion about authentic truth and reality from a Catholic worldview. The work allows for discussion of virtue (or the destructive consequences of the lack thereof) and its effects on human flourishing. The work assists the student to a right ordering of the imagination, passions, and emotions. The work has artistic merit and intellectual merit. The writing is well crafted. The work is likely to be read by future generations. There is no shocking or significant profanity. There is no blasphemy. There is no description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy. The content does not diminish the student’s faith or innocence or lead the student to sin or despair. The instructor is effectively equipped to provide a Catholic perspective on all essential content and themes.
    2 Fair Choice Themes are primarily cultural and political, somewhat limiting discussion about transcendent concerns. Discussion about authentic truth and reality from a Catholic worldview is possible but not forefront. The work allows for discussion of virtue (or the destructive consequences of the lack thereof) but its impact on human flourishing is ambiguous and/or ambivalent. Disorder in the work may somewhat confuse the student’s passions or emotions. The work is currently popular in some English or liberal arts courses but has not yet proven its staying power over time. There is no shocking or significant profanity. There is ambivalence or neutrality toward the Catholic faith. There is no excessive or explicit description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy. The content does not diminish the student’s faith or innocence or lead the student to sin or despair. The instructor is adequately equipped to provide a Catholic perspective on most content and themes.
  1 Poor Choice Themes are primarily cultural and political, limiting discussion about transcendent concerns. Discussion about authentic truth and reality from a Catholic worldview is significantly impeded by a worldview that is provocatively and enticingly anti-Christian. Virtue and vice are confused, ridiculed, or presented as inconsequential. Disorder in the work is not resolved or leads the student’s passions or emotions astray. The work is culturally popular, but rarely found in school curricula, and has not yet proven its staying power over time. There is shocking and explicit violence. There is shocking or significant profanity. The work is blasphemous. There is excessive or explicit description of sexual activity or sexual fantasy. The content may diminish the student’s faith or innocence or lead the student to sin or despair. The instructor is insufficiently equipped to provide a Catholic perspective on all content and themes.

 

See pg. 10 of PDF for evaluation form

 

Selected Reading List for Catholic K-12 Students

  This list suggests options for Catholic educators and is not intended as an exhaustive list of all possible texts. Titles with an asterisk (*) are suggested for use when using The Cardinal Newman Society/Ruah Woods Standards of Christian Anthropology. Even with a shared rationale for teaching literature, deciding which generally acceptable books are best suited to the needs and abilities of specific learners will need to be determined by those closest to them. The non-exhaustive list below demonstrates that Catholic educators have no need to risk assigning lesser or morally ambiguous reading. There are more than enough excellent works available to fill any curriculum.

Grades K-4 Fiction – General


Adapted Greek and Roman myths
Aesop’s Fables
Bible stories
Folk tales
Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes
Poetry
Selected Fairy Tales from Grimm
Selected Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Andersen

Grades K-4 Titles


A Book of Nonsense (Lear)
A Pair of Red Clogs (Matsuno)
A Seed is Sleepy (Aston)*
Abraham Lincoln (d’Aulaire)
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Viorst)
An Egg is Quiet (Aston)*
Andy and the Circus (Daugherty)
Angus and the Ducks (Flack)
Beauty and the Beast (Lamb)
Before I Was Me (Fraser)
Blueberries for Sal (McCloskey)*
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Martin)
By the Shores of Silver Lake (Wiler)
Caps for Sale (Slobodkina)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Dahl)
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (Dahl)
Charlotte’s Web (White)
Clown of God (De Paolo)
Corduroy (Freeman)
Cranberry Thanksgiving (Devlin)
Curious George Series (Rey)
Farmer Boy (Wilder)
Favorite Uncle Remus (Harris)
Flower Fables (Alcott)
Frederick (Lionni)
Frog and Toad Series (Lobel)
Harold and the Purple Crayon (Johnson)
Heavenly Hosts: Eucharistic Miracles for Kids (Swegart)
Heidi (Spyri)
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Numeroff)
Homer Price (McCloskey)
Just So Stories (Kipling)
Lentil (McCloskey)
Little Britches (Moody)
Little House in the Big Woods (Wilder)
Little House on the Prairie (Wilder)
Little Lord Fauntleroy (Burnett)
Madeline (Bemelmans)
Make Way for Ducklings (McCloskey)
Mama, Do You Love Me? (Joosse)
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (Burton)
Millions of Cats (Gag)
Mirette on the High Wire (McCully)
Molly McBride and the Purple Habit (Schoonover-Egolf)
Mr. Popper’s Penguins (Atwater)
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Series (O’Brien)
Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (Steptoe)*
Nate the Great Series (Sharmat)
On the Banks of Plum Creek (Wilder)
Owl Moon (Yolen)
Ox-Cart Man (Hall)
Papa Piccolo (Talley)
Peppe the Lamplighter (Barton)*
Peter Pan (Barrie)
Pinocchio (Collodi)
Pied Piper of Hamelin (Browning)
Rikki Tikki Tavi (Kipling)
Roses in the Snow: A Tale of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (Jackson and Kadar-Kallen)
Saints Chronicles Series (Milgrom and Davis)
St. Clare of Assisi: Runaway Rich Girl (Hee-ju)
St. George and the Dragon (Hodges)*
Stone Soup (Brown)
Storm in the Night (Stolz)
The Animal Hedge (Fleishman)*
The Blue Fairy Book; The Red Fairy Book (Lang)
The Bobbsey Twins (Hope)
The Borrowers (Norton)
The Boxcar Children Series (Warner)
The Children’s Book of Virtues (Bennett)
The Elves and the Shoemaker (Galdone)
The Emperor’s New Clothes (Hans Christian Andersen)
The Five Chinese Brothers (Bishop and Wiese)
The Little Engine That Could (Piper)
The Little Flower: A Parable of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (Arganbright and
Arvidson)
The Long Winter (Wilder)
The Lost World (Doyle)
The Moffats (Estes)
The Mystery at Midnight (Hendey)
The Princess and the Kiss (Bishop)
The Quiltmaker’s Gift (Brumbeau)*
The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame)
The Secret Garden (Burnett)
The Selfish Giant and Other Stories (Wilde)
The Snowy Day (Keats)
The Story About Ping (Fleck and Wiese)
The Story of Ferdinand (Leaf)
The Story of Peter Rabbit (Potter)
The Swiss Family Robinson (Wyss)
The Trumpet of the Swan (White)
The Twenty-One Balloons (Du Bois)
The Velveteen Rabbit (Williams)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Carle)
The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
These Happy Golden Years (Wilder)
Through the Looking Glass (Carroll)
Treasure Box Set (Maryknoll Sisters)
Ugly Duckling (Hans Christian Andersen)
Wee Gillis (Leaf)
Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak)
Winnie the Pooh (Milne)

Grades 5-8 Titles


A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
A Story of Joan of Arc (Earnest)
A Wrinkle in Time (L’Engle)
Ablaze: Stories of Daring Teen Saints (Swaim)
Across Five Aprils (Hunt)
Across the Plains (Stevenson)
Adam of the Road (Gray)
All Creatures Great and Small (Herriott)
Amos Fortune, Free Man (Yates)
An Old Fashioned Girl (Alcott)
Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery)
Around the World in Eighty Days (Verne)
Beowulf: A New Telling (Nye)
Black Beauty (Sewell)
Black Stallion (Farley)
Beric the Briton (Henty)
Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of the Iliad (Lee)
Blessed Marie of New France (Windeatt)
Bonnie Prince Charlie (Henty)
By Pike and Dyke (Henty)
Caddie Woodlawn (Brink)
Captains Courageous (Kipling)
Cricket on the Hearth (Dickens)
Cyrano de Bergerac (Rostand)
David Copperfield (Dickens)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (Cather)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)
Facing Death (Henty)
Fingal’s Quest (Pollard)
For the Temple (Henty)
Forget Not Love: The Passion of Maximilian Kolbe (Frossad)
From the Earth to the Moon (Verne)
Gentle Ben (Morey)
Great Expectations (Dickens)
Hans Brinker (Dodge)
Helen Keller: The Story of My Life (Keller)
Hero of the Hills (Windeatt)
Holy Twins: Benedict and Scholastica (Norris)
I Am David (Holm)
I, Juan de Pareja (De Trevino)
If All the Swords in England (Willard)
In Freedom’s Cause (Henty)
In the Reign of Terror (Henty)
Jack and Jill (Alcott)
Jo’s Boys (Alcott)
Johnny Tremain (Forbes)
Journey to the Center of the Earth (Verne)
Kidnapped (Stevenson)
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (Green)
King of the Wind (Henry)
Lay Siege to Heaven (De Wohl)
Leif the Lucky (D’Aulaire)
Lilies of the Field (Barrett)
Little Men (Alcott)
Little Women (Alcott)
Log of a Cowboy (Adams)
Madeline Takes Command (Brill and Adams)
Misty of Chincoteague (Henry)
My Ántonia (Cather)
My Side of the Mountain (George)
Mysterious Island (Verne)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass)
Number the Stars (Lowry)
O Pioneers (Cather)
Old Yeller (Gipson)
Oliver Twist (Dickens)
Our Town (Wilder)
Patron Saint of First Communicants (Windeatt)
Penrod and others (Tarkington)
Pied Piper of Hamelin (Browning)
Radiate: More Stories of Daring Teen Saints (Swaim)
Red Hugh Prince of Donegal (Reilly)
Redwall Series (Jacques)
Rip Van Winkle (Irving)
Robin Hood (Pyle)
Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)
Rolf and the Viking Bow (French)
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor)
Saint Benedict: The Story of the Father of the Western Monks (Windeatt)
Saint Catherine of Siena (Forbes)
Saint Dominic (Windeatt)
Saint Helena and the True Cross (De Wohl)
Saint Hyacinth of Poland (Windeatt)
Saint John Masias (Windeatt)
Saint Martin de Porres (Windeatt)
Saint Monica (Forbes)
Saint Rose of Lima (Windeatt)
Saint Thomas Aquinas (Windeatt)
Sarah Plain and Tall (Wilder)
Son of Charlemagne (Willard)
Sounder (Armstrong)
St. Benedict, Hero of the Hills (Windeatt)
St. Joan, The Girl Soldier (De Wohl)
St. Patrick (Tompert)
St. Thomas Aquinas for Children (Maritain)
Tales of King Arthur (Talbott)
Tanglewood Tales (Hawthorne)
Tarzan Series (Burroughs)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Green)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Black Arrow (Stevenson)
The Black Cauldron (Alexander)
The Blood Red Crescent (Garnett)
The Bronze Bow (Speare)
The Call of the Wild (London)
The Children of Fatima (Windeatt)
The Children’s Homer (Colum)
The Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis)
The Deerslayer (Cooper)
The Dragon and the Raven (Henty)
The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
The Fledgling (Langton)
The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry)
The Hiding Place (ten Boom)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
The Horse and His Boy (Lewis)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle)
The Innocence of Father Brown [or others] (Chesterton)
The Island of the Blue Dolphins (O’Dell)
The Jungle Book (Kipling)
The Knight of the White Cross (Henty)
The Last Battle (Lewis)
The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Lewis)
The Little Flower (Windeatt)
The Little Prince (Saint-Exupéry)
The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
The Miracle Worker (Gibson)
The Miraculous Medal (Windeatt)
The Oregon Trail (Parkman)
The Pearl (Steinbeck)
The Prince and the Pauper (Twain)
The Ransom of Red Chief, and Other Stories (O. Henry)
The Railway Children (Nesbit)
The Red Badge of Courage (Crane)
The Red Keep (French)
The Restless Flame (De Wohl)
The Song at the Scaffold (Von le Fort)
The Spear: A Novel of the Crucifixion (De Wohl)
The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (Pyle)
The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Walsh)
The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow (French)
The Sword and the Stone (White)
The Time Machine (Wells)
The Trumpeter of Krakow (Kelly)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Lewis)
The Wanderings of Odysseus: The Story of the Odyssey (Sutcliffe)
The War of the Worlds (Wells)
The Weight of a Mass (Nobisso)
The White Stag (Seredy)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Speare)
The Yearling (Rawlings)
Thomas Aquinas and the Preaching Beggars (Larnen and Lomask)
Tom Sawyer (Twain)
Treasure Island (Stevenson)
Tuck Everlasting (Babbit)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Verne)
Two Years Before the Mast (Dana)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe)
Under the Lilacs (Alcott)
Westward Ho (Kingsley)
Where the Lilies Bloom (Cleaver)
Where the Red Fern Grows (Rawls)
White Fang (London)
With Wolfe in Canada (Henty)
Won by the Sword (Henty)
Work (Alcott)

Grades 9-12 Fiction Titles


A Good Man is Hard to Find (O’Connor)
A Man for All Seasons (Bolt)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
A New Voyage Round the World (Dampier)
Aeneid [excerpts] (Virgil)
Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides (Aeschylus)
An Enemy of the People (Ibsen)
Animal Farm (Orwell)
Beowulf (trans. Tolkien)
Billy Budd, Bartleby the Scrivener, and other short stories (Melville)
Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
Canterbury Tales [excerpts] (Chaucer)
Citadel of God: A Novel about St. Benedict (De Wohl)
Come Rack! Come Rope! (Benson)
Death of a Salesman (Miller)
Diary of a Country Priest (Bernanos)
Doctor Faustus (Marlow)
Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak)
Don Quixote (Cervantes)
El Cid (trans. Racine)
Emma (Austen)
Frankenstein (Shelley)
Great Expectations (Dickens)
Gulliver’s Travels (Swift)
Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
Jane Eyre (Bronte)
Joan of Arc (Twain)
Kim (Kipling)
Kristin Lavransdatter (Undset)
Lieutenant Hornblower Series (Forester)
Le Morte D’Arthur (Malory)
Les Misérables (Hugo)
Lord Jim (Conrad)
Lord of the Flies (Golding)
Man in the Iron Mask (Dumas)
Medea, The Trojan Women, The Bacchae (Euripides)
Metamorphoses [excerpts] (Ovid)
Mill on the Floss [others] (Eliot)
Moonstone [and others] (Collins)
Murder in the Cathedral (T.S. Eliot)
Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky)
Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone (Sophocles)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn)
Oresteia (Aeschylus)
Paradise Lost [excerpts] (Milton)
Persuasion (Austen)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
Quo Vadis (Sienkiewicz)
Sense and Sensibility (Austen)
Short Stories (Poe)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Anonymous)
Stories (Chekhov)
The American (James)
The Betrothed (Manzoni)
The Blithedale Romance (Hawthorne)
The Chosen (Potock)
The Cloister and the Hearth (Reade)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)
The Complete Stories (O’Conner)
The Divine Comedy [excerpts] (Dante)
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Anonymous)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
The Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
The House of Seven Gables (Hawthorne)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo)
The Iliad [excerpts] (Homer)
The Invisible Man (Wells)
The Living Wood (De Wohl)
The Longest Day (Ryan)
The Mayor of Casterbridge (Hardy)
The Odyssey [excerpts or full] (Homer)
The Old Man and the Sea (Hemmingway)
The Open Boat (Crane)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
The Power and the Glory (Green)
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy)
The Song of Roland (Anonymous)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
Tom Brown’s School Days; Tom Brown at Oxford (Hughes)
Up from Slavery (Washington)
Vanity Fair (Thackeray)
Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
SHAKESPEARE
As You Like It
Hamlet,
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth
Othello
Richard II
Romeo and Juliet
The Merchant of Venice
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest

Grades 9-12 Poets


Matthew Arnold, W.H. Auden, Hilaire Belloc, William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Lord Byron, G.K. Chesterton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Richard Crashaw, Emily Dickenson, John Donne, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, A.E. Hausman, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, Joyce Kilmer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Siegfried Sassoon, William Shakespeare, Percy Shelley, Robert Southwell, Edmund Spenser, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Francis Thompson, William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats

Grades 9-12 Spiritual Classics


Abandonment to Divine Providence (de Caussade)
An Introduction to the Devout Life [excerpts] (St. Francis de Sales)
Dark Night of the Soul (St. John of the Cross)
Summa Theologica [excerpts] (St. Thomas Aquinas)
The Bible
The Catechism of the Catholic Church [selections]
The Confessions [excerpts] (St. Augustine of Hippo)
The Desert Fathers [excerpts]
The Glories of Mary (St. Alphonsus Liguori)
The Imitation of Christ [excerpts] (Thomas à Kempis)
The Life of St. Francis of Assisi [excerpts] (St. Bonaventure)
The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence)
The Rule of St. Benedict
The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man (Lewis)
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (St. Ignatius of Loyola)
The Story of a Soul (St. Thérèse of Lisieux)
True Devotion to Mary (St. Louis de Montfort)
Grades 9-12 Non-Fiction Titles
Apology, Dialogues, Euthyphro, Republic [excerpts] (Plato)
Autobiography (Franklin)
Democracy in America [selections] (De Tocqueville)
Funeral Oration (Pericles)
Harvard Address and/or Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (Solzhenitsyn)
Humanae Vitae (St. Paul VI)
I Have a Dream (King)
Letter from a Birmingham Jail (King)
Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
Nicomachean Ethics, Book I (Aristotle)
Night (Wiesel)
Politics, Book I (Aristotle)
Self-Reliance (Emerson)
Slave Narratives (Douglass, Jacobs)
The Communist Manifesto (Marx)
The Conquest of Gaul (Caesar)
The Declaration of Independence
The Documents of Vatican II [selections]
The Federalist Papers [selections] (Hamilton, et al.)
The Gettysburg Address (Lincoln)
The Gulag Archipelago [Abridged] (Solzhenitsyn)
The Histories [selections] (Herodotus)
The Magna Carta
The Prince (Machiavelli)
The Rights of Man (Paine)
The Social Contract (Rousseau)
Treatise on Law and excerpts from other works (Aquinas)
The United States Constitution
Veritatis Splendor (St. John Paul II)

 

 

 

1 Congregation for Catholic Education, The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School (1988) 57.
2 Congregation for Catholic Education, Educating Together in Catholic Schools: A Shared Mission Between Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful (2007) 12.
3 Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) 53.
4 Saint Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes (1965) 62.
5 Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (1977) 49.
6 Congregation for Catholic Education (1977) 36.
7 Congregation for Catholic Education (1977) 49.

8 The general educational approach in this section is proposed by Luigi Giussani in his book The Risk of Education (Cross
road Publishing Company, 2001). See esp. pp. 55-65.
9 Code of Canon Law (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983) 795.
10 Congregation for Catholic Education (1988) 66, 69.
11 There are many lists of literature and spirituality which might be considered part of the “Great Books” in general and the
Catholic intellectual tradition in particular.

12 St. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982) 75.

13 https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/wp-content/uploads/Transcendental-Taxonomy.pdf

Catholic Habits of the Mind

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PowerPoint overview of Catholic Habits of the Mind:
 
 

 

By Denise Donohue, Ed.D., and Patrick Reilly

 

Catholic education integrally forms students in mind, body, and soul so they might know and love God and serve their fellow man. Because of this mission, Catholic education has a long tradition of excellence in harmoniously forming students’ intellects and characters through instruction in knowledge and formation in virtue. There are some well-known teachings on developing intellectual virtue in the Catholic intellectual tradition. In order to reinvigorate classroom teaching in Catholic schools and to assist teachers in delivering a deeper and more robust student formation, this paper advocates for the development of three Catholic “habits of mind” to elicit in students: thinking with faith, thinking philosophically, and seeking and valuing the transcendent.

Father Antonin Sertillanges, O.P., wrote substantively of the habits and behaviors of the Christian intellectual in his important work, The Intellectual Life.[1] St. John Henry Newman, in the 19th century, described education as cultivation of the “philosophical habit of mind,” developing greater understanding of both the parts and the whole of knowledge. And St. Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages reflected on the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle’s writings on habits, both moral and intellectual.

In the Catholic paradigm—and indeed in the classical terminology that has been foundational to both secular and Christian education for more than two millennia—we call good habits “virtues” and distinguish them from vices, which are consistent bad habits. The Catechism defines virtue as “a habitual and firm disposition to do the good.”[2] The development of virtue leads a student to both human flourishing and to Heaven. Sertillanges identifies “studiousness” as the key intellectual virtue, but it is a part of temperance; indeed, all the virtues that support academic and intellectual work flow from the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

In Catholic education, virtues overlap and occur throughout all levels and types of student formation. Learning a “pattern of intellectual behavior that leads to productive actions”[3] such as in the secular Habits of Mind program may have some utility in all schools, but a liberal education aims for much more, with even productive actions possessing an ethical dimension.[4] Catholic intellectual virtues help students do more than problem-solve; they help students seek and find the truth of a thing. In Catholic education, this inquiry into the truth ultimately leads to Truth Himself: God. This path is one that secular education cannot fully pursue. Our nature is designed to pursue truth through the inquiry of things, and in Catholic education, this truth is embodied in the person of Jesus Christ. When illuminated by God’s grace, we understand and determine the interconnection of things, and learn something about the higher causes of things.

In Catholic education, the formation of moral virtue is not only an essential part of the written curriculum[5] but is modeled and taught through the lives and witnesses of its teachers and others who exhibit virtues such as faithfulness, docility, humility, piety, gentleness, compassion, and kindness, among others. Catholic schools are all about formation in virtue, as these dispositions are considered the means of acquiring the goods of this life and the gaining of heaven. Our Lord made explicit to us in his teaching of the beatitudes the result of acquiring specific dispositions: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied…Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:3-10).

The formation of intellectual virtues aligning with a moral formation conforms to the holistic approach of Catholic education, which seeks integral education of mind, body, and soul. Catholic education forms young people with a Catholic worldview and shows them that virtue has positive real-world consequences in this life. It teaches that virtues such as prudence are applicable to intellectual, moral, and physical challenges that may come their way. Most importantly, Catholic education teaches the virtues as the way of Christ and guides the path to sainthood.

Catholic Intellectual Virtues

The Catholic intellectual tradition—developed by St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others—distinguishes intellectual virtues. They focus on what one knows and how that knowledge is used, always within the framework of a moral purpose. These traditional five virtues are art, prudence, understanding, science, and wisdom. Teachers in Catholic education who employ these methods can rest assured of their soundness and heritage.

Art and prudence are considered practical virtues because they are concerned with two forms of action: making and doing. Art directs the intellect in applying certain rules or methods to make useful, practical, beautiful, and pleasing things. It is the capacity of knowing how to do something or knowing different techniques, such as knowing how to use a computer program or how to make a kite fly. Art involves applying knowledge to shape matter, whether that matter is an artistic sculpture or principles of arithmetic. Prudence directs the intellectual powers toward knowing what is best and assessing what ought to be done. It involves analyzing and evaluating the proper means of action with the direction of contributing to our long-term happiness and is the foundational intellectual virtue necessary for all the other moral virtues. According to St. Thomas, prudence is the “form” of the moral virtues, and the human passions and actions are the “matter.”[6] Thus, in any particular situation, “it is prudence that determines what the just, temperate and brave act is.”[7]

Understanding, science, and wisdom are considered speculative virtues, and these are connected by nature to man’s desire to seek and know truth. Understanding cultivates knowledge of first principles or truths that are self-evident, or that reason and logic add to our experience. This knowledge is intuitive and easily attainable, such as the law that something cannot both exist and not exist at the same time under the same conditions.[8] Science uncovers “knowledge of conclusions acquired by demonstration through causes or principles which are final in one class or other.”[9] Science, therefore, is the evident knowledge of something through demonstration. Still, it is much more. It is human reason acting upon knowledge to draw conclusions from sound premises, thereby multiplying knowledge of creation, humanity, and God. It involves the habits of careful observation, experimentation, and measurement to reach conclusions using demonstrative reasoning. Science demands evidence and properly ordered reasoning and this evidence and reasoning assist with determining a certain level of certainty about a thing. Wisdom is the knowledge of conclusions to life’s most profound questions. Its object is truth and is generally identified as the study of philosophy or metaphysics. It seeks the answers to the questions of humanity’s existence and that of the universe, such as, “Why is man the only rational creature?” and “Why are the planets ordered the way they are?” Catholic educators are called to facilitate discussion and to direct the student’s intellect toward grasping the relationship between humanity and these existential realities.

Generally, this is done through philosophical questioning and inviting students to contemplate reality in wonder and awe. Aristotle called wonder the beginning of a love of wisdom—the highest understanding of things, their first causes and principles. Wonder begins, he says, “in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progressions raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g., about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe.”[10] Students should not stop at intellectual curiosity, which is satisfied with answers to “How” and “Why.”[11] The type of wonder desired here is a deeper, contemplative wonder that is exemplified by a full-body emotional, aesthetic, and existential response. This wonder leaves one open to the uncertainty and the mystery still evident in the experience.[12] It is at this moment that one can “step off” into the realm of faith, accepting it as a valid way of knowing, a moment in which one can revel in the first cause of all created things: God.

While there is certainly a place for wonder as curiosity in Catholic schools – in all schools –contemplative wonder does not stop with answers in the material world. As Newman says, wonder should lead reason to “ascend” above the actual fact or experience and the strictly material. It should look not only to material causes, comparisons, relationships, classification, and principles but should also evoke a sense of humility and a sense of our powerlessness and adoration before the glory of God, the author and end of all that is true, good, and beautiful. Catholic education teaches students the use and skills of reason to rise toward the transcendent. We teach students habits of reasoning that elevate thought above information and experience. Secular education leaves students hanging at the peak of ascent since it cannot jump off into the realm of religious faith. A Catholic school that teaches religion but fails to form students with skills and habits of philosophical reason is leaving students unable to contend with the issues of post-modernity, where they can quickly fall prey to ideology despite conflicts with their consciences and sense of natural law. They can have years of experiencing God’s love and mercy in Catholic education, the sacraments, and the family, but then they turn away because their inadequately formed minds cannot find God in reality, and they are lost in confusion.

St. John Henry Newman points out that while materialists can experience fascination, wonder is fully experienced when it causes us to “Rejoice with trembling”[13] and focuses not just on creation but also on the Creator. There is a depth and mystery to creation and reality and to our relationship to God, which evokes “a feeling of awe, wonder, and praise, which cannot be more suitably expressed than by the Scripture word fear; or by holy Job’s words, though he spoke in grief, and not as being possessed of a blessing. ‘Behold, I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: on the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him. Therefore, am I troubled at His presence; when I consider, I am afraid of Him’ [Job xxiii. 8, 9, 15].” [14]

A greater emphasis on these true Catholic intellectual and moral virtues and on the transcendent can help ensure the development of habits to assist in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and cultivating wisdom for human perfection in the light of faith. These are critical goals in Catholic education, which understand that human nature is oriented toward unity with God the Creator, and man’s gift of reason is intended to serve the free search for truth about God, humanity, and creation. Without an appeal to truth, man’s free will and reason lack purpose, and human dignity is not respected. Catholic intellectual virtues move beyond an emphasis on problem-solving to prepare students as useful workers and citizens. This focus is insufficient to achieve Catholic education’s goal of virtuous living and sainthood.

Additionally, Catholic educators should ensure that their curricula and course plans include but are not limited to memorization, seeking knowledge from sound testimony, identifying first principles, asking about essence, asking about causes, division, and composition of ideas, classification, analogical thinking, communicating with proper language, communicating with elegant language appropriate to the circumstances, discerning the unity of knowledge and bearing of knowledge upon other knowledge, following the methods that are proper to each academic discipline, right use of freedom in intellectual pursuits, and concern for the common good. These approaches harmonize with human nature and aid in complete human flourishing.

Catholic Habits of the Mind

Three ‘habits of mind’ are needed to build the Catholic integrity of an educational program, honor the Catholic intellectual tradition, and put students on the path of true happiness in this world and the next.

Thinking with Faith

Faith is the trust we have in something we do not see, based on the authority and credibility of the source, which is generally a person.[15] An example of human faith is to believe that Alaska exists without ever having been there based on the credibility of others and their testimony. Certitude is not personally confirmed, but the will and the intellect join to assent to the truth that Alaska is a place based on the credibility of witnesses.

Faith becomes supernatural when we are disposed to it through the sacraments and grace, and the matter is based on Divine Revelation from God Himself. Here the will and the intellect are turned toward God, the evidence being the witness of holy men and women, the prophets, the saints, the Apostles, and Jesus Christ. St. John Paul II, in his discussion of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, writes:

According to the Apostle, it was part of the original plan of the creation that reason should without difficulty reach beyond the sensory data to the origin of all things: the Creator. But because of the disobedience by which man and woman chose to set themselves in full and absolute autonomy in relation to the One who had created them, this ready access to God the Creator diminished. (Fides et Ratio, 1998, 22)

While we have not seen the eternal kingdom, we believe, with the supernatural help of grace through faith, that it exists, so we continue to journey toward that deeper, fuller understanding of God’s plan for us as imparted in Divine Revelation. In faith, the indivisible unity between the intellect and will is more easily discerned. St. Augustine is credited with saying, “believe so that you may understand.”[16] This is the goal of Catholic education: to open the door of faith for students to behold the transcendental realities through learning, discussion, experience, service, and sacraments. It is essential that students cultivate the intellectual and moral habits of being that predispose them to an encounter with faith through learning opportunities and discussions of the importance and validity of faith as a way of knowing. 

In public education, the discussion of faith is limited. The material sciences are held up as the highest and most privileged ways of knowing, and students are taught that knowledge of truth is limited to what can be physically seen, weighed, or measured. While this is a valid way of knowing, it is not the only means of knowing.

Whereas modern society and most secular education today define truth according to consensus and experience, the Catholic educator understands that truth is the conformity of the mind and reality and that all truth proceeds from God. The human intellect is intended to be ordered to truth, and reason allows the intellect to rise above consensus and experience to better know God, His ways, and His creation.

Aquinas says that both the light of reason and the light of faith come from God and work to contribute to the understanding of Divine Revelation and ultimate truth. St. John Paul II writes:

Faith therefore has no fear of reason but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfillment, so faith builds upon and perfects reason. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. (Fides et Ratio, 43)

What more fitting place to champion faith as a means of knowing than in a Catholic school? Enlightened by faith, Catholic education teaches habits that form students not only for knowing but also for apprehending the transcendental realities that give ultimate meaning to this life as souls are prepared for the next.

Thinking Philosophically

Saint John Henry Newman taught that the essence of education is cultivation of the intellect for its own sake. He argued that education should cultivate a “philosophical habit of mind” that reasons upon knowledge rather than simply accumulating information from experience and creatively expressing one’s feelings and desires. Education teaches the student to “ascend” above knowledge to new levels of understanding by the right use of reason. He wrote, “…in order to have possession of truth at all, we must have the whole truth; and no one science, no two sciences, no one family of science, nay, not even all secular science, is the whole truth…” (Discourse 4). Instead, God is “a fact encompassing, closing in upon, absorbing, every other fact conceivable.”

Reason needs to be cultivated not only as a logical tool for problem-solving but also as a means of attaining truths foundational to reality and larger than experience—as in contemplation of the natural and eternal law. Collaboration to find solutions and clear communication is necessary, but a Catholic school will want to put additional emphasis on dialectic and persuasion for the purpose of reasoning toward higher truths.

Dialectic is a discussion of seemingly conflicting things that appear to be true at the same time. It is a method of dialogue that aims to arrive at truth instead of defeating or persuading an opponent. It is associated with the Socratic method and the methods of medieval scholastics, including St. Thomas Aquinas. Educators can also teach the Topics of Invention.

The Topics of Invention are a method of classical rhetoric used to examine all aspects of a subject in the context of its circumstances, attributes, and relation to other subjects. Knowledge from an authoritative source – including the Catholic Church – is also used as a valid means of seeking the truth of a thing. Adding the habit of ‘thinking philosophically’ allows for rational dialogue and “ascending” to the higher truths of God, which ought to be the outcome of an integrated Catholic education.

Valuing and Seeking the Transcendent

Catholic education should also ensure that student thinking is oriented toward assigning value and meaning to what is being considered, and students should recognize that transcendent realities are among those things. Pope Francis has noted that:

For me, the greatest crisis of education, in the Christian perspective, is being closed to transcendence. We are closed to transcendence. It is necessary to prepare hearts for the Lord to manifest Himself, but totally, namely, in the totality of humanity, which also has this dimension of transcendence.[17]

Traditionally, in Catholic education, subjects are taught not merely as vehicles for the conveyance of content knowledge and technical skills. Catholic education helps “the pupil to assimilate skills, knowledge, intellectual methods and moral and social attitudes, all of which help to develop his personality and lead him to take his place as an active member of the community of man.”[18]

In Catholic education, the Catholic faith increases students’ understanding, and moral formation increases learning. Processes and methodologies should not thwart the opportunity for students to go beyond the pragmatic, utilitarian, and material world. Church documents are filled with discussions regarding the formative value of all education. For instance:

The Catholic teacher, therefore, cannot be content simply to present Christian values as a set of abstract objectives to be admired, even if this be done positively and with imagination; they must be presented as values which generate human attitudes, and these attitudes must be encouraged in the students. Examples of such attitudes would be these: a freedom which includes respect for others; conscientious responsibility; a sincere and constant search for truth; a calm and peaceful critical spirit; a spirit of solidarity with and service toward all other persons; a sensitivity for justice; a special awareness of being called to be positive agents of change in a society that is undergoing continuous transformation. (Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith, #29-30)

Catholic education focuses on the formation of the intellect, will, and soul of the student. It allows opportunities for students to ponder God’s omnipotence and love and his personal relationship with them. It is a specific charge for Catholic teachers to teach to the transcendent in a way that goes beyond abstraction, naming, listing attributes, and so forth and prepares a human soul for an encounter with real things—something secular schools cannot do.

The integral formation of the human person, which is the purpose of education, includes the development of all the human faculties of the students, together with preparation for professional life, formation of ethical and social awareness, [and] becoming aware of the transcendental, and religious education. (The Catholic School, #17)

The transcendentals of truth, beauty, and goodness can assist in determining value. Transcendentals are timeless and universal attributes of being. They are the properties inherent to all beings.[19]

The pursuit of truth, defined as the mind in accord with reality,[20] is a foundation of Catholic education and is a significant component of the Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards. From the Congregation for Catholic Education (1997) we read, “Various school subjects do not present only knowledge to be attained, but also values to be acquired and truths to be discovered. All of which demands an atmosphere characterized by the search for truth” (#14). Man, by his nature, is made to seek the truth.[21] For instance, the Catholic Curriculum Standards expect students to “Analyze how the pursuit of scientific knowledge, for utilitarian purposes alone or for the misguided manipulation of nature, thwarts the pursuit of authentic Truth and the greater glory of God.”

What is true is also beautiful. As a timeless and universal attribute of being, beauty helps evoke wonder, awe, and delight of the soul leading to philosophical and theological questions like, “How can something so beautiful exist?”  “Is this beauty only meaningful to me?” “Who created all of this?” and so forth. Catholic education—with its focus on the transcendentals of truth, beauty, and goodness—already teaches wonder as more than an intellectual satisfaction; it is an invitation to think beyond creation and seek the reality – and mystery – of the wisdom of God who created all that we know and experience.

Finally, in Catholic education, we know that the true and the beautiful are also related to all that is good. A thing is “good” when it exercises the powers, activities, and capacities which perfect it. In Catholic education, we also call human action good when all components of the action are noble and virtuous. Habits of Mind tends toward some of these same ends in an aspirational sort of way, but a robust Catholic education can thoughtfully and wholly fulfill the mission of intellectual formation within its own paradigm that looks to the transcendent.

Conclusion

When choosing specific approaches to Catholic education, it is important to understand the nature of the human person and use that understanding as the foundation for any education program.[22] Humanity has been gifted with faculties that work in specific ways. Education works best when it follows a natural order and engages the student’s will and emotions in the learning endeavor. As an embodied soul, it is essential that the whole person—the intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual—be ordered so that students can better understand themselves as effective and flourishing human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, and heirs to the eternal kingdom.

Catholic educators interested in cultivating habits of mind might consider incorporating the intellectual and dispositional standards from the Catholic Curriculum Standards, in addition to a Catholic school’s virtue and catechetical program. Standards such as, “Evaluate how history is not a mere chronicle of human events, but rather a moral and meta-physical drama having supreme worth in the eyes of God,” and, “Display personal self-worth and dignity as a human being and as part of God’s ultimate plan of creation,” elevate a student’s thought from the here and now to the eternal.

Catholic schools choosing to highlight the transcendental concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness, which are also embedded in the Catholic Curriculum Standards, will naturally use and develop many of the intellectual behaviors appropriate to a well-formed Catholic student. The Catholic Curriculum Standards seek to form dispositions toward:

  • demonstration of Catholic moral virtues;
  • ardent pursuit of the truth of things and the rejection of relativism;
  • value of the human body as a temple of the Holy Spirit;
  • dignity of the human person and primacy of care and concern for all stages of life;
  • care and concern for the environment as part of God’s creation;
  • appreciation of the beauty of well-crafted prose and poetry, historical artifacts and cultures, the order of creation, and the proportion, radiance, and wholeness present within mathematics; and
  • appreciation for the power of literature, the story of history, and the discoveries of science and how through interaction with them one can identify and choose the personal and collective good.

Using faithful curriculum standards, teaching the Catholic habits of mind described here, and providing a solid virtue program will help ensure a proper Catholic education program.

 

Denise Donohue, Ed.D., is Vice President of Educator Resources and Evaluation and Patrick Reilly is President and founder of The Cardinal Newman Society, which promotes and defends faithful Catholic education.

[1] A. D. Sertillanges The Intellectual Life (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960) at  https://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife/page/n1/mode/2up (accessed on Jan. 21, 2021).

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993) 1803.

[3] Arthur L. Costa, “Describing the Habits of Mind,” in Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick (eds.), Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2008)16. Retrieved at http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108008/chapters/Describing-the-Habits-of-Mind.aspx (accessed on Oct. 15, 2020).

[4] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Q. 57, Art.1 at https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2057.htm (accessed on Jan. 21, 2021).

[5] See the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist, Disciple of Christ: Education in Virtue program’s list of virtues to learn in a Catholic school at https://golepress.com/welcome/education-in-virtue/ (accessed on Jan. 21, 2021).

[6] St. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate 27, 5 ad 5.

[7] Sr. Teresa Auer, O.P., Called to Happiness: Guiding Ethical Principles (Third ed.) (Nashville, Tenn.: St. Cecilia Congregation, 2013), 163.

[8] See Auer (2013) 156 for examples.

[9] See Martin Augustine Waldron, “Virtue,” The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 15 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912) at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15472a.htm (accessed on Oct. 23, 2020) for definitions of the intellectual virtues.

[10] Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.982b.

[11] Anders Schinkel, “The Educational Importance of Deep Wonder” (2017), Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 51, No. 2 (2017), 543.

[12] Schinkel, 544.

[13] Newman frequently references this passage from Psalm 2:11 in his works.

[14] St. John Henry Newman, “Sermon 2: Reverence, a Belief in God’s Presence” 26 at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume5/sermon2.html (accessed on Jan. 21, 2021).

[15] St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998) 33.

[16] Fr. David Pignato, “The Primacy of Faith and the Priority of Reason: A Justification for Public Recognition of Revealed Truth,” The Saint Anselm Journal, 12.2 (Spring 2017) 52-65.

[17] “Pope’s Q and A on the Challenges of Education,” ZENIT (Nov. 23, 2015) at https://zenit.org/2015/11/23/pope-s-q-and-a-on-the-challenges-of-education/ (accessed on Jan. 21, 2021).

[18] Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, The Catholic School (Vatican, 1977) 39.

[19] See “Educating to Truth, Beauty and Goodness” from The Cardinal Newman Society at https://newmansociety.org/educating-to-truth-beauty-and-goodness-2/

[20] Aquinas, De Veritate, Q.1, A. 1-3; cf. Summa Theologiae, Q. 16.

[21] See Fr. Robert Spitzer, New Proofs for the Existence of God (Grand Rapids: MI.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2010) 259-266.

[22] For further reading, we recommend the following resources: Auer (2013); Luigi Guisanni, The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995); Curtis Hancock, Recovering a Catholic Philosophy of Elementary Education (Mount Pocono, PA: Newman House Press, 2005); and St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998).

Copyright © 2023 The Cardinal Newman Society, 10432 Balls Ford Road, Ste. 300, Manassas, Virginia 20109, (703) 367-0333, www.CardinalNewmanSociety.org. Permission to reprint without modification.

 

Eucharistic Literacy: Forming Teachers as Effective Catechists

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At Mass, you often see mothers whispering into the ears of their squirming toddlers. Occasionally you can catch the words, “Look, it’s Jesus!” Shortly after the consecration, the congregation echoes loudly this whispered declaration of faith, “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the word, have mercy on us.” Both confessions are needed to help the child see who is present on the altar; who is present to us in the Blessed Sacrament. Eucharistic literacy begins with the family and is supported by the parish family.

What, then, if these great truths learned at home and at Sunday Mass are largely forgotten the rest of the week? In secular schools, Christ is disregarded as irrelevant to daily life, and learning is focused on career readiness and a secular worldview that pretends Christ never redeemed the world. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that most young adult Catholics who never had a strong Catholic education do not believe the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

There is a need for the Eucharistic revival, and Eucharistic literacy through Catholic education is a crucial component. The revival can take many approaches, but at Sophia Institute for Teachers, we have seen the importance of forming Catholic educators: parents, catechists, and teachers. This mission extends beyond giving them the tools to teach, but also inviting them to experience Divine Love through the Sacraments. How can teachers proclaim, “Look, it’s Jesus,” without knowing His gaze upon them?

There is much that Catholic schools, dioceses, and colleges can do to form educators who are already hired. Since 2014, the Sophia Institute has provided day-long catechetical workshops for tens of thousands of Catholic educators around the country, and we are happy with the impact of this simple solution. A theological scholar’s more intellectual sessions are balanced with practical, pedagogical sessions from a Sophia master teacher that model concrete ways to make these concepts present to the students. The teachers’ imaginations are fed, and then they are sent home with lesson plans to use with their students. But most importantly, there are sessions for reflection and prayer, with the Holy Mass at the center of the day. 

At our recent workshop on the Eucharist called, Encountering God’s Love in the Sacraments, Franciscan University’s Dr. James Pauley made four points for teaching students during this Eucharistic Revival:

1 | teach and show them how to deeply invest,

2 | help them develop fluency in Sacramental language,

3 | help them see the Mass as the supreme encounter with love, and

4 | provide them a joyful witness to Jesus in the Eucharist.

All four of these points were incorporated into the pedagogical sessions hosted by our master teacher, Jose Gonzalez. He led teachers in meditating on the mysteries of the Eucharist through sacred art. They learned, some for the first time, about how the Old Testament revealed the gift of the Eucharist in the New Testament. And Jose drew on his experience to offer engaging ways to speak and teach about the Mass and the Liturgy. All these activities were ordered to the joyful experience of Holy Mass and Adoration together.

The results were encouraging: 93 percent of attendees reported feeling more confident and renewed in teaching the Faith, 89 percent gained new lesson ideas, and 93 percent learned new content about the Eucharist. These figures align with typical feedback from our workshops.

This is how we will see a genuine revival in our schools. Teachers of all subjects must see that the goal is not only familiarity with the doctrine of the Eucharist, but leading young people and their families to an authentic encounter with the Lord through the Eucharist. Strengthening Eucharistic literacy among students—helping them truly know and gain some understanding of the mysteries of the Eucharist—begins with hiring teachers who themselves are “literate” in the Church’s teaching and devotion to the Holy Sacrament. But just as ongoing formation is needed in all subjects, so is catechetical formation for all teachers.

We invite dioceses to schedule workshops with the Sophia Institute for Teachers, or schools and colleges can follow a similar model in their teacher formation programs. One key is to ensure that each workshop attendee leaves with all the tools they need to continue what they began. We provide multiple lesson plans, following the example of Our Lord by both informing and giving personal witness. Teachers tell their students, “Look, it’s Jesus!” by what they say, the content they teach, and how they behave. The lesson plans offer consistent support, guidance, and encouragement.

Just as ongoing formation is needed in all subjects, so is catechetical formation for all teachers

To help develop “fluency in Sacramental language,” as Dr. Pauley recommends, our Spirit of Truth series of lesson plans immerses the students in vocabulary from an early age. For example, we don’t wait until 5th or 7th grade to introduce the word “transubstantiation” but begin in 2nd grade, when most are preparing to receive First Communion. The students are guided to find the root of the word “substance” and make the connection with the word “transform,” even if the concept is not completely mastered for many years.

We hope that through the encounters with the Lord facilitated by these lessons, teachers will see their pivotal role in the classroom. The teacher stands alongside the parent, proclaiming to the children, “Look, it’s Jesus.” This requires a vibrant faith, fluency in the Sacramental language, and a personal connection with Christ. Belief in the Real Presence can only come from God by grace, but teachers can lead students to Him.