Forming Hearts and Minds of Students for Worship

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To understand the place of the Eucharist in Catholic education, we must first understand worship. Here are four elements of worship that Catholic educators should contemplate: worth, training, method, and culmination.

Worship requires worth

Each morning, Catholics and Jews greet the new day with the words of the 95th Psalm of David:

Come, let us sing to the Lord. Shout for joy to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him with praise and Thanksgiving…O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!

Psalm 95 forms an integral part of Jewish morning prayers and, as Catholics, we received this inheritance and incorporated it into Lauds (Morning Prayer) of the Roman Rite Liturgy of the Hours. With our Jewish brothers and sisters, we share a fundamental conviction that the first impulse of the day should be worship.

The very word worship reveals the nature of the act. Worship at its most fundamental is to recognize something as having ultimate worth. Another way to put it is to say: to worship is to “make a big deal” of something. In worshipping we acknowledge that we have found something so precious and full of worth that we have to name it. The American novelist David Foster Wallace famously remarked to a group of 2005 graduates of Kenyon College that worship is in no way optional:

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship. Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

The task of all education, then, is the task of proposing to students what ought to be worshipped, what is worthy. To propose divine worship to students, the highest calling of Catholic education, is to invite them to behold the eternal significance and beauty of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, the worth of this Lord Jesus is not self-evident to students inhabiting a world saturated with Tik-Tok stars, influencers, and billionaire entrepreneurs. Despite its challenges, it is the joyful obligation of each generation committed to Catholic education to unmask all that is truly worthless and to propose anew the One who is worthy of ultimate value and supreme worship.

Worship requires training

While worship is the most natural thing in the world to us, it can also seem thoroughly alien. To focus on another… to forget myself for a moment… to not ask, “How long will this take?” or “How much will this cost?” or “What will I get out of it?”… to restrain these impulses will very often feel completely unnatural. The truth, though, is that each of our students was made for this worship and made to find all their joy and fulfillment in discovering this Worth. Yet, just because we were made for worship doesn’t mean learning to worship will be easy. We were made to speak, to walk, and to use our hands, and when these are learned they bring untold joy and fulfillment but learning to do each of these required awkward beginnings and hours of frustrating practice. After those hours, we found ourselves capable not simply of speaking and walking but even of singing and running. Worship, like all these others, while ordained to us, is not automatic to us. Training and practice are necessary to cultivate a real habit of worship. It must be explained, prepared for, done, reflected upon, and done all over again. It cannot simply be taught; it must be caught.

As Catholic schools seek to prepare the ground for Eucharistic revival, we must prepare the hearts and minds of students for worship. Taking time at the beginning of a new school year to explain our rites, practice our responses, and rehearse our music are all seemingly mundane but essential steps in helping us move from merely standing to running in worship. The Church, in her wisdom, has given us liturgies and devotions to be used over and over and over again, so that the music and prayers and responses can be practiced and properly learned, moving from our lips to deep down in our innermost being. In this way, we are slowly being trained, so that one day when we have a moment when we don’t know how or what to pray, words will be given.

Worship requires a method

To train ourselves to acknowledge ultimate worth requires some kind of method. Since man first sought to draw closer to this Power behind all things, what one scholar called the mysterium tremendens et fascinans, the method has been sacrifice. While sacrifice has certainly looked different through the ages, the essential quality remains the same: to sacrifice is to waste something on your God. At the height of Israel’s sacrificial economy, one Passover might see the blood of 250,000 lambs shed. Whether the ancient sacrificial offering was flesh, grain, or oil, the essential meaning of the gift was the same. These things I am offering are precious to me, yet this rare and precious thing is not worth more to me than my God. He is source of all that I have, so He is more precious. He is worth more.

Now, these things are easily accessible to us. They are not fitting sacrifices, because they are too easy. For sacrificial worship to have its proper place in our schools, other sacrifices must be made. For school leadership, it will be the sacrifice of time, something which is so precious, because we have such a limited amount of it. To propose worship to students is to ask Catholic schools to sacrifice time and resources. It is to carve out time from instruction, from organizations, from sports, and from all the other demands of a school day and to “waste it” on Our Lord. It is to “waste” resources (that’s the polite word for money) on music and art and a space that is fitting for a God of goodness, truth, and beauty. If our school liturgies require no waste, then we must ask to what degree they are training for worship.

Putting the blade to instructional time and every other urgent need in a school schedule is no easy ask for Catholic school leadership. What is asked of our students in this sacrificial worship is to offer up something that will seem to many of them even more precious: their sense of dignity, their sense of “not caring,” of aloof “coolness” and social status. For so many of our students, these are precious offerings, but these too must be invited to be placed on the altar. None of these sacrifices will be easy, and if they were, they would not be worthy of divine worship, but by the gift of sheer divine grace, schools and students can be trained.

Worship requires culmination

It should be obvious to all concerned that the habit of worship we’ve described, in all its beauty and profundity, is incredibly difficult. Not just for the obvious reasons we have spoken of, that training is required and that we are easily distracted and easily turned back in on ourselves. More tragically, though, these lips that speak God’s praises also soon take up gossip and slander. The hearts that we lift up to the Trinity in adoration are often deceitful. And it is for these reasons that the culmination of our worship is nothing we offer. The climax of our school worship cannot simply be preaching, no matter how engaging, or singing, no matter how robust, or prayer, no matter how earnest. These are our acts of devotion, but the crown of Christian worship, the end of Christian worship is not our offering, but His: the Eucharist. Our worship finds its source and summit in the Mass because there, and only there, is found the perfect act of worship and obedience to the Father.

For centuries the children of Israel called themselves to worship, longing for the day when a perfect temple, with holy priests, would offer perfect praise to the Father. Now, in our Eucharistic worship, we encounter the one who in His death declared the worth and beauty of the Heavenly Father. In the eternal Son’s offering of Himself, He gathers up our scattered voices, imperfect singing, and distracted praying, and, united with Him, makes of our worship something glorious and truly worthy.

The journey towards this culmination of our worship is no small labor. We take up this adventure of worship with all the sacrifice and training required, not simply because it is “right and just,” though to be sure it is. We propose right worship to our students because worship is not simply our duty, it is our destiny. It is the future for which every student in our schools was made. One day, when this veil of tears is lifted and we know Him, even as we are fully known, sacraments will cease, but worship, the Revelation of St. John promises, will not. One day it is all we will do, and of it, we will never tire.

Eucharist, The Heart of Catholic Education

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“The sacred liturgy does not exhaust the entire activity of the Church…. Nevertheless, the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time, it is the font from which all her power flows” (The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 9-10).

We begin with an image. One of the most profound visual statements of the Catholic educational ideal — namely, the integration of the various disciplines of human wisdom in the light of the divine Wisdom incarnate — is portrayed in the tympanum over the right door to the main entrance of the Cathedral of Our Lady in the city of Chartres, France.

Chartres was the sight of a tremendous intellectual renaissance in the twelfth century, which witnessed not only the construction of this magnificent cathedral, but also the founding of a remarkable academic institution, the Cathedral school. This was an institution that brought together in one place for the purposes of research and teaching many of the best and wisest scholars of the day, an institution that would serve as a model for the creation and development of that amazing medieval invention, the university.

For the great scholars and visionaries at Chartres, their challenge was to create an educational framework in which the disciplines of human wisdom might be married to the revelation of divine Wisdom in the person of Jesus Christ. Indeed, this portal sculpture is an artistic expression of precisely that intellectual vision.

If you do an online search for an image of “the seven liberal arts and the western portal at Chartres,” you will find several good photographs of the tympanum, some of which have the characters labeled. In the middle, you will see the famous Sedes Sapientae, or holy “Seat of Wisdom.” Surrounding it in the archivolts are personifications of the seven liberal arts: on the bottom right, grammar, who is teaching two boys to write; moving then to the bottom left, we find dialectic, in whose right hand is a flower and in whose left hand is the head of a barking dog; proceeding around clockwise, we find rhetoric, who is pictured proclaiming a speech; geometry, who is shown writing figures on a tablet; arithmetic, whose attributes have been effaced over the centuries, so no one is sure what she is doing; astronomy, who is gazing up at the sky; and finally, moving to the inner archivolt, music, who is playing two instruments: the twelve-stringed harp and some bells. Underneath each of the arts is a representation of the thinker classically associated with that discipline: Priscian for grammar, Aristotle for dialectic, Cicero for rhetoric, Euclid for geometry, Boethius for arithmetic, Ptolemy for astronomy, and most likely Pythagoras for music, about whom Cassiodorus had related the story that he had “invented the principles of this discipline from the sound of bells and the percussive extension of chords.”

Here at Chartres, we see in concrete, visible form the artistic record of an attempt to integrate human wisdom, as exemplified by its instruments — namely, the seven liberal arts — with Wisdom incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. The visual movement of the image, moreover, goes in both directions. The arts and disciplines of human wisdom are seen as a preparation for an increased understanding of faith: they surround and support the image of Wisdom Incarnate in the center. By the same token, the Seat of Wisdom is pictured at the center as both the source and summit of all human wisdom. Mary sits at the center of the arts as a paradigm — as the “Seat of Wisdom” — because she is a model of one who obediently responded to God’s word, thus giving birth (in her case, quite literally) to God’s Wisdom Incarnate.

This point is emphasized in the two friezes below, both of which illustrate the events of the Christ’s birth. In the bottom frieze (reading from left to right), we see the Annunciation, the Visitation, and in the middle, the birth of Christ, with the angel leading the shepherds in from the right, sheep in tow. In the top frieze, we see Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus at the altar in the Temple. If you look closely, you’ll see that, unfortunately, likely due to violence done to the cathedral during the French Revolution, Christ is missing His head.

I am sometimes asked: “Doesn’t Jesus look sort of a like a loaf of bread?” The answer is, yes, and it’s not just because He’s missing his head. Scholars tell us that these images were carved in response to a Eucharistic controversy raging at the time, in which certain groups were emphasizing the presence of the Risen Christ of heaven in the Eucharist, perhaps to the detriment of an understanding of the Eucharist which might include the living Christ who lived and walked the earth. Here at Chartres, we see an attempt to correct that potential misunderstanding by including within the Eucharistic imagery scenes from Christ’s birth. This theological and historical context helps explain why the artist pictures the child Jesus on top of an altar rather than in Mary’s arms or in a manger.

Let me stress that such details are not merely artistic trivia. Lying behind this entire set of images is a very conscious theology of Incarnation and sacramentality. If God has created the world and reveals Himself to us through His creation, then we have the possibility (as St. Paul tells us) of coming to know the invisible attributes of God through the visible things of creation. As in the visible, earthly elements of the Eucharist, we are meant to see the real presence of Christ, the Word made flesh, so also, in the visible, earthly elements of creation, we are meant to see the presence of God’s creative Word and Wisdom.

It would be a similar theology of Incarnation, moreover, that would allow the word and wisdom of God to become incarnate in actual, human language and thus, by extension, present and embodied on a written page such as the Scriptures.

Thus, as the scholars at Chartres understood, we must learn to read both the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture, for they are not mutually exclusive. Rather, on this view, they will ultimately illumine each other because they both have the one God as their Author. Indeed, on the classical Christian understanding of the seven liberal arts, the trivium (or “threefold way”), which includes grammar, rhetoric, and logic, are precisely the disciplines that teach us how to read and understand the Book of Scripture; while the quadrivium (the “fourfold way”), the arts of geometry, mathematics, astronomy, and music, are those that guide us in our understanding of the Book of Nature. The portal image makes clear, however that this reading — whether of one book or the other (and notice that each of the classical thinkers associated with the arts is pictured writing in a book, which is the classic medieval pose for the four Gospel writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) —must always be done in the light of the divine Wisdom incarnate.

Note how, in this vision of an authentically Catholic education, all the disciplines are present and effectively integrated. This aspiration to unity and integration of all the disciplines is one that has continued to inspire the best Catholic educational institutions in the centuries since. It was the vision that inspired the nineteenth century theologian and saint, John Henry Cardinal Newman, to write his important and influential book, The Idea of a University, although it was a vision he had nurtured for years. In one of his earlier sermons, for example, he wrote:

Here, then, I conceive, is the object of … setting up universities; it is to reunite things which were in the beginning joined together by God and have been put asunder by man…. It will not satisfy me, what satisfies too many, to have two independent systems, intellectual and religious, going at once side by side, by a sort of division of labor, and only accidentally brought together. It will not satisfy me, if religion is here and science there, and young men converse with science all day and lodge with religion in the evening…. I wish the intellect to range with the utmost freedom, and religion to enjoy an equal freedom, but what I am stipulating is, that they should be found in one and the same place and exemplified in the same persons (Cardinal Newman, in Sermon I of Sermons on Various Occasions).

What is especially poignant in this passage is the marriage imagery: the notion that in setting up universities, our goal should be “to reunite things which were in the beginning joined together by God and have been put asunder by man.” The rule in contemporary universities, however, is to allow our students to fall into (indeed, we often insist that they fall into) one or another of the disciplines, to the detriment of — perhaps even the exclusion of — the others. It is perhaps not inaccurate to say of the faculty and staff of the modern university that they are like the orphaned children of a sad divorce: a divorce not only between human wisdom and divine Wisdom, but also between and within the disciplines themselves. The job of a Christian university, then, is to do what secular culture cannot: unite what has been put asunder by man.

Bridging these divides, uniting what has been put asunder, and integrating what should be seen as a whole, was the challenge set forth by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Ex corde Ecclesiae. Allow me, if I may, to quote the passage I have in mind in full.

The integration of knowledge is a process, one which will always remain incomplete; moreover, the explosion of knowledge in recent decades, together with the rigid compartmentalization of knowledge within individual academic disciplines, makes the task increasingly difficult. But a University, and especially a Catholic University, “has to be a ‘living union’ of individual organisms dedicated to the search for truth … It is necessary to work towards a higher synthesis of knowledge, in which alone lies the possibility of satisfying that thirst for truth which is profoundly inscribed on the heart of the human person.” Aided by the specific contributions of philosophy and theology, university scholars will be engaged in a constant effort to determine the relative place and meaning of each of the various disciplines within the context of a vision of the human person and the world that is enlightened by the Gospel, and therefore, by a faith in Christ, the Logos, as the center of creation and of human history (Ex corde Ecclesiae 35).

Bridging these divides — bridging especially the significant division between what author C. P. Snow once called “the two cultures”: the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the humanities, on the other — is necessary not only for the health of the secular academy, but it is an absolute requirement, as Newman and Pope John Paul II have made clear, for a truly Catholic education. Only if we help our students bridge this divide will we have helped them achieve the kind of unified and integrated human wisdom — both of themselves and of the world — that could serve as the proper handmaiden of the Divine Wisdom Incarnate.

Randall Smith is a Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. He is the author of four books, including How to Read a Sermon by Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (Emmaus); Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture of Medieval Paris (Cambridge); and From Here to Eternity: Reflections on Death, Immortality, and the Resurrection of the Body (Emmaus). His next book — the only book-length commentary in English on Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind into God — will be available from Cambridge University Press in the fall of 2024.

What Is “Eucharistic Education”? Why Do We Need It?

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The need is acute. Christ our Lord’s greatest gift to His Church—the gift of Himself in the Holy Eucharist—is being neglected by far too many Catholics. The pews are emptying, vocations are plummeting, and the Church is graying because those not attending Mass on Sundays do not realize what they are missing. The King of Kings yearns to enter under their roofs, but He finds closed doors. “We are too busy,” they mutter, as they shuffle from soccer practice to scouts. “We have access to everything on our phones. What need is there for church?”

The time has come to address this crisis of faith head-on. One entity in the Church is specially equipped for this challenge—the Catholic school on the primary, secondary, and university levels. The Catholic school can inspire Catholics to love the Blessed Sacrament through Eucharistic education.

What is “Eucharistic education”? It is more than teaching about the Eucharist, though such teaching is certainly included. Eucharistic education places the Eucharist at the center of a school’s life—its academic curriculum, its formational programming, and, to the extent possible, its extracurricular activities. All of these elements receive their shape from the Eucharist and are ordered to leading students to a deeper love for it. In other words, the Eucharist is the summit and source of a school’s life.

The first step toward a Eucharistic education is explicitly including the Eucharist in every area of a Catholic school. It should be stated in a school’s mission statement: the school exists to develop its students’ personal relationships with Jesus Christ, who is fully present to them in the Eucharist. It should be included, in varying degrees, in both the titles and the content of religion classes at all grade levels. It should feature prominently in religious events in addition to Mass: visits to the chapel, Eucharistic adoration, an annual Eucharistic procession. It should be showcased in artwork and other decorations spread throughout the school building.

When the Eucharist is incorporated into the mission statement, into course titles, and into school décor, administrators, teachers, and campus ministers receive support and motivation to make these stated goals a reality in their classrooms and programming. Once it is clear that every person in the school is scaling the same summit and receiving power from the same source, the day-to-day work of Eucharistic education becomes easier and more exciting.

In the academic realm, religion courses take the lead in providing a Eucharistic education. Regardless of grade level, religion courses typically are divided by theme: God and creation, Jesus Christ, the Church, Sacred Scripture, the sacraments, and morality. In a Eucharistic education, the Eucharist is taught in every course, not just the courses on sacraments including the Mass. The essence of what the Eucharist is, in varying depths depending on the grade level, is repeated every year. In addition, the different course themes allow for different accents on the Eucharist: Scripture courses examine both the Old Testament types of the Eucharist and its New Testament description; morality courses underscore how we live the Eucharist as the sacrament of charity; courses in ecclesiology and Church history highlight how the Church, like the Eucharist itself, is the Body of Christ and how, in the words of St. John Paul II, “the Eucharist builds the Church and the Church makes the Eucharist.”

Religion class lessons are essential, but they are only as strong as the religious programming that makes these lessons become flesh before students’ eyes. That is, religion classes and the celebration of the sacraments are mutually enriching, and the success of one depends on the success of the other. Every effort must be made, then, to ensure that Masses, celebrations of the sacraments, and other religious events, such as holy hours and retreats, treat the Eucharist with the utmost devotion and reverence.

This requires some soul searching on the part of administrators and campus ministers, as the tendency in today’s Catholic schools is to involve multiple students in administering these religious events. The intentions in assigning liturgical roles to students are noble, but the reality of doing so is that the solemnity and the unique character of the Eucharist diminishes if students see their peers handling the Eucharist and taking over roles in the Mass that belong to adults. In particular, students serving as extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion should be avoided: in the minds of students, if a peer can touch something, then that something is not special. To that end, schools can help foster deeper devotion to the Eucharist by encouraging students to receive Holy Communion on their tongues. Students know that they cannot touch precious objects, be they in the home or in a museum. If they are instructed similarly on the Eucharist, they will learn how special the Eucharist is without using books or memorizing definitions.

A key feature of Eucharistic education is that it permeates all curricula, not merely the religion courses. Art, music, Latin, literature, history, and science courses can all include lessons on the Eucharist that, in varying ways, present the Eucharist as the heart of Christian life. These lessons are not catechetical; such instruction occurs in religion course. Rather, these lessons engage students’ hearts and imaginations, which are essential components within a person’s faith life.

In art classes of varying grade levels, students can learn creative ways to depict the fact that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ. They can also study paintings that do the same. In music classes, students can learn the great Eucharistic hymns in English and in Latin. For students studying the Latin language, these hymns take on much more meaning, as they can both reiterate and learn anew grammatical features and vocabulary. In addition to the standard prayers (Pater Noster, Ave Maria), students can begin class with the Eucharistic prayers (Adoro Te Devote, Tantum Ergo) that they can recite, sing, and memorize.

There are not many stories or literary works that include the Eucharist as a major plot element, but incorporating the few that do into the curriculum will allow students to see in an imaginative way how essential the Eucharist is to our lives. Middle school students can read the Chronicles of Narnia with its theme of sacrifice. High school and college students have two short story options: “A Hint of an Explanation,” by Graham Greene, and “Benediction,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the C.S. Lewis novel Till We Have Faces.

History courses offer many opportunities for teachers to add events that most certainly will not be included in the average textbooks but fit perfectly into the traditional chronologically divided periods. For example, when studying Roman history, students can read the letter from Pliny to Emperor Trajan, written in 110 AD, inquiring what the former should do with the Christians in his territory; Pliny briefly describes the celebration of Eucharist at that time. Medieval history can include the first Eucharistic heresy of Berengarius of Tours and the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi. Courses on the Protestant Reformation can contrast Luther’s heretical theology of the Eucharist with that of Catholic theology. American colonial history can include the French Jesuits of New York and the Mohawks’ attack on St. Isaac Jogues which was motivated by their belief that the saint’s implements for Mass were instruments of black magic.

Science class seems the most unlikely of places to discuss the Eucharist, but, in a secular age, it provides the perfect forum for studying the Eucharistic miracles that have taken place over the centuries, particularly the ones of the twenty-first century that occurred in Poland, India, and Mexico, and that have been studied with the latest scientific instruments. The segue for presenting the miracles could be the study of blood types or of muscle composition. The Eucharistic miracles offer so much to today’s students. First, they offer scientific support for their faith in the word of Jesus Christ that the Eucharist is really His body and blood. Second, they help overcome the popular notion that faith contradicts science. Third, their wondrous nature helps capture not only students’ intellects, but their imaginations as well. As students speculate how it is possible that these miracles came about, they are forced to consider God’s power over creation, a power that can transform ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Amidst the variety of academic disciplines and other activities in a school, it can be difficult to unite them all with a single theme. Eucharistic education provides that unity by directing, like a skilled concert master, all of a school’s elements in a harmonious orchestra in which students, teachers, and parents all know the tune. The tune is union with Jesus Christ, who is truly present in the Eucharist. As students study the Eucharist, they study Jesus. As they spend more time with the Eucharist and fall in love with it, they fall in love with Jesus. In helping students grow in this love, the Catholic school has fulfilled its mission. Eucharistic education will lead students to the Bread of Life.

 

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 recently entered 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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Click here for PDF
 

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.