Connecting Catholic Education
No one truly deserves to be called “educated.”
What I mean is, no human ever completes their education. It’s never accomplished, except in small part. Education is a lifelong journey that probably continues into eternity!
Nevertheless, we talk of high school graduation as a conclusion, college as the pinnacle of education, and doctorates as “terminal degrees.” We carve up education into a multi-step progression—from primary to secondary to higher education—and treat each level like a distinct program. Both students and teachers at each level are regarded as entirely different, and in most schools and colleges, there is minimal interaction across levels.
While there are reasons for this, The Cardinal Newman Society thinks Catholic education needs to unify. Next June, we’ll shatter convention with our Newman Guide Leaders Summit for administrators from all levels and types of Newman Guide Recommended education. And through our Newman Guide Network, we’re encouraging collaboration among peer groups but also across all Newman Guide Recommended institutions.
While Catholic schools, colleges, and other programs—and the grades and levels within them—are beautifully diverse in particular aspects, The Cardinal Newman Society strives to restore the common foundation and mission of all Catholic education. Our Newman Guide standards draw attention to the end toward which all Catholic education should stive: the full communion of every person with the Father, through Jesus Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit.
This is the meaning of the high red bar in the Cardinal Newman Society logo, typically running across the page. It symbolizes the high standards of faithful Catholic education, to which all Newman Guide Recommended institutions are committed. But it also is meant to remind us of the lifelong continuum of Catholic education, which begins with the parents’ baptismal promise to raise a child in the Faith and continues through the Christian life.
We think the practical divisions of Catholic education should not get in the way of ensuring faithful formation for every Catholic of every age. The divisions also need not prevent collaboration for the good of all. It’s time to unite and hold the center against the confusion, legal threats, and ideological distortions of our age, for the good of Catholic families.
Lifelong continuum
After nearly two decades of celebrating Catholic colleges in The Newman Guide, with rapidly growing numbers of recommended grade schools and graduate programs and soon also homeschooling, online, and hybrid options, we’re emphasizing the lifelong continuum of Catholic education for people of all ages.
Formation in faith and virtue isn’t just for children. And college isn’t the moment when young adults no longer need guidance—far from it! In fact, we need Catholic education throughout our lifetimes.
Of course, it’s a great blessing that educators today know so much more about the psychological development of their students and can ensure that curricula and pedagogy are age-appropriate. It helps to classify education by grade level, stage of formation (primary, secondary, and higher education), and educational approach. Some classical educators are embracing developmental stages called grammar, logic, and rhetoric, although others regard these as liberal arts that should not be strictly age-limited.
And yet, while broad age-related divisions are helpful, we must remember that they are conceptual and can be too rigidly enforced. We risk shackling students and preventing them from exploring the unity of all knowledge and ascending above it toward God. If we don’t serve every Catholic at every age, we risk excluding people who would benefit from Catholic education. If we don’t keep focus on the enduring mission of Catholic education across all levels, then we narrow our expectations to particulars and lose sight of the goal that lies beyond this life.
It doesn’t help that modern society is preoccupied with the diploma—a piece of paper signaling preparation for employment—instead of delighting in the daily encounter with truth. That encounter is no less fulfilling for the elderly as it is for children.
Mutual success
Moreover, just as Catholic education serves the good of the individual student as well as the good of the Church and society, so should every Catholic school, college, or other educational program be individually excellent yet also collaborate in its mission of evangelization with other educators.
We are excited to see leaders from the Newman Guide Recommended colleges already working in many ways to strengthen personnel policies, share costs, recruit students, etc.—always united in their shared mission. Now, as the number of recommended schools and other programs increases, our Newman Guide Network is forging ties among those faithful Catholic educators for mutual support.
The big task that remains is to build ties across levels. Our leaders summit in June will be a big step, with two cohorts—higher education leaders and leaders of grade-school, homeschool, and other programs—meeting separately for some time but then also gathering together for fellowship and attention to their shared mission. In addition, we are encouraging elementary and secondary education leaders to promote attendance at Newman Guide Recommended colleges, and we are encouraging colleges to forge relationships with Newman Guide Recommended schools and homeschool programs.
One key area of collaboration that is urgently needed is in the defense of faithful education from threats to religious freedom and from ideological activism. The Cardinal Newman Society has long been a vital conduit of information and advice from legal experts to educators. We also recommend actions to stand up and protect these precious institutions.
Heaven or hell
I’ll end with a brief reflection: At what stage of life do we become perfect?
It seems a ludicrous question, and yet I have heard it pronounced with great conviction by various Catholics that catechesis and formation in virtue is for the young, and it does not belong in college. Education in general is something that ends with high school or college graduation. The rest of life is just career and tending to families, perhaps with some private reading along the way.
So is it graduation, then, when we become perfect?
I ask this, because at the moment a Catholic decides education is no longer relevant to his or her life, that must be the moment when the intellect is without error, and the will and passions are perfectly aligned with reason. Only at that moment of perfection does the human have no need of learning and growing.
Until then, all our activity should still be striving for God, by growing in understanding and wisdom without ceasing.
Or maybe there’s an alternative. Perhaps, instead of perfection, we are on the opposite side of holiness when we lose our desire to learn. Perhaps we have lost our desire to know God.
Catholic education belongs in every stage of life. If we move from the liberal arts to specialized studies and skills needed for a particular career, all the more important is the Catholic worldview that situates the particular within the Whole. The alternative to striving for knowledge of God and His wisdom is to fall away from the very purpose for which man was created—and that doesn’t end well.
May faithful Newman Guide education thrive and grow at every level, and by every productive means, for the good of the student and the good of the Church.