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The mind is the seat of Christian belief and knowledge, and therefore it is the target of the Enemy’s lies and corruption, warned Monsignor James Shea, President of the University of Mary, in his keynote address to The Cardinal Newman Society’s Newman Guide College Leaders Summit in June.

That is why Newman Guide education, with its faithfully Catholic understanding of the world and clarity about the deceptions that have confused most young people today, is best suited to helping students reject the lies and rebuild Christian culture.

Shea noted that, while The Cardinal Newman Society has high standards for recognition in The Newman Guide, Christ calls educators to the highest standard: to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” For all people, there is always a gap between who we are and who we are called to be. We lack perfection in our passions, senses, emotions, and will. Despite attempts to improve, our mediocrity only seems to deepen.

Citing St. John Henry Newman, Shea explained that difficulties with holiness are not found primarily in the lower faculties or even in the will.

“The defect actually is in the highest and the most noble of all of our faculties, which is in the mind,” said Shea. “Our problem is an intellectual problem. And our problem, first and foremost, is that we are confused about the meaning and the purpose of our lives; that we fundamentally miss the point.”

We ask too many questions about what Jesus would do or what our behavior should be, when the real question has to do with taking on the mind of Christ: What does Jesus think?

According to Newman, Shea said, the Cross is the triumph of what, by human standards, was an epic failure. By God’s standards, however, the Cross is the true measure of the world. Newman said if we want to understand our lives and measure them rightly, we must go to the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross puts its true value upon everything. Every other way of proceeding is defective because it is a worldly way of thinking.

The source of human mediocrity, then, is the intellect, and Catholic educators must strive to repair this defect in themselves and their students.

“Learning to be present, the way that the Lord was present, to the circumstances right in front of us; doing God’s will, come what may; and not making our success or our achievement the condition of our effort,” said Shea, “but truly doing God’s will and allowing the triumph of the Cross to be part of both our lives and our institutions, is essential to the question of education as evangelization.”

Defeating strongholds in the mind

Authentic Catholic education is evangelical, he said, because Catholic educators are “entrusted with the formation of the minds of our students. And we know that it’s not just information, and not even just knowledge, but it’s wisdom which we seek to impart, which involves a transformation of mind. …Jesus is described in the prologue to John’s Gospel as the light coming into the world which enlightened every man.”

Scripture tells us, in Romans 12, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” In 1 Corinthians 2:16, St. Paul says, “we have the mind of Christ.” And in Philippians 2:5, “have the same mind as Christ, who though He was in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at.”

Conversion of the mind results in the conversion of the will and passions, Shea said, as they fall into place with the intellect. Jesus tells us: if you’re going to give testimony, don’t worry about when or what you will say. This doesn’t mean that we don’t need education or formation. It’s just the opposite. Jesus had already deeply formed the minds and hearts of His disciples before sending them out so that they wouldn’t have to worry tactically about what to say when they were brought to trial. Their defense would well up from within them, from their formed minds and souls, which were repositories of the Holy Spirit.

This is the work faithful Catholic education carries on, and at Newman Guide Recommended institutions, “we do it better than anyone,” Shea said.  But educators must stay alert and focused on their task of evangelization.

Shea noted that the Desert Fathers in the fourth century discovered that there are different thoughts that the Enemy, the devil, uses to attack men. This understanding of men’s thoughts is the basis of the seven deadly sins. This is why conversion of mind is the essence of true and deep conversion, because the Enemy is fundamentally a liar, and the arena of spiritual warfare is the mind. While the tempter can get hold of our emotions and tries to affect our will, primarily he is a liar, a deceiver, a false accuser. The mind, then, is the arena of spiritual warfare.

Shea explained how, over time, the deceived mind can become a type of prison — strongholds, as St. Paul called them.

“Strongholds are deeply entrenched in human reasoning, corrupted by the enemy’s lies,” Shea said. “They build up over a lifetime, reinforced by repetition, deepened by emotion, and confirmed by culture. And strongholds cannot be torn down by human power. Divine power tears down strongholds.”

Both the spiritual and the intellectual formation of students, then, should teach them how to reject lies as much as receive truth. Shea frequently tells his students: “Your mind is not meant to be a prison. It is meant to be a fortress. There should be no safer place than retreating into your own thoughts, where you can remind yourself who you are and who God is.”

Leading the way forward

Educators in Newman Guide Recommended institutions, because they are on the front lines of this battle and do the best job of formation and enlightenment of the mind, are going to be under a similar attack by the Enemy all the time. This is especially true, according to Shea, in this post-Christian society and civilization. It has been noted that we are not living in an age of change but in a change of the ages.

Because of this shift, and because our culture is not Christendom anymore, Shea encouraged The Cardinal Newman Society to not only promote ways of doing Catholic education right, but also to help Catholic educators discern ways in which secular, materialistic, utilitarian, pragmatic, relativistic, and anti-human thought — today composing a type of competing religion in our post-Christian, post-truth age — may be seeping into even the most faithful Catholic institutions.

These elements are pervasive, so much a part of the air we all breathe, and they are especially so for students who may know no other way of encountering reality. Catholic educators need to look out for them and call them out when discovered. Unless Newman Guide educators do that, evaluating and measuring the problem carefully, we are losing ground.

Shea closed by praising The Cardinal Newman Society for doing great work and for not giving in to discouragement, but instead choosing a path of beauty and holiness in seeking out ways in which the Holy Spirit is working in good, wholesome, Catholic education and showing and encouraging a way forward.

“Let’s be bright and happy warriors in the midst of a difficult time which still challenges us,” said Shea, “because we know that in the end the victory has already been won — and so as long as we don’t give up, we’ll always win!”

This article is a summary of the address given at The Newman Guide College Leaders Summit by Monsignor James Patrick Shea, president of the University of Mary.