“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.
Marriages, Religious Vocations Fostered at Newman Guide Colleges
/in Blog Latest, Newman Guide Articles/by Kelly SalomonWhile Catholic marriages and religious vocations are declining in the United States, Newman Guide Recommended colleges are bucking this trend. Catholic families should seek out these faithful colleges where students are prepared not only for career but also for vocation—including marriage, single life, the priesthood, and religious life.
Forming husbands and wives
Catholic marriage is in crisis. The number of Catholic marriages in the United States declined 77 percent from 426,309 in 1969 to 98,354 in 2021—even though the total number of Catholics grew during the same time period. In a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Catholics approved of cohabitation without marriage.
Faithful Catholic education, however, is ordered toward God’s calling for every student. Newman Guide Recommended colleges teach the truth and beauty of family, and professors and staff witness to the sanctity of marriage. The campus life and student culture are conducive to good friendships and growth in virtue. Students are encouraged to discern their vocations, especially through frequent access to the sacraments, Eucharistic adoration, and prayer.
All these factors contribute to the impressive rates of married alumni who met their spouses while attending Newman Guide institutions, including:
“Attending a Newman Guide college with its promotion of the sacramental life, faithfulness to the Magisterium, and flowering of Catholic culture increases grace in one’s soul, but also increases one’s odds to find a holy spouse,” argues Patrick O’Hearn, author of Courtship of the Saints: How the Saints Met their Spouses.
“Often, young people are so focused on pursuing their occupation rather than their vocation,” O’Hearn says. “Our occupation is always at the service of our vocation… Our first vocation is to be holy. How we live out that vocation (as a priest, consecrated religious, or married) is our second most important calling.”
Religious vocations flourish
In 1970, there were about 800 ordinations to the Catholic priesthood, and today there are only about half that amount. It’s an even bleaker story for religious sisters: a decline from 160,000 in 1970 to just over 35,000 today.
The good news is that Newman Guide Recommended colleges are doing a wonderful job of preparing students for religious vocations. Many Catholic colleges don’t even track or publicize this data, but Newman Guide colleges view religious vocations as a great fruit of their efforts.
The portion of alumni who have answered the call to religious vocations include:
At the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D., the university began keeping track of religious vocations in recent years. The University has 12 women and 20 men in religious formation since 2020.
At ITI Catholic University in Trumau, Austria, where students include both single and married laypeople, seminarians, priests, and religious, approximately 20 percent of graduates pursue religious vocations. Other Newman Guide colleges such as Aquinas College in Nashville, Tenn., and Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., also help prepare religious sisters and priests, respectively, as well as laypeople.
To put this data in perspective, Christendom College was founded in 1977, and with a student body of around 500 has helped form more than 100 alumni priests. If every Catholic college in the country accounted for the same number of alumni priests—even without adjusting for their larger student bodies—that would result in more than 400 additional ordinations each year, nearly doubling the 458 ordinations in 2023. But that would require other Catholic colleges to reject the path of secularization and adopt Christendom’s devotion to truthful formation of its students.
Father Gary Selin, S.T.D., a seminary professor and graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, says the college helped him “acquire the virtues necessary in becoming a disciple before learning to be a leader.”
“At the college, I found myself within a strong community of students where friendships developed organically and deeply,” he explains. “We were united in our desire to deepen our understanding of the truth. I found that all the streamlets of truth led to a unified vision. The overall structure and dynamism of the curriculum led to contemplation of Divine Wisdom, the Triune God. Of course, God’s grace was present during the whole time.”
Fr. Selin adds that he was “impressed with the way that the students gravitated toward the chapel for Holy Mass and personal prayer. The many hours that I spent in prayer in that chapel helped me see how Jesus Christ is the Truth, the source of the wisdom that we discovered through our studies and on our knees in prayer.”
“The atmosphere of friendliness and joy on campus helped me see more clearly that God desires our happiness and beatitude,” says Fr. Selin. “These experiences, along with serving Mass, having holy priest chaplains on campus, and my devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, helped me be more convinced that God had given to me a vocation to the ministerial priesthood.”
May God bless Fr. Selin, and may God bless the work of faithful Catholic colleges in forming the next generation of Catholics for their careers and vocations. The graduates of these colleges are a bright light and source of hope for our Church and culture.
Ep. 21: From Nuclear Engineering to Eucharistic Task Force Leader, Meet Bob Laird of The Cardinal Newman Society
/in Podcast Blog/by Christopher ByrnePodcast: Play in new window | Download
Meet Bob Laird, senior counselor to the president of The Cardinal Newman Society, as he shares his journey from West Point graduate to nuclear engineering, to family life work at the Arlington diocese, to spearheading our Task Force for Eucharistic Education, a program designed to revive Eucharistic understanding and devotion. What is the thread that draws this varied background together? Bob’s deep commitment to his Catholic faith.
Forming Hearts and Minds of Students for Worship
/in Academics Commentary, Eucharistic Education/by Christopher ByrneTo 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
/in Academics Commentary, Eucharistic Education/by Christopher Byrne“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?
/in Academics Commentary, Eucharistic Education/by Christopher ByrneThe 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.
Ep. 18: The History & Vision of The Catholic University of America with President Peter Kilpatrick (Pt. 2)
/in Podcast Blog/by Christopher ByrnePodcast: Play in new window | Download
Join us for PART 2 of our interview with President Peter Kilpatrick of The Catholic University of America!
We discuss his conversion to the Catholic faith, the state of Catholic higher education and how the how the largest Newman Guide college is making an impact beyond their DC campus.
2024 Scholarship Winner: Newman Guide College ‘Final Piece’ in Catholic Formation
/in Blog Latest, Newman Guide Articles/by Cardinal Newman Society StaffThis year’s winner of The Cardinal Newman Society’s $5,000 scholarship to a Newman Guide Recommended college sees faithful Catholic college education as a critical “final piece” in his lifelong Catholic formation.
“Our journey in Catholic formation mirrors the complexity of a puzzle coming together,” writes Dominic Kalpakgian of Classical Academy High School in Escondido, Calif., in his winning essay. “Each stage of our upbringing adds a vital piece to the mosaic of our faith.”
Attending a Newman Guide Recommended college means his formation will be “seamlessly integrated, forming a harmonious whole.”
Kalpakgian’s $5,000 scholarship will be applied toward his first year at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio, which has agreed to another $15,000 in scholarships over the next three years if he meets the University’s requirements.
In his winning essay, which can be read in its entirety here, Kalpakgian writes that his Newman Guide education will play a critical role in the rest of his life. “Regardless of my eventual career path—whether in medicine, business, or criminal justice—my aspiration to deepen my Catholic faith while receiving an exceptional education and fostering enduring friendships fuels my desire to enroll in a Newman Guide school.”
The topic for this year’s contest was to reflect on the following question:
The Cardinal Newman Society received many outstanding essays, and runner-up entries will be shared in the coming weeks.
The annual contest is open to high school seniors in the United States who participate in The Cardinal Newman Society’s Recruit Me program and use The Newman Guide in their college search. The innovative Recruit Me program invites students to sign up to “get recruited” by Newman Guide colleges and receive information about faithful Catholic education. Rising high school seniors who wish to enter next year’s essay contest can sign up for Recruit Me online here.
Kalpakgian’s $5,000 scholarship is made possible by the generosity of Joseph and Ann Guiffre, supporters of The Cardinal Newman Society and faithful Catholic education.
“We are grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Guiffre for enabling this scholarship,” said Cardinal Newman Society President Patrick Reilly. “They understand the unique value of a truly Catholic education, and they are thrilled to help a student experience all that a Newman Guide-recommended college can provide.”
Sixteen of the Newman Guide colleges have agreed to with additional $5,000 grants over three additional years, under certain conditions including full-time enrollment and academic progress.
From Pieces to Portrait: Crafting My Life’s Formation at a Newman Guide College
/in Blog Newman Guide Articles/by Cardinal Newman Society StaffEditor’s Note: The Cardinal Newman Society, a nonprofit organization based in Virginia that promotes and defends faithful Catholic education, recently announced that Dominic Kalpakgian from California is the winner of the Society’s 2024 Essay Scholarship Contest for Catholic college-bound students. Kalpakgian’s $5,000 scholarship will be applied toward his first year at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio, which has agreed to another $15,000 in scholarships over the next three years if he meets the University’s requirements. Below is the full text of his winning essay. More information about the contest can be found here, and rising high school seniors who would like to compete in next year’s contest can sign up for our Recruit Me program here.
As a child, my fascination with puzzles knew no bounds. Starting from humble 20-piece challenges, I eagerly progressed to conquering 50, 100, and even 1000-piece behemoths! Each puzzle posed a unique challenge, enticing me with the promise of revealing a breathtaking scene once assembled. Yet, the pinnacle of satisfaction came with placing that final piece, completing the intricate picture. Yet, in those moments, I understood a fundamental truth: a puzzle, like life itself, remains incomplete until every piece is seamlessly integrated, forming a harmonious whole.
In much the same vein, our journey in Catholic formation mirrors the complexity of a puzzle coming together. Each stage of our upbringing adds a vital piece to the mosaic of our faith: the foundational teachings of our parents, the structured catechesis of grade school, the camaraderie of youth groups during middle school, and the enriching experiences of high school conferences and Bible studies. Yet, akin to that elusive final piece, attending an authentically Catholic college often emerges as the crowning touch, the culmination of years of spiritual nurturing. It is here that the myriad fragments of our formation seamlessly merge, unveiling a life deeply rooted in Christ, where every piece finds its rightful place in the grand design.
As I stand on the precipice of adulthood, in a world increasingly defined by division and uncertainty, the pillars of education, faith, and community have never been more vital. Embarking on the journey of higher education, I am acutely aware of the prevalent cultural challenges, including the erosion of virtue, ideological influences, the absence of genuine community, and the fading significance of faith. Amidst my exploration, universities listed in the Newman Guide, such as Ave Maria, the University of Dallas, or Franciscan University, stand out as beacons aligned with Catholic values and best positioned to train students to push back against these worrying trends.
A dynamic Catholic college is pivotal to me. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that almost 40% of students at secular colleges experience a decline in religious affiliation. I yearn for a community that actively celebrates and reinforces my Catholic values, while providing opportunities for spiritual growth. In particular, I seek a college that prioritizes a robust presence of priests and religious, supportive faith-based student organizations, and courses exploring the intersection of faith and contemporary culture.
Amidst rising concerns about knowledge silos and career-focused curricula, I aspire for an educational experience that transcends mere technical skills. I seek a holistic formation that nourishes the mind, soul, and spirit. While some institutions prioritize trendy topics over timeless truths, offering classes on ‘deconstructing reality’, a Catholic education should cultivate not just intellectual prowess but also ethical reasoning, and a deep and abiding love of Jesus and his Church. The Newman Guide Schools are best suited to achieve this mission. The friendships forged in the crucible of a Newman Guide community are not merely casual acquaintances; they are the anchors that will steady me as I navigate the choppy waters of adulthood. Surrounded by peers who share Catholic values, I can step into the future with confidence, knowing that I am tethered to others and not alone.
I eagerly anticipate a college experience characterized by intellectual growth, spiritual enrichment, and a vibrant community. This will be the final piece in my puzzle to reveal a completed icon of my life’s formation. Regardless of my eventual career path—whether in medicine, business, or criminal justice—my aspiration to deepen my Catholic faith while receiving an exceptional education and fostering enduring friendships fuels my desire to enroll in a Newman Guide school.
Ep. 17: The History & Vision of The Catholic University of America with President Peter Kilpatrick (Pt. 1)
/in Podcast Blog/by Christopher ByrnePodcast: Play in new window | Download
What goes into running the largest university on The Newman Guide and an institution known as ‘the Bishop’s University?’ We sat down with President Peter Kilpatrick of The Catholic University of America to discuss its rich history, his vision for the University, and the roll-out of its new Lead with Light campaign.
A Win for Benedictine College
/in Blog Latest/by Cardinal Newman Society StaffNothing could be more sensible: a Catholic college with a proud heritage in football invites Harrison Butker, a faithfully Catholic athlete—one of the best kickers in the NFL, whose team just won the Super Bowl—to speak at its commencement ceremony.
From any rational perspective, Benedictine College did everything right.
And what could be more appropriate, that the speaker at a Catholic college commencement ceremony would uphold Catholic morality and celebrate marriage and family above career?
From an authentically Catholic perspective, Harrison Butker did everything right.
Students of Benedictine College stood to applaud Butker’s speech—and more, they celebrated the distinctive Catholic education they had been privileged to receive at one of the very few colleges deserving Newman Guide Recommended status.
The students and their parents, in choosing education that forms young people in accord with both our Christian faith and the light of reason, did everything right.
That’s because a Newman Guide education is rooted in truth, never yielding to “political correctness” or “wokeness” that changes with every generation and at the whim of destructive political movements.
A Newman Guide college defends the freedom to seek and proclaim truth. It does not accept the radical liberty to deceive and malform students.
A Newman Guide institution chooses commencement speakers who model our Catholic faith, virtue, and wisdom—the sort of people students can emulate. In 2024, these included:
Any one of these speakers, in complete fidelity to Catholic teaching, might have said something during their commencement speech that Harrison Butker’s critics would not have liked. They probably did, but Butker was the high-profile target.
In fact, the public outcry, NFL statement, and media attacks are intended to topple something much larger than Butker or even Benedictine College. They are aimed at the Catholic Church. They project intolerance for Catholic beliefs and certain truths about the human person. Those who stand with Butker are threatened with all the fanaticism, injustice, and brutality of a totalitarian regime.
Many Catholics like those who rushed to befriend Butker’s critics are quick to compromise and eager to please those who hate them. The Cardinal Newman Society has always represented a different approach. We stand firmly with all that is true, good, and beautiful, and we proudly recommend those Newman Guide schools, colleges, and graduate programs that do the same.
The result? While it seems another private college closes every week in the U.S.—unable to compete with state-sponsored, career-oriented, woke universities on the same terms—most of the Newman Guide colleges are thriving.
Rather than apologize for their Catholic education, they embrace The Cardinal Newman Society’s standards for excellence and fidelity. They realize the importance of having firm policies in place, such as campus speaker policies that favor model Catholics like Butker and prevent those who would scandalize and deliberately mislead students into falsehood.
If there’s one lesson Catholics should learn from the Harrison Butker spectacle, it’s that the education we want is the education modeled by Benedictine College and the other Newman Guide Recommended institutions, as well as faithful Catholic homeschooling and hybrid options.
Why? Because they’re doing everything right.