Restoring Integrity in Education
Over the course of his lifetime—which spanned most of the 19th century—St. John Henry Cardinal Newman was many things: scholar, reformer, preacher, convert, theologian, priest, and cardinal. Through it all, however, he was an educator.
Cor ad cor loquitur (“Heart speaks to heart”) was Newman’s motto, and he believed strongly that “personal influence” is the best means of teaching the truths of our Catholic faith. He is widely known for his brilliant and inspiring writings—many published after his death—but Newman was devoted first to his parishioners and his students.
Newman’s integrity as educator
Speaking from heart to heart was so much Newman’s manner that he was fired from his coveted position as tutor at Oxford, because he insisted on providing students spiritual guidance as well as academic support. The students, however, would flock to hear his sermons at Oxford and then later at the Catholic University of Ireland, which Newman founded and led for a time.
Newman then devoted the rest of his years—more than three decades—to forming and inspiring boys aged 11-18 at The Oratory School in Birmingham, England. His students included the great author and politician Hilaire Belloc, and future students included a son and grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien. Newman met personally with parents to forge genuine partnerships in the care of souls—an unusual practice at the time for English boarding schools—and led the reform of English Catholic education with the school’s liberal curriculum and moral formation.
The practical schoolmaster was also a great visionary, whose Idea of a University and University Sketches helped define Catholic education in contrast to the old universities that had become morally and intellectually dangerous to Catholics. Amid many pastoral works, Newman also wrote numerous texts of devotion and theology on topics such as the Blessed Virgin Mary, development of doctrine, the role of the laity in the Church, and the nature of conscience.
It is extraordinary to find so many achievements in one man! How, then, do we reconcile the pastoral Oratorian, who was dedicated to personal witness and mentorship, with the public intellectual, who eagerly battled Protestant error and English society’s slide into secularism?
Newman’s integrity is found in his devotion to education—both the moral imperative of forming every person individually according to God’s plan and the human purpose of cultivating the intellect, so that Catholics can recognize, share, and defend truth.
The Vatican chose Newman to establish a university in Dublin, and lay Catholics chose him to establish his Oratory School, because Newman clearly had the vocation of an educator. He spoke wisely and eloquently to Catholics in England who were rising from 300 years of Anglican suppression and persecution while also suffering from a decay of both faith and reason. His lessons resound today.
Integral formation of the soul
It was the integrity of Catholic laypeople that most concerned Newman. His sermons, lectures, and writings were often driven, not by general musings on theology and theories of education, but instead by the very practical concerns of a shepherd tending his flock.
“I want a laity,” he preached, “not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold, and what they do not, who know their creed so well, that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.”
Newman looked to faithful Catholic education for the repair of the human person, which is “dis-integrated” by original sin. In a fascinating 1856 sermon at his University Church in Dublin, Newman lamented that people tend to focus on knowledge to the exclusion of morality—or conversely, on morality without regard for sound reasoning. That’s because each soul is subject to conflicting appeals of intellect, conscience, passion, and appetite. The typical student arrives at school with all these faculties “warring in his own breast” and each trying “to get possession of him.”
This, Newman argued, was not our original state. At creation, God’s grace “blended together” all of our human faculties, so that they “acted in common towards one end.” It was the Fall that confused the soul, and humans have lived so long in this fragmented state that many doubt whether the various faculties of the soul can ever be reconciled. Thus society is divided into centers devoted to the mind, or the body, or secular pursuits, and people despair of the integral unity that their souls truly desire.
Newman, however, believed that human integrity can be achieved by both authentic formation in Christ and development of a “philosophical habit of mind” that ascends above information to higher truths. The Church’s objective in education, then, is “to reunite things which were in the beginning joined by God, and have been put asunder by man.”
Teaching integrated knowledge
Newman argued that the project of reintegrating the human person cannot focus exclusively on accumulating information or even on cultivating the intellect. An integral formation of the person is ordered toward truth in all its aspects.
The integrity of schools and universities as centers devoted to both seeking and teaching truth, then, was also important to Newman. In The Idea of a University, he conceded that a limited education can be devoted to teaching and learning truth without ties to the Catholic Church. But the integrity of the education is broken if it fails to acknowledge divinely revealed truth and the relevance of Christianity to all learning.
In practice, secular education “cannot be what it professes, if there be a God,” Newman claimed. To exclude the truth of God from education diminishes an institution’s ability to teach truth. It forbids the study of religion and theology and prevents full understanding of even the “secular” subjects—of their origins and first principles, known only by divine revelation. It interferes with moral formation, which is necessary to restore the integrity of young people.
An education that does not assent to the authority of the Church with regard to faith and morals is headed toward complete secularization: “It is not that you will at once reject Catholicism, but you will measure and proportion it by an earthly standard. You will throw its highest and most momentous disclosures into the background, you will deny its principles, explain away its doctrines, rearrange its precepts, and make light of its practices, even while you profess it.”
Newman believed strongly in the personal witness and influence of teachers, especially for moral formation. He envisioned several tiers of influence at his Dublin university: lecturers, tutors to help guide students and teach the liberal arts, and house staff focused on the moral training and personal habits of about 20 students per residence. The Oratory School had a similar structure.
Newman looked after his students in prayer: “May I engage in them… remembering the worth of souls and that I shall have to answer for the opportunities given me of benefitting those who are under my care.” Here we see the heart of Newman as Catholic educator, cooperating with both the Church and with parents to restore the human integrity of young people.
Likewise, today, Catholic educators can reach students’ hearts with the zeal that Newman showed for truth and the formation of young souls. This is what we look for in Newman Guide Recommended schools, colleges, and other programs.
By renewing the integrity of faithful Catholic education, we can help bring about the springtime of faith so greatly desired by Newman in his own time. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, ora pro nobis!
This article is adapted from an article originally published at TheCatholicThing.org on Sept. 19, 2019.