The Distinctiveness of Catholic Education

The Contemporary Catholic School

• Edited by Terence H. McLaughlin, Joseph O'Keefe S.J., and Bernadette O'Keeffe.

The Distinctiveness of Catholic Education

• In the 30 years since the Second Vatican Council, Catholic education has faced demands to clarify its distinctiveness.
• Discussions at the level of principle focus on the aims, purposes, and values.
• Focus at the level of policy and practice concentrates on the pedagogic, curricular, and institutional processes to realize these aims.
• This concern is mirrored on both sides of the Atlantic, such as in England, Wales, and the United States.
• Underlying the modern preoccupation with distinctiveness, Catholic schools are becoming less distinguishable from other schools due to changes in spirit and tone.
• Fears about the anti-democratic influence of Catholic schools are becoming unfounded.
• Factors for Catholic schools becoming less distinguishable include theological, philosophical, sociological, and cultural considerations.
• Catholic belief, as well as personal beliefs and behaviors of individual Catholics, have become less sharply distinguished from other beliefs and lifestyles.
• However, Catholic education still possesses unique characteristics, though they may be complex and difficult to specify.
• This chapter explores questions relating to the distinctiveness of Catholic education, adopting a philosophical approach and focusing on the Catholic school system for pupils up to the age of 18.

The Clarification of Distinctiveness and the Role of Philosophy

• Clarification of distinctiveness is needed to avoid a merely de facto or pragmatic acceptance of educational norms that may undermine Catholic aims and values.
• Catholic education is conducted against the grain of the world.
• Clarity is an indispensable ally in complex judgment exercises.
• Clarity is needed to discern which features of the general educational landscape should be resisted and which can be compatible with Catholic values.
• Clarity can help articulate a role for the school in relation to pupils who are not Catholics.
• Clarity alone cannot resolve such questions.
• An important enemy is 'edu-babble', imprecise and platitudinous rhetoric.
• Slogans such as 'education is of the whole child' sound plausible but lack clear meaning and truth, serving as spurs to deeper discussion rather than substitutes for sustained thought.
• There is a distinctively Catholic variant of 'edu-babble' using phrases from Church documents, such as 'The school should be based on the values of the Gospel'.
• Clarity needs to go beyond 'edu-babble', with sustained attention to the meaning and justification of central concepts and claims.
• This leads to the need for a 'Catholic philosophy of education'.
• No distinctively Catholic systematic account of the nature and role of education has emerged within contemporary philosophy of education.
• A Catholic philosophy of education should draw upon philosophical resources of notable Catholic thinkers and address matters of current educational concern.
• Topics such as the aims of education, personal autonomy, moral education, and education in religion have been addressed independently of Catholic concepts and arguments.
• A Catholic philosophy of education seeks to illuminate the nature not merely of Catholic education but of education as such.

The Distinctiveness of Catholic Education

• A number of distinctive features of Catholic education are outlined with reference to central educational documents of the Church.
• Church documents require interpretation and elaboration, understood by reference to the wider belief, tradition, and practice of the Church.
• An adequate account of Catholic educational principles cannot be derived from such documents alone.
• The documents include:
  • 'Gravissimum educationis' (GE).
  • 'General Catechetical Directory' (GCD).
  • 'Catechesi tradendae' (CT).
  • 'The Catholic School' (CS).
  • 'Lay Catholics in Schools: Witnesses to Faith' (LCWF).
  • 'The Religious Dimension of Education in a Catholic School: Guidelines for Reflection and Renewal' (RDCS).
  • 'Educational Guidance in Human Love: Outlines for sex education' (EGL).
• Attention is confined to Church documents with a directly educational focus, acknowledging that a full range of the thinking of the Church is needed in an adequate account.
• The documents are a rich source of Catholic educational principles.
• These include the rights of all people to education, the right and duty of the Church to engage in education, the paramount rights of parents, and the duty of states to ensure the true freedom of parents with respect to choice of school.
• There is an important distinction between Catholic education and Catholic schooling, with the former not requiring the latter.
• However, Catholic schooling is welcomed as a 'privileged means' of achieving Catholic education's aims.

Three related general features emerge as distinctive of Catholic education

• Embodiment of a view about the meaning of human persons and of human life
  • Catholic education is based on and seeks to promote a particular view of human beings and human life, based on a substantial or comprehensive theory of the good.
  • Catholic school develops and conveys a specific concept of the world, of man, and of history.
  • Educational task is based upon a theological and philosophical perspective about the nature of reality and of human beings, with Jesus Christ at its heart.
  • There is a direct connection between the Catholic faith and Catholic education.
  • All aspects are related to Christ, with an attempt to assist pupils to achieve a synthesis of faith, culture, and life.
  • As Archbishop Beck puts it, the basis of every system of education depends on what man is.
  • Every form of education teaches a philosophy of man implicitly or explicitly.
• An aspiration to holistic influence
  • The distinctiveness of Catholic education affects the whole education.
  • It involves a secret ingredient that orients the whole of human culture to the message of salvation.
  • The Catholic school offers a kind of integral formation with a synthesis of culture and faith, integrating all aspects of human knowledge through the subjects taught.
  • Catholic education is favourably conducted in its own separate Catholic schools.
  • Pupils identify elements of culture opposed to the Gospel.
  • Subjects such as science, history, the humanities, and the arts are enriched with a religious perspective.
  • Philosophy and its relationship to divine wisdom are studied.
  • The program of the school as a whole is unified with a distinctive understanding of the human person.
  • A distinctively Catholic approach to personal and social education is involved.
  • A teacher full of Christian wisdom guides pupils to the heart of total Truth.
  • Behind all subjects are eternal realities.
  • There is a search for a form of unity across the disparate elements of the curriculum.
  • Christopher Dawson claims that modern education has become a disintegrated mass of specialisms and vocational courses.
  • The mind needs a unifying vision of the spiritual sources from which Western civilization flowed.
  • Dawson favors the integrated and systematic study of Christian culture as an entry into the study of western civilization.
  • The distinctive understanding of the human person should act as a unifying element in the program of the school.
  • Underpinning all the elements identified as distinctive of Catholic schools is an inspirational ideology derived from the intellectual and social tradition.
  • It emphasizes a Christian personalism involving a moral conception of social behavior in a just community, a concern for social justice and the common good, and the development of personal responsibility and social engagement.
  • The Catholic school extends an invitation to students both to reflect on a systematic body of thought and to immerse themselves in a communal life that seeks to live out its basic principles.
  • The Catholic school exerts its holistic influence through its distinctive communal and organizational ethos and structure.
  • Emphasis is laid on the need to respect the independence of the disciplines.
  • Subjects should not be seen as mere adjuncts to faith.
  • Subjects must be seen as properly autonomous and be taught with scientific objectivity.
• Religious and moral formation
  • Catholic education seeks to bring about a distinctive and moral formation of its students.
  • This formation extends beyond the transmission of beliefs to the shaping of religious and moral personhood and character.
  • Students are to be helped to know and love God more perfectly.
  • Catechesis involves the communication of the living mystery of God and an education of the believing conscience.
  • Christian Doctrine is imparted in an organic and systematic way with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life.
  • The school seeks not merely intellectual assent to religious truths but a total commitment to the Person of Christ in which prayer has an important role.
  • The pupils are encouraged to achieve a personal integration of faith and life.
  • Catholic faith must be presented in its entirety under the guidance of the Magisterium, respecting the hierarchy of truths and ensuring integrity of content.
  • There is a persistent need to discern the essential features of the Christian message which is to be transmitted to pupils.
  • A marked feature is the respect for freedom of conscience.
  • Every human being has the right to seek religious truth and adhere to it freely.
  • To proclaim or to offer faith is not to engage in the 'moral violence' of imposition.
  • Catechesis aims at faith which is fully responsible, mature, and enlightened.
  • Human beings are fundamentally free and the aim of catechesis is spiritual, liturgical, sacramental and apostolic maturity.
  • Adherence to the Faith is seen as the fruit of grace and freedom.
  • Other elements include an emphasis upon the living character of the tradition and upon the rational basis of faith, calling for respect for those pupils who are not Catholic.
  • 'Genuine freedom' is interpreted in a way that stresses its relationship to the moral law in the order of nature and of grace.
  • Personal autonomy is distinguished both from subjectivism and from the belief that human beings can seek their salvation by their own powers alone.
  • God's call does not apply constraint.
  • Included in the task of catechesis is the task of moral formation.
  • Moral formation has as some of its distinctive features the insistence that there are absolute moral norms which bind everyone everywhere.
  • The role of the Catholic school is seen as going beyond mere intellectual transformation, with a particular concern for character formation.
  • One of the most distinctive areas is sex education, with an emphasis on values, moral norms, and a Christian vision of sexuality.
  • This includes the importance of the holistic formation of the person in the context of Christian faith.
  • Education for chastity is also emphasized including education in the significance of virginity and celibacy.
  • The moral influence of the Catholic school embraces wider social and political attitudes.

Catholic Education and Public Education: Contrasts and Affinities

• The concept of 'public education' is complex and many faceted, confronting two important realities.
  • Education is inherently value-laden.
  • There are deep-seated differences of view about many questions of value in pluralistic liberal democratic societies.
• Public education seeks to base its value influence on principles broadly acceptable to the citizens of society as a whole.
• It cannot assume the truth of or promote any particular vision of the good life but aims at a complex two-fold influence.
  • On matters which are widely agreed, public education seeks to achieve a strong influence on the beliefs of pupils.
  • On matters of significant disagreement, public education seeks to achieve a principled forebearance of influence.
• It exerts a complex combination of centripetal (unifying) and centrifugal (diversifying) forces on pupils and on society itself.
• Public education must be constantly alert to the need to articulate and handle in a fair way differing perspectives on matters of significant controversy.
• Public education cannot presuppose a particular philosophy of life.
• Any aspiration to exert a holistic influence gives rise to difficulties.
• Public education has a clear role in the development of moral character, although it can assume the truth of or acceptability of only the 'common' or 'public' values of society.
• It lacks the mandate to exert wide ranging influence across the moral domain as a whole.
• On matters of religion, public education is either silent or sees its role as one of illuminating the religious domain in general for reflective consideration and judgment.
• 'Moral inspiration' is largely lacking in public education, with questions of the good largely relegated to the private domain.
• The de facto vision of human life conveys that of homo economicus, which is judged by a utilitarian calculus of individual self-interest.
• Public education mirrors the spiritual vacuum and emptiness at the heart of contemporary US society and inculturates this in children.
• A major lesson for public schools is the need to engage in debate and to renew public discourse about what it means to be an educated person in a postmodern democratic society.
• An aim such as the development of democratic citizenship can constitute a sufficiently 'thick' overall aim to provide the educational process with substance and direction.
• Critiques assert that liberal values and the political community lack the substantiality needed to enable persons to achieve defensible and necessary forms of affiliation to a 'larger moral ecology'.
• This critique speaks to the effects of private economic pursuits and consumerism on the notion of a caring public ethos.
• There is acceptability and desirability of at least certain forms of religious schooling as an alternative within the overall educational system.
• Such schooling can be seen as compatible with liberal democratic educational principles and by making a distinctive contribution to democratic life.
• Bryk and his associates discern 'openness with roots' as characteristic of Catholic schools.
• Catholic schools argue that schooling demands an impassioned rationality shaped by a vision of the common good involving inspiration, not coercion, through dialogue, not dogma.
• A debate about the reinvigorated role of contemporary Catholicism may have respect to common culture.
• Since the possibility of an 'overlapping consensus' between contrasting comprehensive views of the good is an important feature of a liberal democratic society, it should not surprise us that important affinities between Catholic education and some of the aims and principles of public education can be discerned.
• Church documents contain elements which indicate the 'openness' of Catholic education.
• There is an acknowledgement of the significance of Catholic schools containing non-Catholic pupils and a special emphasis upon those pupils who are poor, without the help and affection of family, and those who do not have the faith.
• The Catholic school is encouraged to be open to civic demands and to wider concerns, including the needs of others and the demands of justice.
• Current emphases in Catholic education are generally attractive, including the claim that pupils should experience their dignity as persons before they know its definition.

The Clarification of Distinctiveness: Issues and Difficulties

• Catholics are urged to achieve a clear realization of the identity of a Catholic school and the courage to follow the consequences of its uniqueness.
• It is not enough for Catholic education to be motivated by a vaguely Christian spirit; rather, reasoned faith is needed.
• Any attempt to pursue matters of distinctiveness confronts a range of issues and difficulties relating to the social and cultural context.
• More research evidence is needed, particularly in England and Wales, on which Catholic educational policy can be based.
• One of the problems relating to research on the outcomes of Catholic education is the dimension of hiddenness and time.
• Each of the elements of Catholic education that have been identified require interpretation and judgment.
• Often these matters of judgment require the determination of the proper balance to be struck between different emphases or aspects of the Catholic tradition.
• Changes in religious education programs emphasize human relationships and human justice.
• Associated with changes of this kind are well-known disputes about the appropriate form that Catholic religious formation should take and about what is required in a balanced and authoritative presentation of the faith.
• Another aspect concerns the extent to which Catholic schools place sufficient emphasis upon specifically religious distinctiveness.
• Additional robust debate on religious topics, and on the detail of Catholic doctrine, may be lacking.
• The increasing heterogeneity of belief and practice among Catholics leads to tensions within the Catholic community.
• One strategy for approaching such disagreements is through a 'culture of silence'.
• Rhetoric, ambiguity, and obfuscation can have a lubricative role in relation to the management of the school and elsewhere.
• Such a strategy undermines the aim of achieving clarity about Catholic educational distinctiveness.
• The example of the teacher in the Catholic school is central to its educational mission.
• Teachers are a crucial factor in whether the Catholic school achieves its purposes, bearing testimony by their lives and their teaching to the one Teacher, who is Christ.
• The teacher is one who not only transmits knowledge but is seen as forming human persons by communicating Christ.
• He or she must provide a concrete example of the Catholic concept of the human person, provide an example of Church membership, be a source of spiritual inspiration, extend horizons through their personal faith, have a mature spiritual personality, and provide a wide-ranging example of faith witness.
• The life of Catholic teachers involves not merely the exercise of professionalism but also of a personal vocation in which they reveal the Christian message not only by word but also by every gesture of their behaviour.
• In addition, teachers must have a keen social awareness and a profound sense of civic and political responsibility.
• All teachers in the school must share a view of life and of the educational task of the school so that unity in teaching and the development of community and ethos can be achieved.
• One of the central difficulties is that of ensuring a sufficient supply of Catholic teachers with these qualities.
• What is needed are Catholic teachers who are practicing their faith and also willing to give an appropriate form of witness to it as part of their professionalism.
• Serious attention needs to be given to the distinctive character of Catholic teacher training.
• The clarification of the distinctiveness of Catholic education is an important and potentially demanding and painful task.
• There is an urgent need to bring sustained philosophical reflection to bear upon Catholic education, which can illuminate all of the distinctive elements that have been outlined.

Wholeness, Faith and the Distinctiveness of the Catholic

• Major principles that influence Catholic education are delineated in the Second Vatican Council's document, Gravissimum Educationis and Pius XI's encyclical letter, Divini Illius Magistri.
• Commitment to education is exemplifies the Divine mandate to announce the mystery of salvation and to renew all things in Christ (GE, 1975, p. 726).
• The purpose of Catholic schooling is to conserve and transmit Divine Teaching and transcendental values, with commitment to the imperative of the propagation of the good news and transformation of human lives.
• The educational philosophy addresses two fundamental issues:
  • The understanding of the unity of education.
  • What constitutes an acceptable immediate aim for the educative process.
• Education must be self-consistent where theory and practice converge. Antonio Rosmini-Serbati believes that education leads to the highest moral perfection possible through harmonious cultivation of the faculties.
• The Catholic school must witness to the community of faith and love and generate a sense of active apostolate within the wider society.
• Christians should be trained to live their lives in the newness justified and sanctified through the truth (Flannery, op. cit., p. 728).
• The discovery of the self, an authentic missionary apostolate is born.
• Pope John Paul II emphasized the apostolate of the 'missionary formation of youth'.