If
a student is extremely well educated yet he loses his soul, that
student’s education has been an utter failure. For the Catholic,
education is not just about imparting facts. It is about instilling the
seeds of virtue and a love in God in the child, always keeping in mind
the child’s last end - which is to save his soul.
St. Alphonsus often contemplated the nature of true education and true wisdom:
Blessed
is he who has received from God the science of the saints. The
science of the saints is to know the love of God. How many in the
world are well in literature, in mathematics, in foreign and ancient
languages! But what will all this profit them, if they know not the
love of God? Blessed is he, said St. Augustine, who knows God, even if
he knows nothing else. He that knows God is more learned than the
learned who no not how to love God.
BRENDAN KAVANAGH
St. Alphonsus often contemplated the nature of true education and true wisdom:
Many involved in Catholic education pay lip-service to the idea of
promoting “gospel values” - one of those suitably amorphous
buzz-phrases that can mean practically anything.
Would it not be better to teach the Science of the Saints as specifically formulated by St. Alphonsus? The fact that an alarming number of pupils lose the faith within a year or two of leaving school (if they ever had it in the first place) indicates that the promotion of “tolerance” and “diversity” under the umbrella of “gospel values” is failing to capture the heart and minds of our youth.
Idealistic students are bored by the politically correct, eco-friendly, harmless Jesus concocted in the utopian imaginations of the well-paid, post-conciliar catechetical “experts” who advise Catholic schools today.
Would it not be better to teach the Science of the Saints as specifically formulated by St. Alphonsus? The fact that an alarming number of pupils lose the faith within a year or two of leaving school (if they ever had it in the first place) indicates that the promotion of “tolerance” and “diversity” under the umbrella of “gospel values” is failing to capture the heart and minds of our youth.
Idealistic students are bored by the politically correct, eco-friendly, harmless Jesus concocted in the utopian imaginations of the well-paid, post-conciliar catechetical “experts” who advise Catholic schools today.
A crucial problem is that contemporary Catholic education increasingly
accommodates the two insidious heresies which infect modern Christian
minds.
These heresies are:
These heresies are:
1. the denial of original sin;
2. the denial of the supernatural.
2. the denial of the supernatural.
Pius XI warns us that “every
method of education founded wholly on the denial or forgetfulness of
original sin and of grace and relying on the sole powers of human
nature is unsound.”
He also notes how “today
we see educators and philosophers who spend their lives in searching
for a universal moral code of education as if there existed no
Decalogue, no gospel, no law of nature stamped by God on the heart of
man.”
Pius XI is unequivocal in his criticism of those progressive educational ideologues:
Such men are miserably deluded in their claim to emancipate the child, while in reality they are making him the slave of his own blind pride and of his disorderly affections.
One such progressive ideologue is Gary Simson, Professor of Law at
Cornell University. According to Professor Simson, school programmes
that teach continence until marriage are unconstitutional:
“teaching sexual abstinence to teenagers is wrong because it teaches
that this one belief is the only proper one.” Professor Simson is one
of these ubiquitous ivory tower gurus who guide and shape contemporary
educational policy and practice in the United States.
Catholic education cannot be viewed in isolation from the prevailing
state of contemporary education in general. Problems of discipline and
behaviour have become staggering in the state sector.
Leo XIII pointed out that “if
young people are not accustomed to respect God they will be unable to
bear the restraint of a virtuous life, and never having learned to deny
themselves anything they will be incited to disturb the public order.”
The fact that a significant percentage of the youth of Britain and
America are out of control is one consequence of our contemporary
educational system - a system which is ideologically opposed to the
whole concept of punishment.
Catholicism is based on the notion of hierarchy and authority. This is
anathema to the modern, bleeding-heart liberal for whom “authority” is
synonymous with “fascism.” Consequently, for the last forty years the
educational system has increasingly been run along the lines of
anti-authoritarian principles which simply do not work in the real
world.
In the good old days, a policeman could clip a misbehaving youth
around the ear. Now that same policeman would end up being sued in the
courts for infringing the child’s “human rights.” The result? Old
people living in inner cities now feel the need to be indoors by sundown
or face the consequences. Groups of marauding youths make parts of our
inner cities no-go areas. Such are the practical results of our
anaemic culture of “tolerance.”
When the education system loses the vision of God, it loses its authority over the young and it betrays the young. For in a materialistic world obsessed with instant gratification the child’s soul is left to die. All that is left is violence, mayhem and blood on the streets. Today’s educational system deliberately treats God as if he is of no importance. This helps to lead our children, sheep-like and ill-informed, into the Brave New World the Globalists are preparing for us.
When the education system loses the vision of God, it loses its authority over the young and it betrays the young. For in a materialistic world obsessed with instant gratification the child’s soul is left to die. All that is left is violence, mayhem and blood on the streets. Today’s educational system deliberately treats God as if he is of no importance. This helps to lead our children, sheep-like and ill-informed, into the Brave New World the Globalists are preparing for us.
BRENDAN KAVANAGH