By Patrick Callahan
This week my own children and many of those in the diocese returned to school. Next week at the Newman Institute for Catholic Thought & Culture we are welcoming our largest class of undergraduates in our history.
We continue, in the phrase of today, to live in “interesting times” for the delivery of Catholic education. The challenges of today, however, should not overwhelm us or distract us to the point of despair. As St. Augustine once said, nos sumus tempora: quales sumus, talia sunt tempora. “We are the times: such as we are, so are the times.”
Over the last 18 months, we have seen for the first time in generations thousands and millions of parents take up the duty of acting as primary educators to our children (Catechism of the Catholic Church §2223). I do not believe I need to emphasize for parents that this duty has been a sacrificial, Christ-like duty. For many of us it has come at a great cost, financially, emotionally, sometimes even physically to see our children educated over the last year and a half. Whether at home or in concert with schools, I have seen a new educational community in our Church born from this ordeal.
As many have discovered, we are not in this alone. Catholic education has been and always will be a living tradition. Through the teacher, the words and wisdom of the past are transmitted to the minds of the future. No surer sign of this can be found than Scripture, the speech of God, which continues to offer words of life.
But a Bible does not do this by sitting on a shelf.
We cultivate the life of virtue by the act of reading, reciting, and listening to Scripture. When we read, we are offering to the author, and in the case of Scripture, to God, our body, our mind, and our will. In reading, we yield our time and attention to let another speak through us. The great essayist G.K. Chesterton called this “the democracy of the dead.” The act of reading is a kind of miracle allowing the words of the dead to live on the lips of the living. It prepares us to understand and live out the words of St. John the Baptist: He must increase, but I must decrease (Jn 3:30).
Understood in this light, we see that the Liturgy of the Word, the first part of the Mass, is a suitable preparation for the Liturgy of the Eucharist. First, the Word is made flesh symbolically through the act of reading and listening to Scripture; next, the Word is made flesh sacramentally in the Eucharist. From the earliest days of Christianity, we have always understood that the Christian liturgy is a kind of education.
How often do we realize the virtuous action of reading or teaching others to read? While we recognize that not every book published today or in the past is wholesome in its content, God’s plan for salvation centers on the Word made flesh. When we read to our children, how often do we realize that we are offering them a sign of that salvific act by allowing the words of another to become incarnate in us?
In this time of great worry about our physical health and wellbeing, we risk busying ourselves to the point of forgetting our spiritual health and wellbeing. I would invite you this year to meditate on the spiritual works of mercy, especially our call to instruct the ignorant.
Just as our jobs can provide us with the financial and physical resources to practice the corporal works of mercy, the education of our children and ourselves can prepare us for this spiritual work of mercy.
At the Newman Institute for Catholic Thought & Culture, we live out this work of mercy on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. There we introduce the great Catholic tradition to students on the secular campus. The modern university remains a product of the great blossoming of Catholic culture and thought during the Middle Ages. By bringing the Church and her tradition back to campus, we look to make the university truly universal.
This will be my first semester as director of the Newman Institute for Catholic Thought & Culture, and I am looking throughout this year to expand how we support our parents, teachers, and catechists. While the heart of the Newman Institute’s offerings are our courses and programs for students at UNL, you will begin to see resources, talks, and workshops aimed at supporting you in your efforts to educate the minds and souls of the youngest members of this great diocese.
In that spirit, I should like to offer a small list of short, accessible books that I have found helpful over the years in understanding the Catholic educational tradition:
Mortimer Adler, “The Paideia Proposal”
St. Augustine, “On Christian Doctrine”
Luigi Giussani, “The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny”
Habiger Institute for Catholic Leadership, “The Heart of Culture: A Brief History of Western Education”
Werner Jaeger, “Early Christianity and Greek Paideia”
C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man”
St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, “The Idea of a University”
John Senior, “The Death of Christian Culture”
R. Jared Staudt (ed.), “Renewing Catholic Schools: How to Regain a Catholic Vision in a Secular Age”
Ryan N.S. Topping, “The Case for Catholic Education” and “Renewing the Mind: A Reader in the Philosophy of Catholic Education”
To discover more about the Newman Institute, its course offering, events, or to support our work, visit newmaninstitute.com.
