by Bishop James Conley
Bishop Conley talks about the importance and value of Catholic education in this homily during Mass at the 2022 Diocesan Teachers' Institute at Pius X High School in Lincoln Oct. 10. This is an adaptation of his homily.
On behalf of the Diocese of Lincoln, I welcome everyone to the annual diocesan Teachers Institute, and I thank you for saying “yes” to the vocation you follow, the vocation of “teacher,” the Lord’s most favored title, rabboni. All those who are called to teach, share in this very fundamental mission of Jesus Christ.
I welcome Sister Mary Thomas, OP, to the Diocese of Lincoln, and thank her for her wonderful keynote address this morning, comparing the philosophy of education of St. Thomas Aquinas to Dr. John Dewey. We are so grateful to her and her community, the Congregation of St. Cecilia, the “Nashville Dominicans,” who staff and teach in Catholic schools all over our country and who have been involved in the continual renewal of Catholic education for decades. I’ve gotten to know many of your sisters over these years, and I thank you for the great work you do. We’re honored to have you here.
Picking up on Sister’s talk, it is so fundamentally important that we as teachers are grounded in a sound Christian anthropology. In other words, that we are able to answer those very basic questions, both for ourselves and for our students: Who are we? Why do we exist? Where are we going? What is our ‘end’ – what is our purpose? How do we live the good life? How do we find joy, meaning, peace, and happiness? These questions are at the very heart of Catholic education, at the very heart of human existence. We must all ask ourselves these questions, as teachers, priests, sisters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, all of us who are on this journey of life.
When we look at education today in general, there are a lot of challenges. Some might say there is a real “crisis of reason” in education; that students are not taught to think logically and critically, they are uncertain about reality and the nature of things. I would not disagree, but in addition to a “crisis of reason” in education, there is also a “crisis of the imagination.” The imagination precedes the reason. Before we can begin to think in a rational way, we need to have a healthy and well-formed imagination. We need to be grounded in the world of reality, the world of nature. For example, we need to take our students outdoors and help them to see and appreciate the beauty of God’s creation. In our Catholic schools, subjects like poetry, music, stories and the liberal arts, particularly in the lower grades, help students form healthy imaginations, and healthy and lively imaginations can help restore some sort of common sense, which, unfortunately, isn’t too common these days.
And so we have these two challenges today, a crisis of imagination and a crisis of reason. It seems to me, that as Catholic educators we should be all about restoring the Christian imagination as well as right reason. I see many signs that this is beginning to happen. I see a true revival emerging in the world of Catholic education all over the country, a sort of quiet revolution. Our anthropology, the way we view reality and the human person, really matters. As Sr. Mary Thomas taught us, if we do not believe in a transcendent world, a world that is created and sustained by an all-loving and all-powerful God, and if we do not see our students as images and likenesses of that God, icons of God who are destined for eternal life, then the way we teach and the goals and outcomes we look for in our students, are going to be very different.
Here in the Diocese of Lincoln I’m so happy to be bishop because our schools have not suffered from a lack of Catholic identity. Many of my brother bishops are working hard to retrieve and restore a true Catholic identity in their schools. Unfortunately, many Catholic schools around the country are Catholic in name only. The children may wear school uniforms and there may be crucifixes on the wall, but these schools are not a whole lot different than the public schools. The influence of Dr. Dewey and his secular model of education still dominates their world view and anthropology. I am so grateful that the Catholic schools in Lincoln are not confused in their identity.
But given the world in which we live today, and the toxicity of the cultural air we breathe, we need to up our game. We can’t simply rely on the Catholic identity of our schools, we need to “reframe” what we’re doing in order to prepare our students for the new world they are soon to enter. That doesn’t mean that we need start over. That doesn’t even mean we have to rebuild. We need to build on the strong foundation that we already have, a foundation that has been years in the making.
Some people say to me: “but aren’t our schools Catholic enough?” In today’s world, it’s not just about Catholic identity, it’s about something much deeper and much more beautiful and mysterious. Faith must be at the heart of everything we do. Jesus Christ, in the words of St. John Paul II, “is the answer to the question that is every human person.” The Lord has to be at the center of everything we do in our Catholic schools, from the athletic fields to the drama department, from the science lab to the cafeteria, from the maintenance department to the religion class. Everyone must be on the same page when it comes to the mission of our Catholic schools. We are called to educate the whole person, body, mind, imagination and soul.
The good news is, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We’ve got all we need to be successful. We don’t need to be looking for the ‘next best thing.’ In the education world, I think we see a lot of this. We look for quick fixes, the next new method, the next new technology, or the next new fad in teaching. Those of you who’ve been in education a lot longer than I have know this. What was popular 10 years ago is now passé. Our schools have an opportunity to bring about an authentic renewal in the hearts and minds of our students, to rekindle their imaginations, to engender a new sense of wonder, joy and beauty in learning.
I told a story at the Saints and Scholars banquet about my recent trip to Rome for the ordination of one of our seminarians, Deacon Matthew Schilmoeller, who is a good example of the fruit of our Catholic schools. Deacon Matthew is a graduate of North American Martyrs Elementary, Pius X High School and St. Gregory the Great Seminary. As a student of the North American College in Rome, he is now completing his graduate degree in theology at the University of St. Thomas and, God willing, will be ordained a priest in May for the Diocese of Lincoln.
I had the blessing of living in Rome for 12 years, both as a student and as a Vatican official. During a good portion of those years, I also served as a chaplain for the University of Dallas Rome program, and as a theology teacher for the Christendom College Rome program. In fact, most of my priesthood was spent working with college students. I always enjoy visiting college students am always interested and curious to hear what’s going on in their world.
On the last night I was in Rome, I took three college students out for dinner, one of whom I baptized in Rome 19 years ago when her parents served as University of Dallas Rome assistants. Two were from Phoenix and one was from the Washington, D.C. area, and all three had really good Catholic educations. They had just finished working typical college summer jobs, mixing with their peers in the secular world. I asked them 'what is it like for your generation today, what are your peers asking, what are the issues that concern them most?' Eventually I asked, 'what are two words that describe your peers the best?' One thought for a minute and then said, “confused and sad.”
I’ve been thinking about that a lot since that evening. It’s really true. There’s a lack of clarity in the minds of young people today. They don’t know why they’re here, who they are, where they’re going. With so many voices and so much information coming to them through social media, through multiple news sources, through their phones, it can be confusing. They’re trying to decipher and figure out all this information, with people tugging at them, pulling at them with all kinds of ideologies. They don’t seem have any secure foundation or worldview, anything that grounds them in who they are, why they are here, where they are going, and who, if anyone, loves them and cares about them. They feel isolated and it’s that confusion and isolation and loneliness that leads to sadness.
We know suicide is up among people in their age bracket. Anxiety, stress and depression are very prevalent in our young people today. Youth and young adulthood should not be a time for depression. That’s a time for joy, excitement and adventure; years for joy and discovery, not for sadness!
So I see that a very important mission of Catholic schools is to bring that clarity and a lack of confusion, a security and trust in the truth, goodness and beauty of life; to remind all of us that we don’t make up our own truth, we conform to the Truth that’s already there. We’re children of God, beloved sons and daughters of the Father who loves us, cares for us and wants us to be happy in this life and forever with him in heaven.
There is a truth, and we can know it and possess it. We’re not just fabricators, not just builders or consumers, we’re not just producers.
We’re children of God and we have a destiny and God wants us to be happy here. The joy of learning, those ‘a-ha’ moments when we embrace the truth. Whether it’s watching a chick breaking out of its shell during our elementary grades, or solve a very difficult and complex math problem in high school, or someone in graduate school who discovers the truth about some scientific theory, those are the kinds of things that engender wonder in the real world around us.
That’s the kind of thing that solves a crisis of imagination – our imaginations are filled with good and true and beautiful things, created by a good, true and beautiful God. That’s what Catholic education is all about, to be reborn in that wonder. We see it in our classrooms, we see it in our students, that’s what we try to engender as teachers. It’s all about relationships with our students and bringing them to that truth while we’re on that same journey with them. We’re not just information delivery systems. We’re on that adventure of learning as well.
We’re on that same adventure of learning. We have to be confident in the truths which we impart. This generation’s looking for clarity, security, grounding, purpose, the answer to their ‘whys.’ They’re looking for joy, which is an antidote to the sadness around them. They want happiness, contentment and peace. And we can offer that to them in our schools. We’ve been entrusted by their parents to provide them with a Catholic education, and as teachers we need to be true that mission.
So I’m excited about Catholic education today, especially here in the Diocese of Lincoln. I truly believe that we’re poised to be a leader in this country. We have so many positive things going for us here in the Diocese of Lincoln. We need to realize that, celebrate that and build upon that. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Keep doing what you’re doing. Keep learning, keep loving your students, keep bringing that lifelong joy of learning and that clarity and that confidence, that security that this generation – and every generation – needs so much.
God bless you.
