The Priest and Catholic Education
Catholic education is a work of the Catholic priesthood. In the order established by God, priests are not only the instruments of Jesus Christ in administering the sacraments, but also in imparting knowledge of the truth to all Catholics. They have a special duty to watch over the formation of the young. Deliberate separation of the intellectual and moral formation of children and adolescents from the influence of the priests of Jesus Christ can severely handicap or even entirely vitiate that formation. It is certainly true that special circumstances exist, particularly during the present crisis in the Church. Nevertheless, as a general principle, the fundamental connection between the priesthood and Catholic education cannot be denied.
“The priest is another Christ.” This aphorism is commonplace in nearly every serious Catholic milieu, and traditional Catholics are especially fond of the saying. They believe wholeheartedly that the priestly character is necessary for a man to act in persona Christi and so to be able to offer the holy Sacrifice of the Mass and to absolve sins in the sacrament of penance. Likewise, they know that it is only the priest who distributes communion, anoints the dying, officiates at marriages, blesses their rosaries, and confers countless other blessings and graces coming from Our Lord Jesus Christ. Further, they acknowledge that this claim of being another Christ means that the priest must be held to a higher standard than the laity; it imposes upon him the duty of striving for Christ-like holiness. On the other hand, one almost never hears the maxim applied to the priest’s position of teacher.
Surely the faithful expect to hear the teaching of the Church from the priest’s mouth in the Sunday sermon. But is this the extent of his teaching power? True, the Church often names the priest’s act of teaching “preaching.” However, it would be a serious error to imagine this role as being confined to the pulpit. Bishop John Cuthbert Hedley (d. 1915), writing about St. Gregory, tells us that the holy doctor’s word of choice in speaking of a pastor’s duty to impart the faith was not praedicare (to preach) but docere (to teach).1 Sermons are an important part of the teaching of the priest, but fifteen minutes once a week hardly suffices for an office of such paramount importance.
Already in the Old Testament, the Aaronic priesthood was a divinely instituted teaching authority. “For the lips of the priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth: because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts.”2 The New Testament priesthood, that which makes a man share in the power of Jesus Christ, far surpasses its Old Testament counterpart. We cannot insist too much: it is this character of the priesthood that imposes the role of teacher upon the Catholic priest. During His three years of public ministry, Our Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself principally to teaching. Even the miracles He worked were intended, more than anything else, to confirm the truth of what He taught.3 Our Lord taught in synagogues; He taught in the courtyards of the Temple; He taught in the open air. He preached sermons to large crowds; He gave intimate discourses to His chosen Apostles; He held conversations with and answered questions from individuals or small groups. Our Lord bequeathed this teaching ministry to His Church in the person of the Apostles, already ordained priests, when He commanded them on the day of His Ascension, “teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”4 Thus, the priest is teacher by the explicit command of the Savior Himself.
Moreover, the teaching office is evident in the very nature of the priesthood. As mentioned, the priest acts in the person of Christ in the confecting of the sacraments. It stands to reason that he would be the one to speak in Christ’s name in the instruction of the faithful. Further, the duty of administering the sacraments brings with it the duty to prepare the faithful to receive these sacraments. This preparation consists principally in the instruction required for the recipients to understand the nature of the sacraments and to order their lives so that the sacraments will be fruitful for their souls. Finally, the priest is a teacher because he is a father. Indeed, it is by this very name that the faithful address him, and this reality, more than a mere title, gives him the power of teaching. Speaking to a congress of high school teachers, Pope Pius XII said, “Now the father, by the very fact of his fatherhood, is a teacher, since, as the Angelic Doctor explains so clearly, ‘the primordial right to teach is based on no other title than that of paternity.’ ”5
That education is tightly bound to the priestly office has been the constant teaching of the Church. The Apostles were the principal teachers of the early Church. St. Paul went so far as to write to the Corinthians, “Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.”6 His teaching office took precedence even over administering the sacrament of baptism. The reason is obvious. Without a thorough understanding of the doctrines of Jesus Christ and the principles of Christian living, baptism would avail nothing. St. Gregory the Great wrote a book called Regula Pastoralis (Pastoral Rule), addressed to priests about how to fulfill their pastoral duties. Bishop Hedley says of this work, “The whole treatise… has for its purpose to make a pastor speak effectively to his flock.”7 It is, therefore, a work addressed to the priest as educator. And this tradition has continued down to modern times. Brother Philip, a superior general of the Brothers of the Christian Schools in the 19th century, wrote of the Church, “Wherever she erects a church, there too, at the same time, she builds a school,”8 indicating how closely the ministry of education is tied to the ministry of the altar. And in the address already mentioned, Pius XII said, “…in great part, the office of the priest consists in teaching and educating.”9
If then, the priest is an educator by divine command, by the nature of his office, and by the constant will of the Church, what is he to teach? Firstly and obviously, he must teach the dogmas of the Catholic faith. No Catholic would dispute that it is the priest’s role to preach the Gospel, imparting knowledge of the truths necessary for salvation from the pulpit and in the catechism class. At the same time, Catholics generally recognize that the priest must teach the principles of Catholic morality to turn the faithful away from vice and encourage them to the accomplishment of good works.
However, it is not the mind of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church that priestly teaching should occupy itself with abstract truths to be granted purely intellectual assent. The Christian life is just that, a life, and the priest is the instructor in Christian living. It is not enough to know the truth, but the faithful must put that knowledge into daily practice. Consequently, the priest is obliged to spell out the profound significance of Catholic dogmas for everyday life and to apply the principles of Catholic morality to the real conditions and circumstances of his faithful. As already pointed out, this duty is especially important in regard to the young. “A young man according to his way, even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”10 The young must form habits, and those habits will be either helpful or detrimental to living as Catholics and attaining eternal life. Brother Philip has rightly asserted that, “A good education is a fund of riches to which no created good is comparable.”11 No education can be called good which does not equip a child to attain the goal of his existence, and no one can reach his eternal objective outside the influence of Jesus Christ’s priesthood.
The Church has spent incalculable energy and resources on founding and running schools for just this reason. Catholic school is not just secular school with the addition of a religion class and the subtraction of noxious influences. Rather, the Catholic school exists to be an educational environment saturated with the influence of Jesus Christ Himself. The priest is the principal minister of this divine influence. Brother Philip was keenly aware of this when he exhorted his fellow religious to inspire their students “with love, respect, and confidence towards priests, by whom, above all, they can be preserved in good.”12
Furthermore, all branches of instruction should come under the influence of the Church and her priests, even if these subject matters do not deal directly with the faith. Much damage has been done to education by confining the Catholic faith to the chapel and the religion class. Can history be taught accurately without reference to God’s action in the world or to the most important events: Original Sin, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the founding of the Church? Can a purely mechanistic conception of the universe that disregards the Creator be taught in the empirical sciences without distorting reality and promoting unbelief? Can literature be taught indiscriminately, without reference to its moral value? Can godless teachers, even those who may be experts in their fields, be permitted to form the minds of Catholic children? The priest has the competence to exercise the necessary vigilance in these and other matters. Yet his influence is not purely negative. He is meant to move among students and teachers as another Christ, teaching classes, yes, but also correcting, encouraging, and exhorting in sermons, conferences, private conversations, and giving clear practical examples in the conduct of his own life. Further, his mission includes imparting to all those charged with the education of Catholic youth a truly supernatural vision that sees the working of Divine Providence in every academic discipline and prioritizes the supernatural destiny of the students.
Consequently, other Catholic teachers, including religious belonging to congregations explicitly dedicated to education, are the auxiliaries of priests in the formation of the young. This is not to say that they are not critically important and often strictly necessary. Pius XII speaks of lay teachers as “direct collaborators in this work of God and of the Church.”13 Brother Philip says of religious teachers that God “has established us as cooperators with the Church in the care she gives to infancy and youth,” but he adds significantly, “as precursors of her pastors, charging us to prepare the way for them.”14 Any autonomy from the priesthood in matters of education must arise from force of circumstances and never be freely chosen. Unfortunately, such situations arise far too frequently today, as the fewness of priests and the doctrinal corruption rampant among many of them pushes numerous parents and educators to a state of abnormal independence. Such situations must be regretted and never imagined to be the ideal. Voluntary separation of education from the priestly ministry severs the work from the life-giving sources of grace. Such education ceases to be truly Catholic, rejecting as it does the divinely established order. Where the priest has been cast out, or relegated to the position of merely dispensing sacraments, one cannot expect the benedictions of the divine Master.
Thus far, nothing has been said about the role of the family in Catholic education. It is beyond the scope of the present article to treat such a vast subject in any detail. However, we can point out that, in the divine plan, there is never any opposition between the true educational rights of the family and those of the Church. On the contrary, God intends these two authorities to work in perfect harmony. The teaching of priests is required to elevate and perfect the teaching given by parents, but this priestly ministry usually avails little if the ground has not been well-prepared by the education given in a profoundly Catholic home.
At the present time, the priest’s role in education has been almost eclipsed. Fundamentally, the blame lies at the feet of the priests and bishops themselves; many have neglected, abandoned, or perverted their divinely established teaching power. Independent schools, homeschooling, laymen with theology degrees, and similar phenomena have arisen to fill the void. Nevertheless, the divine commission remains, “Going therefore, teach ye all nations.” For the good of souls, priests must reclaim their mission. In turn, the faithful must love and respect this priestly office and cooperate in promoting it everywhere to the greatest extent possible.
TITLE IMAGE: St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (1651-1719), founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christians Schools, educational reformer, and father of modern pedagogy.
Endnotes
1. John Cuthbert Hedley, Lex Levitarum (New York, 1905) p. 119.
2. Malachias 2:7.
3. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III. Q.43, a.3.
4. Matthew 28:19.
5. Pius XII, “Address to the Italian Catholic Union of Secondary School Teachers,” in Yzermans, Vincent A. Pope Pius XII and Catholic Education (St. Meinrad: Indiana, 1957), p. 28.
6. I Corinthians 1:17.
7. Hedley, op. cit.
8. Brother Philip, Considerations for Catholic Teachers (1921), p. 3.
9. Pius XII, op. cit.
10. Proverbs 22:6.
11. Br. Philip, op. cit., p. 23.
12. Ibid., p. 53.
13. Pius XII, op. cit.
14. Brother Philip, op cit. p. 2.