Religious Education from a Critical Realist Perspective

Sensus Fidei and Critical Thinking

Johnny C. Go

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351016612
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the possibility and necessity of critical thinking in religious education through the lenses of critical realism and the Christian doctrine of sensus fidei ('sense of faith'). Drawing on Bhaskar's original critical realism and data from a survey of over a thousand teachers in the Philippines, the author argues for a view of critical thinking based on components of 'disposition' and 'competence'. As such, critical thinking becomes the expression of a commitment to judgemental rationality and, in a Christian religious education, is guided by the individual's sensus fidei. A philosophical and theological discussion of the process of coming to know in the religious domain, Religious Education from a Critical Realist Perspective also offers concrete recommendations on how to promote the practice of religious critical thinking in confessional religious education classrooms. As such, it will appeal to scholars of philosophy, theology and pedagogy with interests in religious education and curriculum development.

1 Critical thinking in Catholic religious education

Is critical thinking compatible with religious education – specifically, confessional Catholic religious education in the Philippines? If so, in what way can it be taught to students and its practice promoted in the classroom?

To both friend and foe of Catholic education, these questions sound gratuitous at best. Critics of faith schools dismiss programs that explicitly teach the doctrines of a particular religion as inherently indoctrinatory and hence incompatible with critical thinking. On the other hand, advocates and practitioners of Catholic education express confidence that in light of an intellectual tradition that has long held the mutuality of faith and reason,¹ there is no reason why a confessional religious program cannot promote critical rationality among students.

Given my professional experience, however, I am convinced that these questions are worth asking and that the issue of critical thinking in Catholic education ought to be problematized – especially in Philippine Catholic schools, where the teaching of doctrine and the initiation of the student into the faith are explicit goals. This question of critical thinking needs to be investigated not only to address charges that confessional religious education inadvertently employs indoctrination and inevitably hampers personal autonomy,² but also to assess whether or not our programs are fulfilling an important goal articulated for Catholic education: to foster ‘a critical sense which examines statements rather than accepts them blindly’ (CCE, 1988, §49).³

The questions become particularly urgent given the challenges and issues faced by Catholic education in the third millennium, such as the marginalization of religion and its confinement to the private sphere (CCE, 2013, §9), students’ lack of religious and moral formation, and an increasing apathy to religion (CCE, 1997, §6; Sullivan & McKinney, 2013).

The research topic and its rationale

The research question emerged from my professional practice as a Catholic educator in the Philippines. As head of a Catholic K–12 school in Manila and a religious educator in the secondary and tertiary levels, I have experienced the tension between the curricular demands of teaching the faith on the one hand and the pedagogical ideal of promoting critical rationality among students on the other.

From discussions with colleagues from the network of schools belonging to our religious congregation,⁴ we have observed that: (a) critical thinking is not as purposefully and vigorously promoted in religious education as it is in the other subjects;⁵ (b) religious educators in our schools feel ill-prepared to handle, much less promote, critical thinking in our classrooms, uncertain about how to handle pupils’ questions, especially their dissent; and (c) given the confessional curriculum, many are ambivalent about the value of critical thinking in our classrooms.

While most students have little difficulty supplying the expected answers in their examination to obtain passing marks, anecdotal reports from parents and alumni over the years suggest that many of our graduates stop attending religious services, with a growing number professing to be non-believers. These reports have led us to question the effectiveness of our schools’ religious education programs.

A fundamental question that this study addresses is: ‘Is critical thinking even possible or desirable in a confessional Catholic religion class in the first place?’ What underlying religious epistemology would be compatible with the Catholic doctrines on revelation especially given the central role played by authority in Catholic doctrinal matters? Is there, in other words, such a thing as Catholic religious critical thinking?

Secondly, if it is the case that Catholic religious critical thinking is possible and legitimate, what initial steps can be taken so it can be promoted in our religious education classrooms?

In this primarily philosophical investigation, I will examine the possibility and legitimacy of critical thinking in confessional Catholic religious education and explore how critical thinking can best be promoted in light of the goals of Catholic religious education as articulated in official church documents. I will use the findings of an empirical study conducted in our network of schools to frame the problem of Catholic religious critical thinking in our classrooms, drawing from Roy Bhaskar’s philosophy of critical realism to interpret its findings. I will then argue that a religious epistemology based on Catholic doctrine is critical realist, and propose a form of critical thinking that is grounded on the Christian doctrine of ‘sensus fidei’ and thus warranted in confessional Catholic religious education.

Critical realism as under-laboring philosophy

Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism will be used as an ‘under-laboring’ philosophical framework⁶ for analyzing critical thinking in general and Catholic religious critical thinking in particular. This choice has been largely shaped by my personal context, especially my Catholic faith. In the second chapter, I will argue that the central insights of critical realism are compatible with the philosophical underpinnings of Catholic Christianity.

Critical realism, as the philosophical movement initiated by Bhaskar, refers to three distinct, interrelated stages: basic critical realism (a philosophy of natural science known as transcendental realism, a philosophy of the social sciences called critical naturalism, and explanatory critique), dialectical critical realism, and the philosophy of metaReality. For this study, I will be drawing primarily from original critical realism – particularly, its epistemology.⁷

A critical realist epistemology provides us with a valuable lens through which we can analyze the question of critical thinking in education. I will argue for a conception of critical thinking as a commitment to what Bhaskar calls ‘judgmental rationality’, defined as the responsibility to evaluate the relative merits of diverse and opposing claims. Not only does such a critical realist approach define one’s motivation for critical thinking, but it also provides the necessary conceptual tools to diagnose the problem of critical thinking in education.

Critical realism as transcendental and immanent critique

‘What must the world be like for science to be possible?’ In posing this deceptively innocuous question, Bhaskar builds a case for a revolutionary philosophy of science that forms the first stage of a philosophical movement that has come to be known as critical realism. A powerful and searing critique of the prevailing philosophies of science at the time, transcendental realism exposes classical empiricism and transcendental idealism – exemplified in Hume and Kant, respectively – as deficient and flawed in their accounts of the practice of science (RTS).

Applying his own brand of the Kantian method, Bhaskar interrogates science by inquiring into the conditions necessary for its possibility and intelligibility. However, he subverts the Kantian method by refusing to restrict his conclusions to properties deduced about the human mind, as Kant has done, but as pertaining to the world. While Kant’s arguments in ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ led him to identify space, time, and causality as human-created conditions for the possibility of empirical knowledge, Bhaskar draws conclusions about the transcendentally necessary attributes of the world presupposed by the practice of science (RTS).

Bhaskar’s transcendental analysis also cuts to the chase by focusing on two basic activities of science as an empirical and experimental discipline: observation and experimental activity. Bhaskar employs these two activities of science as the very means of his critique of empirical realism. As a philosophy that defines the world exclusively in terms of the empirical, empirical realism reserves a privileged status for experience and consequently accepts the indispensable value of these two fundamental scientific activities. Through them Bhaskar undertakes an ‘Achilles’ heel critique’ – a form of immanent critique that uses what is strongest and most valued by the rival position to expose the inconsistencies and contradictions internal to it (FCR, pp. 78–79). In this case, to refute both empiricists and idealists, Bhaskar leaves at their doorstep the irresistible Trojan horse of experience, and through it, conducts his immanent critique.

Bhaskar’s transcendental and immanent critique not only exposes the shortcomings of the prevailing accounts of science, but also demonstrates that an adequate theory of science will, contrary to empiricist and idealist claims alike, require nothing less than an ontology of depth realism. This unapologetic restoration of ontology in Bhaskar’s philosophy of science has led to a vision of the world that is far more complex, mysterious, and fascinating than the virtual flatland suggested by empirical realism. Moreover, critical realism offers a more comprehensive and realistic account of the scientific enterprise, one that illumines its essential features as a discipline, its inherent fallibility, and its legitimate goals and processes (RTS).

Implications for methodology

This study, though primarily theoretical, will have an empirical component. Since the methodology used for the empirical investigation needs to be consistent with the meta-theory that underpins this work, some critical realist caution ought to be taken in particular with regard to the use of quantitative and statistical tools (Scott, 2005, 2007).

Critical realism is averse to any form of reductionism – including the reduction of causation to mere correlation and, more generally, the reduction of complex phenomena into what can be measured. An adequate and accurate explanation must take pains to account for the multiplicity of factors that shape phenomena, especially psychological and social phenomena (Bhaskar, 2014). Failing to account for the complexity of phenomena will amount to a superficial or even distorted explanation of the object being investigated (Price, 2014). The fact that social phenomena are complex, however, does not eliminate the usefulness of quantitative models as long as they are used with caution and one avoids statistical positivism, mistaking what legitimately serves as evidence as already constituting adequate explanation (Bhaskar, 1998a; Lawson, 1997; Nash, 2005).

To avoid using a methodology inconsistent with the work’s underlying meta-theory, the purpose of the empirical study has been limited to a diagnosis of the problem of critical thinking rather than a comprehensive explanation of it. The findings are used as evidence to support a hypothesis that requires further analysis and explanation.

Sensus fidei as heuristic for religious critical thinking

While a critical realist understanding of critical thinking as a commitment to judgmental rationality provides the motivation for critical thinking, for its specific exercise in Catholic religious education, I turn to the traditional Christian teaching on sensus fidei (literally, ‘the sense of faith’) that has been only recently more substantially developed under the Catholic tradition.

Key contemporary church teachings on sensus fidei are found in Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (1964) (Lumen Gentium) and, most recently, in the groundbreaking 2014 document from the International Theological Commission called ‘Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church’ (henceforth, SF).⁸

The Christian doctrine of sensus fidei

Sensus fidei refers to the critical capacity believed to be the gift of the Holy Spirit to the entire church and all its baptized members for the purpose of interpreting revelation and discerning the authenticity of the resulting diversity of interpretations (LG §12, 35). It is ‘a kind of spiritual perception, sense of discernment (flair)’ that enables all baptized believers to recognize the authentic meaning of the Gospel (World Council of Churches, 1998). Since the interpretation and proclamation of the Gospel involve the entire community, the sensus fidei needed for this task is given to every member of the community – ‘from the bishops to the last of the faithful’ (LG §12).

This notion of the sensus fidei is by no means restricted to the Roman Catholic tradition: this sense of the faith belongs to all Christian traditions (Tillard, 1995), recognized not only as the guiding force behind the very process of the development of dogma (DV §8; World Council of Churches, 2012), but also as the very agent for the move towards a more authentic ecumenism among the Christian churches, making it possible for particular teachings to have an effect beyond the boundaries of their own communities (Tillard; WCC, 2013).

Sensus fidei and Christian religious critical thinking

In his encyclical Evangelii gaudium (‘The Joy of the Gospel’), Pope Francis claims that by virtue of the sensus fidei, every Christian – regardless of position in the church or level of instruction in the faith – is an active subject in the church (EG §120). If sensus fidei is indeed the believer’s personal capacity to discern the truth of the faith, then the exercise of Christian religious critical thinking needs to be rooted in this sense of the faith.

I will draw from th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Abstract
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations of often-cited sources
• 1 Critical thinking in Catholic religious education
• 2 Critical realism and Catholic Christianity
• 3 A critical realist account of critical thinking
• 4 An empirical investigation of teacher epistemologies
• 5 A case for a critical realist Catholic religious epistemology
• 6 Catholic religious critical thinking as the exercise of sensus fidei
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Works cited
• Index