Vatican II and New Thinking about Catholic Education

The impact and legacy of Gravissimum Educationis

Sean Whittle, Sean Whittle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315389226
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

It is only in the years since Vatican II that the new thinking about Catholic education has crystalised into shape. Vatican II and New Thinking about Catholic Education provides an opportune moment to take stock of the impact of Vatican II on Catholic education.

This volume considers the various ways in which Vatican II and its teaching on education has been received and engages with the challenges and testing times that beset faith-based education in the twenty-first century. With insights from an international range of leading and influential advocates of Catholic education, the volume demonstrates the differing contexts of Catholic education and explores the ways in which Vatican II's teaching on education has been received over the past four or five decades.

Part I
Vatican II on Catholic education

1
Vatican II and new thinking about Catholic education

Aggiornamento thinking and principles into practice

Gerald Grace

Part 1: Historical background

Introduction

Gravissimum Educationis, ‘a rather weak document’

(Ratzinger, 1966)

Gravissimum Educationis (1965) failed to excite much interest and discussion at the time of its publication, and subsequent comment upon it has been generally critical. Thus we find Professor Alan McClelland (1991) describing it as ‘somewhat uninspiring and, in places almost platitudinous’ (p. 172). In a later scholarly paper entitled, ‘Toward a Theology of Catholic Education’ (1999), Kelty lamented the fact that Gravissimum Educationis largely repeated the teaching of Pius XI that Christian education should be seen as ‘preparation for eternal life in the world to come’ (p. 11). Although this is an entirely proper and classic Catholic understanding, it is a sign that document failed to develop thinking about ‘preparing people capable of working for the transformation of this world’ (p. 13). Perhaps the most influential judgment on the document had already been made by Professor Joseph Ratzinger in his book, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (1966), in which he described the Decree on Christian Education as ‘unfortunately, a rather weak document’ (p. 254).

What interpretations can be made about the disappointing treatment of Catholic education in this initial document of the Second Vatican Council? My own view is that despite the presence of aggiornamento¹ thinking in Council deliberations, the focus of discussion was too exclusively concentrated upon the institutional Church per se and Catholic education in its schools, colleges and universities was relegated to a marginal status within the council proceedings. From our perspective it is difficult to understand why the Council fathers did not appreciate that, in the modern age, it is largely in the contexts of Catholic education, in its schools, colleges and universities, that the future of the Catholic Church will be renewed or weakened in the next generation.²

The late arrival of aggiornamento : The document on The Catholic School (1977)

The opportunity for new and inspirational thinking in Catholic education which had been missed in 1965 came, at last, in 1977 with the publication of the ground-breaking document, The Catholic School, issued by The Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education in Rome. The Catholic School powerfully expressed a new spirit, which it was hoped would characterise Catholic education internationally. The Catholic School inaugurated a post-Vatican II conception of what a Catholic Christian education should be in the era of late modernity. It can be called the ‘foundation charter’ or ‘mission statement’ for contemporary Catholic education. As a mission statement The Catholic School presented eight foundation principles for the guidance of Catholic educators in the future and these, in my opinion, should be revisited and discussed in all celebrations, seminars and conferences which are organised to mark the anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. These principles may be summarised as follows:

1) On the distinctive and necessary role of the Catholic school

In considering the mission of the Church in society and education, the document declared:

… there is a pressing need to ensure the presence of a Christian mentality in the society of the present day, marked, among other things, by cultural pluralism. For it is Christian thought which constitutes a sound criterion of judgement in the midst of conflicting concepts and behaviour. Reference to Jesus Christ teaches man to discern the values which ennoble from those which degrade him. Cultural pluralism, therefore leads the Church to reaffirm her mission of education to ensure strong character formation. Her children, then, will be capable of resisting the debilitating influence of relativism and of living up to the demands made on them by their baptism. …For this reason, the Church is prompted to mobilise her educational resources in the face of the materialism, pragmatism and technocracy of contemporary society.

(The Catholic School n. 11–12)

This section of the charter stresses the importance of Catholic educational institutions as having a counter-cultural role in modern society. In a sense, Catholic schools are being asked to be critics and conscience of society. As it was expressed later in the document, ‘the Catholic school… becomes the Christian leaven in the world’ (n. 84).

2) Catholic schools and human formation

The Catholic School recognised tendencies in the modern age to reduce the concept of education to the acquisition of knowledge (shown by examination results) and the development of skills (needed for subsequent employment). While not denying that both of these are important, The Catholic School as a document insists that a Catholic conception of education involves a more holistic concept, best expressed as human formation, rather than simply as ‘training’. Such formation must involve the acquisition of Christian values:

It must develop persons who are responsible and inner-directed, capable of choosing freely in conformity with their conscience… a school is not only a place where one is given a choice of intellectual values, but a place where one has presented an array of values which are actively lived. …Christ is the foundation of the whole educational enterprise in a Catholic school. …The Catholic school aims at forming in the Christian those particular virtues which will enable him to live a new life in Christ.

(The Catholic School n. 31–36)

Since that statement was written, the world of education internationally has become increasingly dominated by a language of ‘training’. Against this, Catholic educators need to continue to use the language of ‘formation’, since training is only one sub-set of the larger Catholic concept of human formation.

3) Integration of faith and life: On finding a vocation

The authors of the document also saw another reductionist tendency in modern education, which is to see the purpose of a ‘good’ education strongly related to the chances of obtaining a desirable employment position in adult life. While understanding this as a reasonable aspiration of youth, the text of The Catholic School insists that the Catholic student must not think simply in terms of, what I would call, ‘the culture of the job’, but also in terms of a ‘culture of vocation’. This was expressed as follows:

The Catholic school has, as its specific duty, the complete Christian formation of its pupils, and this task is of special significance today because of the inadequacy of the family and society. …Young people have to be taught to share their personal lives with God. They are to overcome their individualism and discover, in the light of faith, their specific vocation… and to make the world a better place.

(The Catholic School n. 45)

It is clear from this section of The Catholic School that the authors were not thinking only of religious vocations but also of lay vocations, where a particular employment offered opportunities to be at the service of others and to contribute to the project of making the world a better place.³

4) On a Catholic conception of the purpose of knowledge

The importance of the theme of service to others was repeated in the way that The Catholic School presented the purpose of knowledge:

This is the basis of a Catholic school’s educational work. Education is not given for the purpose of gaining power, but as an aid towards a fuller understanding of, and communion with, man, events and things. Knowledge is not to be considered as a means of material prosperity and success, but as a call to serve and to be responsible for others.

(The Catholic School n. 56)

The authors of The Catholic School saw an external world in which knowledge itself was being transformed into a market commodity associated with power, wealth and personal status. Catholic schools were called upon to resist an individualistic ‘success culture’ and a market conception of knowledge by affirming a Catholic conception that knowledge entails service to the common good. It should be noted that one of the strongest statements in support of The Catholic School’s view of knowledge was made in 1997 by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in their publication, The Common Good in Education. This asserted that ‘Education is not a commodity to be offered for sale. The distribution of funding solely according to the dictates of market forces is contrary to the Catholic doctrine of the common good. …Education is a service provided by society for the benefit of all its young people, in particular for the benefit of the most vulnerable and the most disadvantaged.…’ (n. 13).

5) On teachers as witnesses

The text of The Catholic School goes on to explain that:

The Catholic school depends not so much on subject matter or methodology as on the people who work there. The extent to which the Christian message is transmitted through education depends, to a very large extent, on the teachers. …The nobility of the task to which teachers are called demands that, in imitation of Christ, they reveal the Christian message not only by word, but also by every gesture of their behaviour. This is what makes the difference between a school whose education is permeated by the Christian spirit and one in which religion is only regarded as an academic subject like any other.

(The Catholic School n. 43)

This statement is clearly influenced by Pope Paul VI’s (now famous) observation in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975) that ‘Modern man does not listen seriously to teachers, but if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are also witnesses’ (n. 41).

6) Catholic schools, the poor and social justice

In 1977 the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education was clearly concerned that Catholic schools internationally, which had historically started their mission primarily in the service of the poor, had, for various social and economic reasons, experienced what could be described as ‘mission drift’.⁴ Thus one of the deliberate intentions of The Catholic School as a document is to remind Catholic school administrators and leaders of that original purpose:

Since it is motivated by the Christian ideal, the Catholic school is particularly sensitive to the call, from every part of the world, for a more just society, and it tries to make its own contribution towards it. …In some countries, because of local laws and economic conditions, the Catholic school runs the risk of giving counter-witness by admitting a majority of children from wealthier families. …This situation is of great concern to those responsible for Catholic education because first and foremost the Church offers its educational service to the poor, or those who are deprived of family help and affection or those who are far from the faith.

(The Catholic School n. 58)

7) Catholic schools and the common good

The authors of The Catholic School are addressing an audience characteristic of late modernity, one marked by the growth of an acquisitive and competitive individualism in an era of global marketisation. They also saw the growing ideological influence of New Right policies in politics and economics which seemed to encourage a form of self-centred individualism. As a counter-cultural message to these tendencies, The Catholic School specifically rearticulated and re-emphasised Catholic social teaching about the common good and its relationship to education: ‘Today, especially, one sees a world which clamours for solidarity and yet experiences the rise of new forms of individualism. Society can take note from the Catholic school that it is possible to create true communities out of a common effort, for the common good’ (The Catholic School n. 62).

8) Catholic schools and the principle of openness

Against widely held views that Catholic schools admitted Catholics only, the Congregation for Catholic Education made it explicit that Catholic schools (subject to available places) were at the service of all those who wished to enter. The concept of the ghetto school (for Catholics only) was to be replaced everywhere by the Catholic school at the service of the wider community:⁵ ‘In the certainty that the Spirit is at work in every person, the Catholic school offers itself to all, non-Christians included, with all its distinctive aims and means, acknowledging, preserving, and promoting the spiritual and moral qualities… which characterise different civilisations’ (The Catholic School n. 85). This new principle of openness to, and dialogue with, the external world was very much in the spirit of Vatican II aggiornamento. It resonated with and confirmed the earlier statement in The Catholic School paragraph 58 that Catholic schools were available to those who were ‘far from the faith’.

From ‘a weak document’ to an inspirational mission statement

The various fiftieth anniversary celebrations, seminars and conferences related to the Second Vatican Council declaration on education should look beyond the limitations of Gravissimum Educationis (1965) to the full flowering of Vatican II aggiornamento, in the truly inspirational document that is The Catholic School (1977). This document presents the authentic principles which should be shaping and guiding Catholic educational institutions across the world. The crucial question is, to what extent are these principles actually being implemented in the work and life of our educational institutions today? Part 2 of this chapter will attempt to begin to answer this question.

Part 2. On the need for more systematic scholarship and research (a new praxis)

Vatican II and new thinking about Catholic education ca...