The following reflection is an excerpt from a talk I gave on Catholic education and the formation of culture:
Christopher Dawson, in his work The Crisis of Western Education, proposes that Catholic education should take place with the context of culture: the reception and transmission of the treasury of the Christian way of thinking and living. This transmission occurs within the context of culture, because Catholicism exists within an unbroken two thousand year tradition that transmits a way of life coherently shaped by the Gospel. To approach education in this context is to enter not only into the past, but into a living tradition. Questions of truth and how to live in accord with this truth have been approached by countless figures in this tradition, which can be received and lived anew. It is to enter into an ongoing conversation, which can guide and ground the continuing pursuit of wisdom.
Dawson roots his theory for the renewal of education in the Church’s vital role of preserving classical learning and shaping Western civilization. Though the Middle Ages was first used as a pejorative term, there is some truth to it insofar as Catholic culture was the means by which the civilization of the ancient world endured and then went through a process of development by which the classical took on the educational, social, and political forms that we now cherish today. Thus, Dawson argues that “the study of Christian culture is the missing link which it is essential to supply if the tradition of Western education and Western culture is to survive, for it is only through this study that we can understand how Western culture came to exist and what are the essential values for which it stands.”[1] This was one of the weaknesses of classical education. It was a study rooted in a lost past and which did not directly shape the world in which we live. The values, even though secularized, of our culture today, directly stem from the Christian culture formed and handed down by Catholicism.
Dawson saw that we need to study Christianity as a “social reality,” which “would devote more attention to the social institutions and moral values of Christian culture than to its literary and artistic achievements.”[2] This is not to say that the literary and artistic should be neglected, but Dawson wants to make sure that the focus is only Christian culture as a lived reality, which has and can shape and guide life. He states further that “what we need is not an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the products of Christian culture, but a study of the culture-process itself from its spiritual and theological roots, through its organic historical growth to its cultural fruits.”[3] It is a whole holistic and interdisciplinary study that sees Catholicism as an historical force that used its spiritual vision to produce organically a way of life.
Dawson argues that this cultural approach should provide an “integration and unity” for university studies that is of utmost importance.[4] “Without this full cultural awareness it is impossible to interpret one’s culture to others or to understand the problems of intercultural relations, problems which are such incalculable importance for the future of the world.”[5] In an age of multiculturalism, Dawson actually argues that the best way to enter into a cultural dialogue is to understand one’s own self and cultural heritage. This provides the context for understanding who one is and the key questions that enter into dialogue.
Not surprisingly, Dawson sees the Catholic school as a unique locus for the engagement of culture. For Dawson:
“The essential function of education is ‘enculturation,’ or the transmission of the tradition of culture, and therefore it seems clear that the Christian college must be the cornerstone of any attempt to rebuild the order of Western civilization. In order to free the mind from its dependence on the conformist patterns of modern secular society, it is necessary to view the cultural situation as a whole and to see the Christian way of life not as an isolated precepts imposed by ecclesiastic authority but as a cosmos of spiritual relations embracing heaven and earth and uniting the order of social and moral life with the order of divine grace. Christian culture is the Christian way of life. As the Church is the extension of the Incarnation, so Christian culture is the embodiment of Christianity in social situations and patterns of life and behavior. It is the nature of Christianity to act as a leaven in the world and to transform human nature by a new principle of divine life.”[6]
The Catholic school must form its students in a Christian way of life in opposition to a secular culture. It is not enough for the student to learn facts about Catholicism or simply to know the rules, for the faith of the Church must be presented in its fullness as a complete way of life. This way of life allows the supernatural grace that comes from Christ through the Church to transform the world.
The foundation for this kind of cultural formation comes from teaching the legacy of Catholic culture and also how this legacy relates to our contemporary situation. For Catholic culture to permeate effectively the life of the university, we must continue on to see how it can serve to integrate the various disciplines within the university and also how it extends to the life of the students beyond the classroom.
[1] Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 103.
[2] Ibid., 105.
[3] Ibid., 105-6.
[4] Ibid., 103.
[5] Ibid., 106.
[6] Ibid., 115.
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