Draft material on Roman Catholic epistemology in education

Traditionally, Roman Catholic educators have drawn upon the thought of Thomas Aquinas as it was transmitted and interpreted in the 19th century. Professor John Elias of Fordham University writes: ‘The Thomistic philosophy of education, however, largely fostered by Jesuits involved in higher education, achieved near-official status among Catholic educators’. At the heart of a Thomistic view of education (properly termed ‘neo-Thomistic’) is the contention that it is possible for individuals, with the help of divine grace, to arrive at absolute truths. Bestowed with both the responsibility and freedom to achieve the knowledge necessary to salvation, the human being can be aided by education in this process. The grace of God provided in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ and accessed via the sacramental ministry of the Church, is available to enlighten the mind and strengthen the will.

A particular feature of Roman Catholic education under the influence of this form of neo-Thomism has been the emphasis placed on human rationality and the inherent spirituality of each individual. Thus, a liberal arts curriculum was advocated by neo-Thomistic writers such as the French theologian Jacques Maritain as a means to the moral formation of students. Religious truth undergirds the study of the humanities because a narrow concern for this world only is ultimately dehumanising. Furthermore, in the neo-Thomistic view philosophy of education, learning and knowledge were grounded on a realist epistemology – namely, the view knowledge is objective and unchanging, and that what is truly known by human beings corresponds to what actually is. As Professor Elias puts it, for neo-Thomism

Learning takes place when individuals with intelligence and free will come to a knowledge of objective reality, including fundamental truths about God, the nature of persons, and the nature of the world. Learning means acquiring intellectual virtues…with God’s grace and a helpful teacher there is confidence that persons will arrive at the truth.

Since the 1960s and the Second Vatican Council, the influence of this form of Thomism has been somewhat diluted by the acceptance of other philosophies of knowledge and by the influence of movements such as Liberation Theology (and educators such a Paolo Freire). This makes it difficult to generalise about what is actually happening in Roman Catholic schools. Indeed, the official documents of the Church display an undercurrent of frustration with the lack of a coherent and distinctively Catholic educational practice. These more recent documents, published by the Vatican and locally, retain the basic pattern found in neo-Thomism without simply returning to it. In John Paul II’s encyclicals Veritatis Splendor and Fides et Ratio he asserts both the objectivity and knowability of the world and the centrality of persons as knowing subjects in that world. In Fides et Ratio he wrote:

…the history of thought shows that across the range of cultures and their development certain basic concepts retain their universal epistemological value and thus retain the truth of the propositions in which they are expressed. Were this not the case, philosophy and the sciences could not communicate with each other, nor could they find a place in cultures different from those in which they were conceived and developed. The hermeneutical problem exists, to be sure; but it is not insoluble. Moreover, the objective value of many concepts does not exclude that their meaning is often imperfect. This is where philosophical speculation can be very helpful. We may hope, then, that philosophy will be especially concerned to deepen the understanding of the relationship between conceptual language and truth, and to propose ways which will lead to a right understanding of that relationship.

Broadly speaking, this kind of insight informs contemporary Roman Catholic thinking about the process of knowing in the context of education. For example, the 1977 Vatican document entitled ‘The Catholic School’ states:

The school considers human knowledge as a truth to be discovered. In the measure in which subjects are taught by someone who knowingly and without restraint seeks the truth, they are to that extent Christian. Discovery and awareness of truth leads man to the discovery of Truth itself. A teacher who is full of Christian wisdom, well prepared in his own subject, does more than convey the sense of what he is teaching to his pupils. Over and above what he says, he guides his pupils beyond his mere words to the heart of total Truth.

There is a valuing of truth, since all truth leads to Truth. Human knowledge is not created by the knower, but is discovered by her. In turn, this knowledge is part of the divine Truth. The distinctively Roman Catholic confidence in the innate rationality and spirituality of the human subject is very much in evidence.

As such, there is in evidence a very positive account of the role that modern philosophy might play. As the Second Vatican Council said:

The philosophical disciplines should be taught in such a way that students acquire in the first place a solid and harmonious knowledge of the human being, of the world and of God, based upon the philosophical heritage which is enduringly valid, yet taking into account currents of modern philosophy.

Thus, while the insights of contemporary philosophy are studied and even incorporated into thinking about educational theory and practice, it is still the case that any epistemology that does not give sufficient emphasis that we can know objective truth is not an accurate representation of Roman Catholicism.

From a reformed and evangelical perspective it is this confidence in the ability of the human knower to know that is the most significant point of departure from the Roman Catholic view of knowledge. As the German theologian Helmut Thielicke wrote, ‘[I]n this whole matter...what is involved is not an ontic, but a noetic problem.’ That is, there is agreement amongst orthodox Christians as to the nature of things as they are, but disagreement as to the human capacity to infer moral and divine truth from the natural order of things. Roman Catholic educators are, as we have seen, rightly insistent that learners need to acquire moral virtues in order properly to learn. The implication (though it is not stated in this way) is that in their ‘natural’ state, human beings are sinfully ignorant. It is sin that corrupts and prevents knowing, and grace is needed to remedy this corruption. However, the Roman Catholic view is that education can operate as a cultivation of that innate and undestroyed spiritual rationality given to each human being. It is too optimistic about the human capacity to know not only truly but rightly; and somewhat naïve, perhaps, about the extent to which secular philosophical systems can be incorporated into the Christian outlook.