Essay by Thomas Fleming The Rockford Institute

We live in times that test our faith. Our intellect is undermined constantly by the strange heresies and fallacies promoted by social scientists, psychological counselors, and self-proclaimed gurus, and the character of our children is under deadly assault from the poisonous images emitted by television, film, and popular magazines.

To counter these influences and to bring up children in the traditional faith of the church, more is needed than a daily dose of catechism. Training the mind is, of course, an indispensable part of a Catholic education, but just as important—perhaps even more important—is the formation of the character. To be truly Catholic, we must begin to live as Catholics, and that means not only regular attendance of the mass but also a developed awareness of the traditions of the Church. The process of Catholic education, therefore must be less like a mathematics class, in which principles are taught and problems solved by applying the general rules to specific cases, and more like a "total-immersion program" used for teaching foreign languages. American students who learn French by this method are cut-off from their everyday world and not allowed to speak their language or read books in English; they are bombarded with French books, French food, French music, French movies. When they comb their hair or brush their teeth, they are doing it in French.

What does this have to do with Catholic education? It is simply this: the everyday world that is minute by minute forming the minds and character of our children is not a Christian world – English speaking or not. On the contrary, the media-created world celebrates individual hedonism, liberation from every authority – from parents, from the Church and its traditions, and even from the authority of conscience and morality.

To resist these powerful influences, we must begins reshaping our character on the lives of the saints and on the customs and traditions of the Catholic faith. The process of Catholic education, viewed from this perspective, culminates in the formation of a good character and a soul directed toward the love of God; along the way, however, a process of spiritual purification must take place, a weaning away from the habits and influences of a world that is not merely secular but anti-Christian.

As St. Augustine observes in his De Doctrina Christiana: "Since it is our duty to make the fullest use of the truth which lives and cannot be changed, and since the triune God takes counsel in this truth for the things He has made, the soul must be purified that it may have power to perceive that light, and to rest in it, once it has been perceived. And let us look upon this purification as a kind of journey to our native land. For it is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits."

This home, which St. Augustine describes, is long and arduous and not without perils. Augustine’s essay on Christian learning is primarily directed toward the study of the Scriptures, but he is careful to point out the limitations of scriptural study: it is not only that ignorant an willful human beings are capable of twisting the Bible to their own perverse purposes, but that even in the ideal, the reading of Scriptures is only a means to an end and not an end in itself. If, as Our Lord has told us, He is the way, the truth, and the life, even the Gospels that tell his story are themselves only a way toward the truth and the life that are to be found in the fullness of the faith.

Nonetheless, regular reading of the Bible, under the direction of a sound Catholic commentator, is an important tool for Christian education. It is important for parents not to fall into one of two mistakes: the mistake of substituting simplifies story-book versions of he Bible for the real thing and the mistake of allowing children (and their parents) an unrestricted right to read and interpret the Scriptures as they see fit. The Bible represents, after all, a slow evolutionary process of accretion: historical narrative, primitive law, prophesy – fulfilled and unfulfilled—and theology. Passages taken out of context and interpreted as binding principles might have unfortunate consequences. One could scarcely take the conjugal behavior of the patriarchs or the Hebrews’ treatment of the Canaanites as exemplary. It is only in the context of the long traditions of the Church that we can fully appreciate the Jews’ long love-hate relationship with their Creator.

It is in the Mass, of course, that the Scriptures find a context that cannot be mistaken -- but many Catholics (I do not exempt myself) are frequently bewildered by the lists of comparatively obscure saints who are invoked and by the peculiar significance of the holidays and saints that are commemorated. Catechism classes, whether for children or for adults, have little time for such things, and it is up to families to do what they can to flesh out the details, by reading together, for example, the lives of the saints.

This is not so easy a matter as it might be. If Butler’s Lives often seem too long and too preoccupied with theological discourse, more popular books (often devoted only to the saints who seem to fit current trends) are short on detail and limited to the briefest sketches. Parents may wish to give their children one of the better short books, which they then amplify with relevant information from Butler or from other sources. The point is that children do not want a bare-bones outline: they want to hear the details, even the gory details, of real men and women who have lived and died in the faith.

An excellent older book, recently reprinted, is "The Catechism In Examples" by the Rev. D. Chisholm (originally published in 1919, reprinted by Roman Catholic Books) which illustrates the basic teachings of the Church by vivid examples drawn from the Scriptures and the lives of the Saints. But there are other less obvious sources for Catholic instruction: the Arthurian romances, medieval and renaissance poetry, and – very important – works of history that are not written from an anti-Catholic/secular perspective.

An institution, with its own website, offering a steady stream of information and advice on good books, the calendar and rituals of the Church, as well as on the resources that are available, will be an indispensable tool for homeschooling Catholic families.

Thomas Fleming
Editor of Chronicles Magazine
President, The Rockford Institute
The Rockford Institute
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