Theology of Catholic Pedagogical Theory: What it Means to Teach at a Catholic School

              Father Greg Boyle is the president of Homeboy Industries. Of you don’t know about Homeboy Industries, it is a business and ministry that “provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women…” Father Greg describes how one of the biggest obstacles in their work is convincing the greater community that these current, transitioning, or former gang members are, in fact, people who Hope to be more than what the gang image tells the world. The preconceptions exist even in the various businesses that Homeboy Industries runs. He tells stories of men or women from rival gangs having to work together. At first, all they know about the other is that they are a rival. The entire Truth of their new coworker is condensed into a gang name or a color or any number of surface or material Truths. It is easy to vilify or hate someone if they are just a “color” or a label. But as they grow in relationship...

“We can use logic and reason to suppose the existence of God, but where does that Logic and reason come from? Aquinas argues that God is the source of those particular gifts. We can and should use our rational thinking to observe the Revelation of God, but, ultimately, it will always take His Grace to help us begin to understand the Truth of God. This means that there is a limit to the human intellect, and, by virtue of Faith, we should always acquiesce to His mystery.” Right now I am facilitating an online class that discusses the “conflict” between Faith and science. I put “conflict” in quotes because one of the main theses of the class is that the debate between Faith and science is largely fabricated. It is not an ancient battle between progressive, humanistic scientists the conservative, ignorant Christians. Nor is it a battle between righteous and Faithful followers of Jesus and sinful and atheistic unbelievers. In fact, the conflict is mostly a modern phenomenon, and, if w...

“Thanks for your response. Indeed, many theologians and scholars will claim that all of Creation is Revelation. All elements of our time and space are invitations to grow in relationship with God. It is our inability to see past our own will and our own intellect that prevents us from "seeing" this Revelation. It's unpredictable. We CAN know where His Revelation will be found (Scripture, Tradition, People, etc...), but if we could predict exactly what it will look like or what it will say, then that Truth of God would not be transcendent. We have to have Faith. I teach this to my students, directly and indirectly. It is easy enough to teach this in terms of philosophy and epistemology...to know transcendent things, we must be in relationship with something that is Transcendent. But as a teacher I model this concept. I'm pretty transparent to my students in how much I Love them and am willing to work with them, but I do not "hunt them down" if they are miss...

“The greatest mistake we can commit in Christianity (or humanity, for that matter,) is to think we can "know" the transcendent by our own means. This is not possible, epistemologically. We rely on One who is Transcendent to give to us Truth beyond human understanding. This is one of the first things I teach students; it is necessary to acquiesce to greater Truths in order to know those Truths. We cannot "climb to the top of the mountain" on our own.” I was reading the other day and came across a great quote about education. Blessed Basile Moreau, the founder of the congregation of the Holy Cross, wrote that education (pedagogy) is “the art of helping young people to completeness.” He continues: “For the Christian, this means that education is helping the young person be more like Christ.” To summarize his points, Moreau tells us that the most important thing is for teachers to re-learn how to teach. Our objective is not simply to give information to our students...

“You are right to say that Faith is an internal relationship with God, first given to us as a gift of Love for us and then freely reciprocated to God in our Love of Him. But that gift extends beyond just God and the self. If we are made in the image an likeness of God and of God is Trinity from whom all Creation comes, then the Love we experience with God, necessarily, must be extended to others. This is where Faith becomes Religion...this is where personal belief becomes universal Vocation. If I Truly Love my students then I should want them to know that they are eternally Loved and in that relationship with God, they can learn to better Love each other. Ultimately, this is the Gospel message.” We cannot internalize Faith. We cannot look at Faith as only a personal experience. It may be a personal choice, at least initially, but to believe in Jesus is to believe in the unity and complementarity of all human beings and the persons of the Trinity. Faith may be a personal choice,...

“As a teacher in Catholic schools I often ask my students to reflect on how they can help other people know they are Loved. I challenge my students to think of what words or actions they can do to make another person's day a little bit better. They have to have Faith that their actions will affect another person. My job as a teacher is not to give them that Faith, but to help them realize it has been there all along. When they act on that Faith, they have taken control of their Loving action.”             Reflection. If there is one skill that we can teach out students, it is the ability to reflect. It is the ability to just sit down long enough to think about what they are learning. To contemplate the words they say and how they affect others. To meditate on the actions they do and how those actions either make other people happier or not. This is actually a skill that can be taught in any classroom, no matter what the sub...

“You touched on one of the first concepts I teach my students in high school theology; in epistemology (the study of knowledge) there are certain things that we cannot know on our own and we require assistance from someone or something greater than we are. In order to receive that knowledge (not "discover" that knowledge) we have to have Faith that that knowledge exists and that there is someone who Loves us enough to share that knowledge with us.” When I teach upperclassmen, I start with a unit on anthropology and epistemology. Some theology teachers get upset that I “waste” my time and do not focus on catechesis or apologetics more…that I start my class with philosophy. Of course, I quote the Baltimore Catechism and respond by reminding my critics that at first we are called “to know Him, to Love Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” The primary directive is “to know” Him. The difficulty is that Catholic theology understand...

“Thanks for the response. Nicely said. It all seems pretty rational and logical when you look at it. If we assume God to have created both us and the world around us and if we assume God to be one who Loves us, then it stands to reason that He is going to use Creation and humans to reveal Himself to us so we can grow in relationship with Him. So, in a way, Creation and People ARE part of His Revelation. Creation and People, then, are Graces given to us so we can recognize our gift of Faith and then act on it. This means that how we relate to each other and how we relate to the World, is, by extension, how we relate to God.” I write these short notes to my online classes, all of whom are Catholic school teachers, keeping in mind that we, as Catholic school teachers and administrators, have a goal much greater than just preparing our students for the next level of education. Our goal extends beyond the walls of our classroom, beyond the curriculum or lesson plans that we deliver to o...