Context and Tradition

“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 our students, and even beyond the dreams or goals our students have for themselves. When I wrote this particular comment, the person to whom I was responding had noted that his subjects, math and science, had to be about more than math and science. He was especially concerned about what his courses meant to his students who were less math and science oriented. He wanted to know how he could relate math and science to God and a relationship with God.

Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church (the old church) is the parish where I started my own Catholic education. (P. Smith)

In my response I basically told him what many contemporary theologians have been stressing in the last few hundred years: all of Creation is Revelation. That means that this teacher had the right and ability to use his subject matter to talk about how God is revealing Himself to the class… how God is inviting us into relationship with Him through things like math and science. The order and logic of math and science, for example, does not disprove the existence of the transcendent, but rather reveals a design at work in Creation, and design suggests care and concern…a personal and Loving God. What this teacher needed to do was somehow create a dialogue of sorts between his curriculum and the tradition of the Church. All teachers need to embrace the apparent tension between our cultural and material context and the doctrine and tradition of the Church. It is not about diluting the tradition to fit the context or manipulating the context to fit the tradition; the Truth of who God is and who we are and that we are called to be in a Loving relationship with Him is found in the conversation between context and Tradition. We cannot presume to say one is more important than the other, as the former gives us vision of where our students (and we) are, and the latter gives us vision of where God is and where He wants us to be. The dialogue between God and humankind is where Catholic education should be. The apparent tension between context and Tradition is not a problem to be solved, but an opportunity to learn. What If we actually looked at all our classroom subjects and curriculum this way? What would Catholic education and Catholic school identity look like?