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

We are Not a Private School; we are a Catholic School! What does it mean to be “Catholic”? Ultimately, our vocation as Catholic school teachers is to play a role in the salvation of souls (Can. 1752). If we are not working to that end, then we are not providing for our students what we are called to do. Immaculate Heart of Marcy Catholic Church and School in Atlanta, GA...where I grew up. (Photo: P. Smith) The Church is the “family of the Lord”, so we say. The immediate family, the domestic Church, then, is the womb in which the children of God are cared for and protected in the safest environment possible. So what of the Catholic School? If the domestic Church is the womb of the Church, then the Catholic School is the nursery. And what are we nursing? To what end? God certainly wants everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4-6). But Salvation is not simply “getting into Heaven”. The contrary to salvation is damnation…slavery to sin and fixation on ego and material Truth.

I have been out of the loop. It has been several months since I last blogged. I suppose I have been disillusioned. Long story short, I do not feel my philosophy of teaching fits with much of what my current school is doing. At the heart of my philosophy of education (not just theological education, but all of education) is relationship. It is in my methodology and my assessment. It is the anthropology of my students. All humans are made to be in relationship, so it seems logical that the way we learn is heavily connected to relationships. This is especially important in the study of theology, particularly Trinitarian theology. A colleague of mine told me the other day that he asked his students, directly, if they thought education was more about relationships or content. One student answered bluntly that she was not in school to make friends; her goal was to get into Stanford. For her, and for many other students and colleagues, sadly, the focus of education is blind dogmatism and co