Is There a Purpose to Religious Education?

It can be understood with a sincerity of mind and heart that the purpose of education is to prepare the student to engage life. The entire educational establishment, based on a Judeo-Christian ethos, would focus on the spiritual and educational transformation of the student to help him respond to truth, beauty, and goodness. This premise presupposes that the educator views the student as a child of God, who requires an educational atmosphere that nurtures and nourishes the student to seek objective truth. Anchored by the objectivity of truth, the student is provided an opportunity to more assuredly address two age-old questions: who am I, and what is my purpose in life?

The progress of education, either from a secular or religious perspective, would ensure that the ability to learn is not diminished because of an ideology that argues against the concept of God or the dignity of the human person, or diminished because of a disdain for all things objectively moral and true. This would be a contradiction that some in the educational establishment, both in the civil and religious realm, would unfortunately see as a non-contradiction, but a right for both student and teacher.

From the religious education perspective, the concept of education focuses on the study of the human person, his relationship with God, and those around him. A second point to consider is that the methodology and content of education within a Judeo-Christian worldview presupposes a willingness to investigate a humanism associated with the reality of God, not as a topic but a way of life. The reality I speak of is what Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of Liberation and Communion and one of the great Catholic educators of the Twentieth century, explains to educate means to help the human soul enter into the totality of the real.[1] Giussani emphasizes the person’s ability to become aware of his surroundings and become aware of the realities around him. He says that the more lively and humble the search, the more insightful the results, since everything positive and useful which a person has found will be used in this endeavor.[2]

Whether one agrees with Giussani’s definition of education or not, there is an important principle one should not ignore: the importance of being actively aware of your surroundings, especially from a Christian moral and ethical perspective. Giussani provides us with an additional point on education to consider, to educate means to help someone understand the elements of reality in their fruitful multiplying, up to a totality which is always the true horizon of our actions.[3] If we follow the pattern of Giussani’s method of education, education is not an indoctrination of information or the compliance with premeditated academic norms to produce human outcomes that do not address man’s relationship with God or respect the dignity of the person next to you.

Acknowledging the trajectory of the principles of education expressed by Giussani, it is important for any educator to at minimum objectively assent and promote with clarity the complementary relationship between the nature of education and the Christian faith. The great Catholic theologian and apologist Frank Sheed, in describing an educational approach on how to incorporate Christ in the classroom, tells us that,

within the context of reality, each man lives out his own individual life, with a variousness from one man to the next which would be dazzling if we dwelt on it too long. But the reality within which all of our so various lives have to be lived is one and the same reality for all. . . the fundamental problem for everyone is what life is all about: Why are we here, where are we supposed to be going, how are we to get there? Above all, how do we know?[4]

The reality of the educational concepts echoed by Giussani and Sheed represents a method of education that focuses on the human being and his state in life, or more specifically, his relationship with God. If a teacher actively chooses to ignore the reality of his teaching environment by not properly addressing both the educational and spiritual needs of their students, then the teaching environment becomes subjective, ignoring the objective needs of students and their ability to resonate with the reality of life and how to engage life through a Catholic world-view.

The purpose of education from the lens of a Catholic world-view is to develop in the student a keen sense of perceiving the world around them, and the ability to recognize objective truth that challenges the student to be subordinate to truth and not against it. This means that Christ is an advocate and not an enemy, the moral life is an asset, not a deficit, the sanctity of life in all its stages is sacred, and not dismissive. Religious education is an academic discipline; it is not an extra-curricular activity where the premise is simply to receive a sacrament to dispel any future need to practice the Catholic faith.

In describing the heritage of Christian education, Msgr. Eugene Kevane reminds us of the nature and purpose of the Catholic institution of learning,  

The Catholic Institution of learning, in other words, is an instrument of Christian formation, a genuine and effective school of perfection, the safe way which St. Augustine had in mind for young people to walk. This is the very essence of the heritage from the Fathers of the Church, the fact that the Catholic faith is learned in two ways: first, by participating in the sacred mysteries, a participation which regulates in a Christian manner the daily life of the young people; secondly, by instruction, in the same way as any other body of intellectual knowledge is learned, ascending in academic method and mode with the ascent of the young person upon the levels of education.[5]

In conclusion, there is a purpose to religious education; it is the pathway to help a student develop an identifiable relationship with Jesus Christ. Second, the purpose is to strengthen a student's spiritual and moral conviction in the name of Jesus Christ. The religious educator's responsibility is to help the student engage the world through a Catholic lens and not run away from it. Third, the purpose of religious education is to communicate the facts of Jesus Christ and transmit the heritage of the Catholic faith as revealed in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. Finally, the purpose of religious education is to offer the reality of eternal life that exists with God in heaven.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so as to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine. It will be you, shining on others through me. Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.

Amen.

St. John Henry Newman