Vatican II on True Education

This year marks the celebration of 200 years of Catholic Education in Australia. Here we look at one of the lesser known documents of the Second Vatican Council, Gravissimum Educationis (the Declaration on Christian Education) to see what it has to offer us today.

Gravissimum Educationis is a short document but elaborates importantly on what constitutes a wholesome Christian education. Here are just a few key takeaways.

Education as an Inalienable Right

The first striking thing about the document is that education is said to be ‘an inalienable right’. That is: a right no person can or should ever take away from someone. This right is one that stems from the very dignity of being a human person. Regardless of race, condition or age, this education is one that should be in keeping with ‘their ultimate goal, their ability, their sex, and the culture and tradition of their country’ (§1). This last part is interesting, because whilst education is, almost by definition, a process of learning and questioning even things we hold dear, this seems to be a critique of those programmatic attempts to subvert a people’s cultural heritage through ideological ‘education’.

As an example of this, we might point to Pope Francis’ critique of ‘gender theory’ as a form of programmatic ideological colonisation, rather than true education (Amoris Laetitia §56). This is actually a topic the Vatican discussed in a document released in 2019.

There is, however, something even more interesting. Part of this right to education is the ‘sacred right’ to a formation of conscience so that young people might ‘appraise moral values’.

If we’re being honest, it’s difficult not to hear in this paragraph the language of the German Catholic moral philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand. For von Hildebrand, a truly formed personality was one that was capable of recognising and responding to ‘moral values’. In The Art of Living he wrote:

Far above his cultural accomplishments rises the importance of man’s own being: a personality radiating moral values, a man who is humble, pure, truthful, honest, and loving. [1]

The human person, as a moral creature, has a sacred right to the formation of his or her conscience, without which one cannot have a wholesome, integrated, and human education.

Once we see the formation of conscience not simply as a duty but as a ‘sacred right’, one could wonder how this might shape our approach to education as a whole.

Primary Educators

The family is ‘the first school of the social virtues that every society needs,’ but more than this, parents should be considered the ‘primary and principal educators’. Since this is the case, and it is a serious obligation on the part of parents to educate their children, only ‘with great difficulty’ and careful consideration should this role be outsourced to institutions such as the government when it is deemed to be lacking (§3). In fact, an interesting observation is that when it comes to the discussion of schools, even though the document holds them in very high esteem, they are, at the end of the day, an ‘aid’ to education (§4). The primary duty still belongs to the parents and this should not be subverted (§6). Catholic schools are of special interest, however, because they are indispensable aids towards a human formation that is also animated by ‘the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity’ (§8). Parents need the help of their communities to provide this holistic, human and Christian education, so schools, as essential community institutions, are an aid to this end.

A Rigorous Theology

In the midst, the document discusses Catholic universities and colleges and the faculties of sacred theology therein. It says:

The Church expects much from the zealous endeavours of the faculties of the sacred sciences . . . for promoting learning on their own or for undertaking the work of a more rigorous intellectual apostolate (§11).

A theological education should, properly speaking, be a rigorous one, since it should involve ‘penetrating inquiry’ into Divine Revelation. It should also see itself within the great tradition, with a responsibility to more deeply understand the legacy of Christian truth and its doctrinal development in the life of the Church. It was a call by the Church not to dumb things down when it comes to education but to ramp things up.

Liturgy and Education

A properly Christian education, though, is one that is centred in Christ. Not only delving deeper into the mystery of salvation, but also being educated in true worship. In this, the document says, special attention should be paid to liturgy in Christian education. This education is one that recognises the new creation we are in Christ and the place liturgy has in the transformation and sanctification of creation. This is because the liturgy is not something that we do. It is something we participate in, but it is fundamentally the work and action of Christ himself, through the Church, for the sake of the world. This is what another Vatican II document, Sacrosanctum Concilium, has to say about the liturgy:

Every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the priest and of His Body which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree (SC §7).

Because of the centrality of the liturgy for the Church, it’s important to see the liturgy as being indispensable in the Christian education of young people. Again, it’s hard not to think about von Hildebrand. His great book Liturgy and Personality is one that explores the relationship between the liturgy and the formation of the human personality because of the way in which it reveals to us essential ‘moral values’ and allows us to be transformed in Christ by Christ himself.

Again, we read in Sacrosanctum Concilium:

The renewal in the Eucharist of the covenant between the Lord and man draws the faithful into the compelling love of Christ and sets them on fire (SC §10).

One of the effects of the liturgy should be to set us on fire. Finally, and therefore, a properly Christian education is also one that is evangelical: it tends towards learning ‘how to help in the Christian formation of the world’ ( GE §2).