Educator's Re-Emphasize Catholic Contribution to Western Civilization

Educator's Re-Emphasize Catholic Contribution to Western Civilization MIKE MASTROMATTEO

A group of Catholic educators and academics has banded together to promote a renewed appreciation of Catholic culture and social teaching in Catholic schools. The Catholic Educator's Resource Center (CERC), comprised of Catholic educators and prominent Catholic academics, has been established as an antidote to what its supporters see as the prevailing secularism in school textbooks.

Don D'Elia, professor of history at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is a member of the CERC advisory board. He said the creation of CERC is well timed to take advantage of the Internet and its ready access to information and the exchange of material. “I see it as putting communications technology at the service of the Holy Spirit,” he said.

D'Elia said any effort to divert education from its current secular course should be welcomed by anyone concerned about the future of Catholic-Christian education. “If our culture is at variance with the truth of our faith, then we can become a divided or nihilistic people,” D'Elia said. He suggested that as products of state and public universities, many of today's teachers have only partial or distorted views of history and the social sciences. As a result, it can be difficult for even well-meaning teachers to impart a proper understanding of the Catholic contribution to their students. “Unfortunately we are getting a number of teachers who have been grounded in a pseudo-reality,” he said. “What we need is a way of bringing a greater Catholic perspective to our schools and teaching methods.”

Similarly, Dominic Aquila, chairman of the Department of History, Humanities and Catholic Culture at Franciscan University at Steubenville, Ohio, believes the creation of the Catholic Educators' Resource Center can help offset pervasive secularism in schools and textbooks.

Aquila, who also sits on the CERC advisory board, suggested that a certain intellectual laziness has contributed to the diminished role for Catholic education among today's academic elites. “I wouldn't suggest that there is a conspiracy to suppress the Catholic contribution in the teaching of history and the social sciences,” Aquila said. “It is probably more the result of indifference than anything else.” Nonetheless, Aquila agreed that the marginalization of authentic Catholic-Christian understandings in public schools and institutions poses problems for a culture in search of meaning and significance. He expressed hope that CERC and related efforts will help students, teachers and parents re-emphasize the church's role in relating all human culture to the news of salvation.

The purpose of CERC is to serve the teacher's needs in the classroom as far as integrating the culture and understanding of Catholicism with what they are already teaching day to day,” says executive officer J. Fraser Field.

CERC takes inspiration from Vatican II's Declaration on Christian Education, which defines a Catholic school as one “striving to relate all human culture eventually to the news of salvation, so that the life of faith will illuminate the knowledge which students gradually gain of the world, of life, and of humankind.” Without a return to this “unity of truth” concept of traditional Catholic education, say CERC officials, the Gospel message is bound to increasingly meet with popular indifference.

“We need to help our students make Christian sense out of what they learn in their natural science, math, and history courses, in their study of art, music, and literature,” writes Aquila. CERC has been working closely with the Society of Catholic Social Scientists to identify areas of weakness in teaching materials and is now offering Catholic-centered educational resources from their web site.

“The Catholic Educator's Resource Center provides an Internet library of journal articles, essays, book excerpts, and other texts chosen for their objective, concise and clear presentation of Catholic teachings, history, and culture, particularly in those areas in which the church's role is unknown or misunderstood. These texts have been selected to assist teachers in Catholic schools, as well as other interested educators, to supplement and refine their current texts and curricula, as well as provide them with scholarly yet accessible resources for themselves and their students.”

Field said the resource center is eager to increase the material it makes available to educators, home-schooling parents and other interested parties. “While before we were concentrating on history and social sciences, our categories now include art and literature, politics and government, ethics and religion, and science,” he said.

The Catholic Educators' Resource Center has received operating grants from the New York-based Homeland Foundation, and from the Knights of Columbus. The organization is seeking additional benefactors.

CERC officials are guided by a number of major principles, including contacting individuals and organizations to establish existing suitable resources, maintaining a library of material which gives proper treatment to the Catholic-Christian contribution, and developing and distributing teaching materials to Christian educators.

The Catholic Educators' Resource Network can be found on the Internet at www.catholiceducation.org. Submissions can also be forwarded by e-mail at info@catholiceducation.org.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Mike Mastromatteo. "Educator's Re-emphasize Catholic Contribution to Western Civilization." National Catholic Register (October 4-10, 1998).

Reprinted with permission of the National Catholic Register.

THE AUTHOR

Mike Mastromatteo writes from Toronto, Canada.