Christian education

There is a need for teachers and lecturers who know how to teach the human sciences and arts perfectly, while instilling a deeply Christian sense of life in their pupils’ minds. “Since education consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created, it is clear that there can be no true education which is not wholly directed to man’s last end, (and so) there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education.”⁵

The right ordering of all knowledge

Classes of religion added on to the rest of the subjects are not enough to make education Christian. It is indispensable for “this education be wholly in harmony with the Catholic faith in its literature and system of training, and chiefly in philosophy, upon which the direction of other sciences in great measure depends.”⁶

Our goal is to align the whole of culture with salvation, to illuminate all human knowledge with faith,⁷ to form Christians full of optimism and drive who are capable of living out their divine adventure in the world: compossessores mundi, non erroris;⁸ having possession of the world, alongside other men and women, but not of its errors. We aim to form Christians who are determined to foster, defend and protect Christ’s interests – his loves – in society, Christians who can distinguish Catholic doctrine from what is simply opinion, while striving to be firmly united and solid in essentials, and who love freedom and the personal responsibility it entails.

Genuine apostolate

My daughters and sons, this marvellous mission of the teacher and the lecturer is a true, profound apostolate. It is especially necessary today because of the spread of erroneous secular teaching and its influence on people’s lives, and in order to save and develop the enormous heritage of Christian culture, the fruit of centuries of effort.