Marking the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s seminal declaration on Christian education Gravissimum educationis, Pope Leo issued an apostolic letter Oct. 28 calling on Catholic educators to “inaugurate a new era that speaks to the hearts of the new generations.”
The Holy Father employed the image of the “constellation” throughout the letter, comparing the diverse institutions, charisms, and fields of Catholic education to stars.
The Church gave birth to education as we know it
“We live in a complex, fragmented, and digitalized educational environment,” he wrote. “Precisely for this reason, it is wise to pause and refocus our gaze on the ‘cosmology of Christian paideia’” — something that has inspired the whole history of education.
The Gospel has always generated “educational constellations,” he wrote, which humbly but powerfully interpreted the times during which they flourished.
“In storms, they have been an anchor of salvation; and in calms, a sail unfurled,” he added. “A lighthouse in the night to guide navigation.”
The letter went on to outline the history of Western education and its inextricable connection to the workings of the Church. The “first universities were born” from “the heart of the Church,” the Holy Father explained, providing numerous examples from the Desert Fathers’ role as teachers to the work of early modern saints, who went out of their way to provide education to women and to the children of the poor.
“I reiterate what I clearly stated in Dilexi te,” Pope Leo wrote. “The education of the poor, for the Christian faith, is not a favor, but a duty.”
The “dynamic story” of the Church’s work to bring education to all is a “genealogy of concreteness,” which “testifies that, in the Church, pedagogy is never disembodied theory, but flesh, passion and history,” he wrote.
The true faith is essential to true education
Pope Leo emphasized that true education is impossible in the absence of the true faith, quoting Saint John Henry Newman, whom he will declare a Doctor of the Church this Saturday, Nov. 1: “religious truth is not only a part but a condition of general knowledge.” But education also can never take place unless “heart” speaks to “heart” and teachers are as ready to listen as they are to speak, the Holy Father wrote.
“No one educates alone,” he added, explaining that educators are an “us” in which “the teacher, the student, the family, the administrative and service personnel, the pastors and civil society converge to generate life.” That “us” works together and “prevents the water from stagnating in the swamp of ‘it has always been done this way,’” forcing the water instead to “flow, to nourish, to irrigate,” the Holy Father explained.
The ‘centrality of the person’
“The foundation remains the same,” however: “the person, image of God (Gen 1:26), capable of truth and relationship.”
“Therefore, desire and heart must not be separated from knowledge: that would mean breaking the person,” he continued, again referencing Newman. “Heart, there, dialogues with heart, and the method is one of listening, which recognizes the other as a good, not a threat. Cor ad cor loquitur was the cardinal motto of Saint John Henry Newman taken from a letter of Saint Francis de Sales: ‘It is the sincerity of the heart, and not the abundance of words, that touches the hearts of men.’”
‘The family remains the first place of education’
Pope Leo reminded readers that Gravissimum educationis defended “everyone’s right to education” and asserted the rights of the family “as the first school of humanity.”
“The family remains the first place of education,” he reasserted. “Catholic schools collaborate with parents, they do not replace them,” and “the duty of education, especially religious education, falls to [parents] before anyone else.”
When educators outside the family work properly with parents, their efforts inspire trust, Pope Leo wrote. When that trust is missing, “everything becomes more fragile.”
Measuring education merely in terms of the economic value or practical skill students can achieve by it is also cause for concern.
“Christian formation embraces the whole person: spiritual, intellectual, affective, social, corporeal,” he wrote. “Education does not measure its value only on the axis of efficiency: it measures it on dignity, on justice, on the ability to serve the common good.”
The “integral anthropological vision” of Catholic education “must remain the cornerstone of Catholic pedagogy,” he added and “goes against a purely commercialistic approach that often today forces education to be measured in terms of functionality and practical utility.”
Education operates with an eye to the “centrality of the person” and “is not just the transmission of content, but an apprenticeship in virtue.”
State support without manipulation
Pope Leo wrote of the duty of civil society and state governments to support education but emphasized the need to honor the principle of subsidiarity, entrusting educational decisions to those most closely connected with their own local communities rather than manipulating or intruding upon their role.
Gravissimum educationis considered it a “sacred right” for students to be allowed to “evaluate moral values with a good conscience,” Pope Leo wrote. The document also “asked civil authorities to respect this right” and “warned against the subordination of education to the job market and to the often ironclad and inhuman logic of finance.”
“Forming the ‘whole’ person means avoiding watertight compartments,” he wrote. The true faith is not just one kind of matter added to many, “but a breath that oxygenates every other matter.”
Therefore, Catholic education “becomes leaven” and “generates reciprocity, overcomes reductionism, opens to social responsibility.”
Creation
Pope Leo drew a connection between the ecological concerns of today and the timeless contemplation and study of creation that has always been an integral part of the tradition of Catholic education.
“Forgetting our common humanity has generated divisions and violence; and when the earth suffers, the poor suffer even more,” he wrote. “Catholic education cannot remain silent: it must unite social and environmental justice, promote moderation and sustainable lifestyles, and form consciences capable of choosing not only what is convenient but also what is right. Every small gesture – avoiding waste, choosing responsibly, defending the common good – is cultural and moral literacy.”
AI and other new technologies
Just as Gravissimum educationis sought to update the methods and language of Catholic education 60 years ago, Pope Leo wrote that now the Church must address itself in new ways to the rapidly developing technologies that affect education today.
“Technologies must serve people, not replace them; they must enrich the learning process, not impoverish relationships and communities,” he wrote.
He called for “pastoral creativity” and new efforts to properly train teachers, including in the use of new technologies.
He emphasized that the Catholic educational community must avoid “all technophobia,” pointing out that “technological progress is part of God’s plan for creation.”
Engaging new technologies “requires discernment in teaching planning, assessment, platforms, data protection, and equal access,” but the Holy Father reminded readers that “in any case, no algorithm can replace what makes education human: poetry, irony, love, art, imagination, the joy of discovery, and even learning to make mistakes as an opportunity for growth.”
“The crucial point is not technology, but how we use it,” he added. “Artificial intelligence and digital environments must be geared toward protecting dignity, justice, and work; they must be governed by criteria of public ethics and participation; they must be accompanied by appropriate theological and philosophical reflection.”
Calling on educators to innovate along the lines of tradition
“I ask all educational institutions to inaugurate a new era that speaks to the hearts of the new generations, reconciling knowledge and meaning, competence and responsibility, faith and life,” Pope Leo wrote, returning again to the analogy of “constellations.”
“Catholic educational constellations are an inspiring image of how tradition and future can intertwine without contradiction: a living tradition that extends toward new forms of presence and service,” he explained.
. In these constellations “lies the ability to navigate challenges with hope but also with courageous revision, without losing fidelity to the Gospel.”
“We are aware of the challenges,” he wrote: “hyper-digitalization can shatter attention; the crisis of relationships can harm the psyche; social insecurity and inequality can extinguish desire. Yet, precisely here, Catholic education can be a beacon: not a nostalgic refuge, but a laboratory of discernment, pedagogical innovation, and prophetic witness. Drawing new maps of hope: this is the urgency of the mandate.”
‘Disarm, lift your gaze, guard your heart’
Pope Leo concluded by calling on educational communities to “disarm your words, lift your gaze, guard your heart.”
“Disarm your words, because education does not advance through polemics, but through the meekness that listens,” he explained. “Lift your gaze. As God said to Abraham, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars’ (Gen 15:5): know how to ask yourselves where you are going and why.”
“Guard your heart: the relationship comes before opinion, the person before the program. Do not waste time and opportunities: ‘to quote an Augustinian expression: our present is an intuition, a time that we live and which we must take advantage of before it slips out of our hands.’”
“In conclusion, dear brothers and sisters,” he wrote, “I make my own the exhortation of the Apostle Paul: ‘You must shine like stars in the world, holding fast the word of life’ (Phil 2:15-16).”
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