As we think about the role of the new high school, I found it interesting to read USA Today describing the pope’s homily today in which he touched on the critical need for Catholic education:
[He is] calling on Catholics to educate their children in the faith and to evangelize to the world. The pontiff called for stronger Catholic teaching to prepare youth for the challenges of secular society and for “cultivating a mindset, an intellectual culture which is genuinely Catholic, confident in the profound harmony of faith and reason, and prepared to bring the richness of faith’s vision to bear on the urgent issues which affect the future of American society.” “Who can deny that the present moment is a crossroads, not only for the church in America but for society as a whole?” Benedict asked.
Later Thursday, in one of his most anticipated speeches, the pope told leaders of America’s Roman Catholic colleges and universities that academic freedom has “great value” for the schools, but does not justify promoting positions that violate the Catholic faith. The former academic said that church teaching should shape all aspects of campus life and that Catholic educators have a “profound responsibility to lead the young to truth.” “I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom,” Benedict told hundreds of educators gathered at Catholic University of America. “Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the church would obstruct or even betray the university’s identity and mission.”
Father Dominic Foster, a priest from St. Francis University in Loretto, Pa., said the most important aspect of Benedict’s speech and his papacy is the unity of faith and reason.
“When you remove faith from society, you remove an important source of ethics. He’s calling on Catholic educators to make their contribution to a public life,” Foster said. “Every university, if it’s doing it’s job, is pursuing truth. But the Catholic university is doing it from a 2,000-year-old perspective. The Catholic church has a definite understanding of human dignity, and human dignity can’t be affirmed without a reference to God.”
