Catholicism – Page 2 – Mysteries and Manners

Three Pseudo-Christian Approaches

February 13, 2016

Some two and a half years ago, Pope Francis told us about the Christian way to encounter God in the world:

“We need to touch Jesus’ wounds, caress Jesus’ wounds, bind them with tenderness; we must kiss Jesus’ wounds, literally. Just think: what happened to St. Francis, when he embraced the leper? The same thing that happened to Thomas: his life changed. To touch the living God”, Pope Francis concluded, “we do not need to attend a ‘refresher course’ but to enter into the wounds of Jesus.” (Pope Francis, VIS)

Read the rest of it here: Vatican Information Service

pope-francis-favela-wyd — via thoughtsfromacatholic.wordpress.com

In this homily, the Pope contrasts this Christian approach of touching the wounds of Jesus with three other approaches: the “Gnostic” approach (pursing “knowledge of God” rather than a relationship with the God-Man, Jesus Christ), the “Philanthropist” approach (doing good things, creating the Kingdom of God rather than working to receive it as a gift) and the “mortification” approach (earning one’s way to God through self-denial).

These three approaches are what you could call “pseudo-Christian”. Each has an element of Christianity in it, but each neglects something or exaggerates something.

As a teacher, especially a former ACE teacher, I think I am very much tempted to adopt these mistakes:

1) The Gnostic Approach: Let’s face it, I’m what Flannery O’Connor disparagingly calls a “big intellectual”. So are a lot of people who went to liberal arts colleges. We thrive on ideas, and connections, and relationships, and books. We love learning ABOUT God. But of course, that is not the same as learning to know God. The former is fascinating, the latter is frightening–and causes us to change. Gnosticism treats one’s relationship with God as an elite journey into higher levels of spiritual knowledge and tends to either despise the world or ignore it.

2) The Philanthropist Approach: ACE teachers, and members of other service organizations, are especially prone to this error I think. The theology goes something like this: Jesus was always talking about “The Kingdom of God.” This “Kingdom” is “the reign of God on earth,” or a society founded upon peace and justice. As Christians, we are responsible for creating this society by opposing and changing the pre-existing unjust structures.

There IS a lot of truth to this approach–but like all distortions, it’s all the more dangerous because it has only part of the truth. This was the Christianity I learned in high school and many learn at colleges that are comfortable professing only the parts of the faith that no secular person could be offended by.

The philanthropist’s mistake is a misunderstanding of what “The Kingdom of God” really is. Notice Jesus never says, “Go out and build the kingdom of God, and as soon as you manage that, I’ll come back!” He says “The Kingdom of God is at hand” and “The Kingdom of God is within you.” That is, the Kingdom is the gift of God’s presence that we can choose to participate in or reject–but it is not something we can bring about by our own efforts.

Often I think it’s up to me to change education single-handedly. Really, it’s God’s work in which He invites me to participate.

3) The Mortification Approach: This is the approach that, I believe, the Philanthropist approach (ie. “Spirit of Vatican II) was trying to correct. This more “traditional” mistake falls too far in the other direction– it makes the journey of faith a bunch of requirements. It encourages people to remove themselves from the sinful world and focus on personal acts of self-denial and good works. It is rigid and prideful. It’s the error of the Pharisees.

Interestingly, it makes the same fundamental mistake as the Philanthropist approach: it relies far too heavily upon human effort and not enough upon God’s grace. Unsurprisingly, the Self-Mortifier and the Philanthropist fall into similar sins of pride and lack of charity toward others.

The Christian approach, according to Pope Francis, is quite different. Unlike the Gnostic, who prizes knowledge and esoteric ways of knowing God, the Christian realizes that knowledge of God is available to everyone, and that the only real way to know God is through love. Unlike the Philanthropist, who focuses only on trying to bring about a utopia on earth, the Christian remembers he is a citizen of heaven and that the Kingdom is a gift, not a political agenda. Unlike the Self-Mortifier, who focuses so much on his idea of heaven and his own advancement in the spiritual life that he cuts himself off from the world, the Christian is willing to walk boldly into the mess to find Jesus in everyone he meets.

Augustine, Advent, and the “O Antiphons”

December 3, 2015

One of my all time favorite passages from the Office of Readings is Saint Augustine’s meditation on desire:

Why he should ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realize that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it), but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is why we are told: Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke with unbelievers. (Office of Readings, Saint Augustine, “Letter to Proba”, emphasis added)

I remember reading this while I was studying in Rome seven years ago. I was praying a lot then, for many things, and the idea that my prayer was a means by which God was “stretching” my heart so that I could have the capacity to receive his gift really helped me.

It strikes me that this meditation describes very well what Advent is all about. We are waiting and hoping for God to finally come, just like Israel waited (and still waits).

Augustine continues:

The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed. No eye has seen it; it has no color. No ear has heard it; it has no sound. It has not entered man’s heart; man’s heart must enter into it. (Ibid)

Because, of course, the “gift” which is “very great indeed” is the Emmanuel Himself.

If you read the Old Testament this way, it makes more sense. All of that wandering in the desert, the exile and return, the judgment of the prophets, the takeover by Babylonians and Greeks and Romans was an enormous stretching process whereby the desire of Israel for the Messiah was increased. By the time of Jesus, that desire was so intense that people were identifying messiahs everywhere.

We see this same desire in the Church as we look forward to the Messiah’s second coming. We see it especially in the “O Antiphons” and the repetition of the word “come” over and over again. Each antiphon has a different name for Jesus– “Wisdom”, “Leader,” “Root”, “Key”, “Radiant Dawn”, “King”, “Emmanuel”, and in each antiphon the speaker begs for the Messiah to “come”:

O Wisdom of our God Most High,
guiding creation with power and love:
come to teach us the path of knowledge!

O Leader of the House of Israel,
giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai:
come to rescue us with your mighty power!

O Root of Jesse’s stem,
sign of God’s love for all his people:
come to save us without delay!

O Key of David,
opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom:
come and free the prisoners of darkness!

O Radiant Dawn,
splendor of eternal light, sun of justice:
come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the
shadow of death.

O King of all nations and keystone of the Church:
come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!

O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law:
come to save us, Lord our God!

(“The ‘O Antiphons’ of Advent”, USCCB website)

Every antiphon is a prayer and an exercise in desire.

Advent is a season for this desire, as Fr. James Martin in his recent seasonal reflection explains. But of course, in some sense, we are always living in Advent, until the Second Coming itself or our own death–whichever comes first.

Augustine even alludes to “set times and seasons” in which we pray to God “in words” to help us “mark the progress we have made in our desire.” I think this is exactly what Advent is:

In this faith, hope and love we pray always with unwearied desire. However, at set times and seasons we also pray to God in words, so that by these signs we may instruct ourselves and mark the progress we have made in our desire, and spur ourselves on to deepen it. The more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruit. When the Apostle tells us: Pray without ceasing, he means this: Desire unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and ask it of him who alone is able to give it.

(Office of Readings, Saint Augustine, “Letter to Proba”, emphasis added)

“Beauty Will Save The World”

November 5, 2015

The other evening I attended the Archbishop’s Lecture Series. Dr. Jonathan Reyes came and spoke about how to preach the Gospel in a skeptical age–and an age in which reasoned arguments no longer have much purchase.

Jenny over at Mama Needs Coffee has a beautiful reflection on his talk. An excerpt:

That’s the kind of love that speaks to a world grown blind to logic and deaf to reason. They might not believe in absolute Truth any more, but they can still perceive its counterpart, absolute Love. And from that encounter of being loved, of being valuable…a conversation can begin. (“My Little Lepers”)

She goes on to recount Dr. Reyes’ reflection on Mother Teresa. The reason the world loves Mother Teresa is because although it cannot comprehend faith very well, or the idea of “objective truth” (the phrase even makes me cringe a little), or rational argument, it is still attracted to beauty, for all of its infatuation with ugliness. And because Mother Teresa went to the ugliest human places with love, she reminded us of what real beauty is like. And the world noticed.

Dr. Reyes encouraged all of us to “get our hands dirty.” The world will not really listen to what Christians have to say anymore, but it is still watching us closely, and it may yet be moved by something beautiful.

Dostoevsky famously said, “In the end, the world will be saved by beauty.”

I thought about this in the context of my own world–my students. They are, as I am, products of a “skeptical age” that has lost the ability to reason. Our generation does not have the patience careful argument requires. Just watch the Presidential debates. We prefer slogans, soundbites, tweets, and hashtags.

I’ve noticed this countless times when I try to teach essay writing at the beginning of the year. Especially this year, I have been bewildered and discouraged by my student’s intellectual poverty–their struggle to form coherent thoughts, never mind reasoned arguments. Many of them still have a hard time wrapping their minds around what an “arguable thesis” even is. They can parrot back cliches and soundbites, but they cannot prove a basic claim.

It is my responsibility to try to teach them how to do this.

And yet, Dr. Reyes’ talk gave me pause. Maybe I am starting in the wrong place. Maybe I shouldn’t start off the school year with essay writing– essentially, teaching kids how to think and prove a point.

Maybe I need to start off the year with beauty.

Maybe they would be more open and eager to learn how to think, how to write, how to formulate a thesis and use evidence to support it, if they were at first struck by something beautiful.

I’m still not sure what that would look like. But I’m going to give it some thought.

Teaching Archetypes; Or, Backdoor Natural Law Theory and “Myth Become Fact”

November 2, 2015

I’m in the middle of a mythology unit with my kids and we’re learning about archetypes–recurring character and event patterns that show up in stories from all different cultures, times and places.

For instance, the orphan-turned-hero archetype: the young boy in the Native American Blackfeet myth we read, Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Jane Eyre, , even Luke Skywalker if you admit that Anakin is kind of dead, practically speaking.

cfe-little-orphan-annie — And of course, Lil’ Orphan Annie.

Or the mentor figure who must die/disappear so the hero can become a hero: Gandalf, Dumbledore, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Glenda the Good Witch.

Or the flood myth archetype: Noah and the Ark, Utnapishtim in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Deucalion and Pyrrha in the Greek story, and stories in practically every culture on this planet.

Or the hero’s journey archetype. Here’s a fun video we watched in class about that:

Or, perhaps more provocatively, the dying and rising godlike hero: the Egyptian Osiris, Babylonian Tammuz, Greek Persephone, Hercules going to the Underworld and bringing Theseus back, Odysseus, Aeneas… and Gandalf the Grey coming back from the dead as Gandalf the White, and Aragorn passing through Dunharrow.

And, of course, Jesus.

Whoah. Yes, it’s true. Jesus fulfills archetypes big time.

One of the essential questions we are considering in this unit is What do Archetypes Suggest About Human Nature?

Well, what they suggest about human nature is that such a thing actually exists– and that human beings all over the world are caught up in the same search for meaning and often come to surprisingly similar answers.

Archetypes suggest there may be eternal truths about human beings. The stories we tell are similar because we are all similar. Among these standards are moral standards that all cultures recognize but some cultures realize more fully than others do.

And there you go: Backdoor Natural Law Theory. Sort of.

Next up on the unit plan: Is Christianity just another myth?

I mean, it is pretty similar to a lot of other myths. Sometimes uncannily so. There’s the whole scapegoat archetype thing going on. And isn’t Jesus basically like the half-god, half-human heroes of old? And doesn’t that prove that Christianity just adopted other mythologies and so basically our God is just an updated Zeus, or something?

We’ll have some interesting discussions, for sure. But to guide us, we will be reading excerpts from C. S. Lewis’ “Myth Become Fact.”

Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying god, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens-at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. (Lewis, “Myth Become Fact”)

This is going to be a bit mind-boggling for some of my kids, but I think it’s worth a try.

What Education Can’t Fix

October 9, 2015

I’ve been having a lot of good–but difficult–conversations with teachers about the state of Catholic education in the United States.

And as I was talking to one of my former ACE roommates about all the struggles I’m having this year with my kids, I realized something that maybe I had only been aware of before on a subconscious level.

Education can’t fix the problems it faces.

That sounds pessimistic. But it’s true.

And maybe also a little bit liberating.

I was frustrated a few days ago with a kid who did not come to finish an essay we had written in class. I was offering her support and extra help, and she did not come after school even after I had reminded her. And then I reminded her the next day and she did not come. And I had made myself available during lunch this time even though originally I had planned on trying to keep my lunchtimes this year. I was upset. Why oh why won’t you come when I am bending over backwards trying to help you?

And suddenly, later, on the phone with my ACE friend, I realized — this kid doesn’t really give a damn about my essay. And that’s kind of reasonable. From the little I know about her situation, she has so much going on at home that if I were her I wouldn’t give a damn about some essay either. She has bigger battles she’s fighting.

I mean, she still has to write that thing and I reminded her again today and she did come, thank goodness.

But sometimes as a teacher I get so caught up in my goals for my kids– or the curriculum standards — that I lose some perspective.

And I starting feeling like it’s my job to “save” them, when of course that’s God’s job.

But I think all educators–not just Catholic ones– are suffering from an identity crisis. We think that education can save these kids from their apparently grim destinies. But although a good education can make a big difference, it is not the only thing.

We get kids with learning disabilities. We get kids from broken homes. We get kids who have never met their dads. We get kids whose parents are struggling to pay the bills. Many of these parents — for all of our Catholic talk of “primary educators”– do not have the time or resources to read to their kids or get them books or help them with homework. Some of them may not know how to read well or at all. Indeed these parents are the primary educators, but many of them do not have the ability to educate. And no matter how good a school is, a school cannot fill the role of a parent.

Education isn’t just trying to overcome ignorance– its trying to overcome material poverty and broken families and cultural decay and entitlement and prejudice and despair.

But really all educators can do is try to teach kids who may be unwilling or exhausted or distracted by bigger problems.

Even the best charter school networks with all the money and resources and professional development and “best practices” in the world cannot quite make up for those things.

All we can do is help. All we can do is love our students and hold them to high expectations and give them the support they need to meet those expectations. And some of them will get there, and some of them won’t.

As Mother Teresa says, “We are not called upon to be successful, but to be faithful.”

Let’s be faithful to our students and leave the success part to God.

images — via Roy Bennet @ InspiringThinkn

Retakes and Repentance

October 6, 2015

Usually when I write a blog post, I sit on it for a day or two and reread it a few times before hitting “publish” and unleashing my stream-of-consciousness onto the internet.

Unfortunately, I didn’t do that the other day with the post “Retakes as Mercy.”

I was feeling fired up and published that post without reflecting on my tone. And although I still stand by the heart of what I said, I want to apologize for some of the things the post may have implied about teachers who don’t necessarily agree with me. There are many wonderful teachers out there who do not agree with an “assessments only” or a “retake policy”, and they are wonderful, merciful, Christlike teachers.

Clearly, every year I am trying to grow as a teacher and I certainly am not perfect. Maybe some of the ideas I adhere to so passionately today I may have to revise in the future when I learn more.

First of all, I should have clarified that because I am only a high school English teacher, I do not know how an assessments-only policy and a retake policy would work in other subject areas or for other student age-levels. I can only speak from my own experience that it has worked well for my kids.

Second of all, there might be many other ways of showing mercy to students besides allowing retakes. Some teachers allow test corrections, for example, which I think is a great idea.

Third, a friend reminded me that repentance is an essential part of Church teaching on mercy. God always offers us His mercy, but we cannot receive it unless we repent. Repentance opens us up to mercy.

So, if you want your grading policy to reflect mercy, you also need to make sure it makes room for repentance. I try to do this in my own retake policy, but I can see how students might take advantages of the policy and not use it the right way.

I’m not trying to suggest that failing a quiz because you honestly did not understand the concept is a sin and therefore requires repentance–it’s not and it doesn’t.

But laziness is a sin. Assuming you’re all set without honestly preparing or quizzing yourself–that is, pride–is a sin. Making excuses or blaming others instead of taking responsibility for one’s own learning–vanity or dishonesty–those are sins. And they are all sins by which high school students are tempted and to which many of them succumb to from time to time.

Teachers sometimes succumb to them as well.

I firmly believe that grades should reflect learning. And I firmly believe that one’s grading policy should reflect mercy.

But your grading policy must also encourage repentance–the only way human beings can open themselves up to mercy.

It is important to remember that different teachers may have very different ways of encouraging both mercy and repentance.

Retakes as Mercy

September 29, 2015

The other evening I went to a housewarming party where there were a large number of current and graduated ACE teachers (I don’t say “former” ACE teachers, because once an ACE teacher, always an ACE teacher).

The topic of conversation inevitably turned to teaching, no matter how many times we scolded ourselves and reminded ourselves that we were supposed to be having “fun.” (Secretly, of course, I was thinking how talking about teaching is fun.) And someone brought up the whole assessments-only model that I have written about here a few times, and someone else brought up the usual objections to the model, and then someone else brought up retakes.

I have written before about why allowing retakes on tests, quizzes and essays is a good thing for students. Most teachers at my school don’t agree with me, and I understand that because this time last year I would have disagreed too. We grew up thinking of school a certain way and it’s hard to see why the traditional model should change. If you don’t prepare for a quiz and you flunk it, you flunk it. Better luck next time.

But apart from the fact that allowing retakes give students who otherwise would never learn the objective another chance to learn what they were supposed to learn in the first place, I’d like to talk about another dimension of the retake policy that just occurred to me:

Mercy.

Maybe it’s Pope Francis’ influence, but I really think Catholic school teachers should model their classroom policies on the Gospel as much as possible. That might be a small step towards solving “The Problem with Catholic Schools.”

So often the objection teachers and others make to retakes is “Well, the real world isn’t like that!” and “If you don’t come prepared to a job interview and you flunk the interview, you’re not getting the job.”

Apart from being a rather poor analogy based on a ill-conceived premise (we should make our policies in school reflect the “real world” as much as possible), such objections are also not very realistic.

Most people have gone to job interviews without enough preparation, or without the right type of preparation. And most of us have also experienced bad interviews. But most of us, after a bad interview, learned from it and tried again, at another interview. And eventually we got a job.

Similarly, if a student fails an assessment the first time, the only reason not to allow him to come see you, learn from his mistakes, and try again on a different but similar assessment is the idea that the student should be punished for his lack of preparation (or, in many cases, his lack of understanding).

But of course that is not a good reason at all, unless you think grades should be used as a form of punishment.

My retake policy requires students to come in during lunch or after school for extra help to discuss the first assessment and their mistakes, to develop a study plan, and the meet again to write a metacognitive letter explain how the student is planning to improve and make better academic choices. Then the student does a “retake”–a different assessment that covers the same objective as the first one.

I would say that the best consequence for not doing something right the first time is to do it right the next time.

“But he can do it right the next time,” you say. “On the next quiz!”

But then the student will never learn what he should have learned on the first quiz. And if your class, like most classes do, builds upon each concept as you go along, the student is now already primed to fail the next quiz because he failed the first one.

Perhaps most importantly, such an approach is not very merciful. The way the “real world” works is the way God works. And ultimately His world, the world of mercy, is the “real world.”

Second chances, as trite and as silly as they may sound, are actually the hallmark of the Gospels. Are such chances undeserved? Of course. But that’s what mercy is. It’s completely undeserved. The “good” thief on the cross, or Saint Matthew leaving his corrupt tax-collecting career behind, or Peter denying Jesus three times and still being made the leader of the Apostles– all of them got second chances, and third chances, and on and on.

God’s mercy is so lavish that we often resist it. But we are called to try to offer that same mercy to one another.

And because I teach in a Catholic school, I can mix theology and education as much as I please.

Thoughts at a Funeral

September 21, 2015

Today our school community went to the funeral of a student’s father who passed away last week. It was a very beautiful Mass. But the most beautiful part was seeing so many of my current and former students supporting their friend. We had a half day of school and they did not have to come to the funeral, but they did.

My great aunt’s funeral was last week and I thought a lot about her during the Mass. I wasn’t able to attend her funeral. I thought about the prayer blanket she knitted for me a couple of years ago; it is folded on my bed and contains a lot of Hail Marys. My great aunt had a great devotion to Our Lady, and lately I’ve been realizing that God is probably asking me to increase my own devotion.

I also found out the other day that my eighth grade teacher died suddenly this past week. She was entering her fortieth year of teaching.

All of these deaths were very much on my mind during the funeral Mass today. But I kept coming back to my former teacher. And I feel like my memories of her are the ones I can write about here.

My earliest memory of Ms. A was when I was in kindergarten. That was before the yearly Christmas recital was held in the town hall–it was probably the last year it was held in the main church. I remember standing in front of the altar with my other classmates, a big paper bell taped to my dress. I was very nervous. I glanced to the side and caught the eye of a very tall, thin lady who was minding a group of enormous-looking eighth graders. She saw me and gave me a big smile. Then she winked at me, nodded approvingly, and gave me a thumbs-up.

I felt immensely better.

And I never forgot that moment. I think that for the rest of my parochial school days I looked forward to being in the eighth grade when I would have that kind lady with the encouraging smile.

When I was in the second grade, my middle school “buddy” was an eighth grader. It was around Christmastime again and we were doing some sort of art project with our buddies. They were talking about The Hobbit, since evidently Ms. A was reading that with them.

I was overjoyed. I began babbling about Frodo and Sam and the other hobbits, since at the time my Dad was reading The Lord of the Rings to my sister and me. I think my buddy was a little confused since I was jumping ahead in the series, but she was pretty impressed nonetheless and squealed, “Ms. A! Ms. A! My buddy is reading Tolkien!”

I don’t remember Ms. A’s reaction but I do remember hoping that she remembered that I was that girl in the Christmas recital and that in just a few years I would be her student.

Just a few years went by and I was her student. In the sixth grade she taught us math. In the seventh grade I had her for literature only. Finally, in the eighth grade, she was my teacher for most of the day.

She was far stricter at first than my kindergarten memory of her had suggested, but her strictness was really quite wonderful. All the boys that made seventh grade rather miserable had to shape up for Ms. A. She had very high expectations of us, and she helped us achieve them. I think I earned the lowest grade of my life in her class on a Math quiz because I didn’t follow the directions. I was very upset, but I remember how kind she was when I met with her. She explained to me my mistakes and showed me how to fix them.

She didn’t change my grade. And I’m grateful.

I remember that she had all of us keep writing journals, which we wrote in almost every day about the books we were reading or about current events. And she would read them and respond to us in elegant cursive. There were twenty-six of us, and as a teacher myself I suddenly realize how much time and effort those responses took, and how painfully awkward a lot of our journal entires must have been.

9/11 had already happened by then and George Bush was taking America to war in Iraq. I remember writing a lot of journal entries about that and yet disagreeing with Ms. A’s purely pacifist position. But she was very kind and very patient with me. I was probably a know-it-all. We even put up a sign on our eighth grade class window: “If you want peace, work for justice – Pope Paul VI.” I think originally we were going to say something very anti-war but we settled on this quote. I was gratified.

She loved Edgar Allan Poe and read to us the entirety of “The Raven” with gusto. Her passion for literature was very compelling and inspired me more than I realized at the time.

She was very mischievous and had a wonderful delight about her. It was clear to me how much she loved teaching and how happy she was to be there for all of us, especially at the end of our illustrious parochial school careers. She provided sound guidance and kind recommendations as we considered different high schools. She was definitely someone who had discovered her vocation and lived it every day.

I do not think life was easy for Ms. A. Perhaps it was her deep admiration and sympathy for Edgar Allan Poe that suggested to me most that she must know a lot about suffering. Yet, as long as I knew her, she bore all suffering — and teaching eighth graders must have involved a lot of it — with grace and love.

I’m writing this in gratitude to Ms. A for all that she taught me and the many students she had over the years. I am sure my own teaching has been influenced by her example.

And I think it’s really beautiful to remember how young children really do remember the little gestures, and what a difference they can make.

Tomorrow, I will stand in front of my own students. Sometimes I still feel like that little kindergartener with the paper bell, getting ready to sing and feeling very unsure of herself. But I will remember Ms. A’s encouraging smile and her characteristic nod, and I will do my best.

Everything That Rises

August 6, 2015

Summer is a good time to be reading Flannery O’Connor again.

On a flight to Boston a few weeks ago I read one of her more disturbing and controversial stories, “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

You can read the full story online here.

The title comes from the philosophical work of a French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and like all of O’Connor’s titles ought to be closely attended to while reading. You can look up excerpts from Chardin’s “The New Spirit” here and try to decipher his complex mystical theology, but just considering O’Connor’s title “innocently,” with the plot of the story in mind, I would guess it could mean that as things “rise” closer to the truth, they also come closer to — that is, “converge” upon — one another.

There are also several instances of “convergence” in the story itself.

Brief summary: the plot centers around a young man (whom Flannery herself would probably call a “big intellectual”) who is bringing his mother to her exercise classes at the local YMCA. He is embarrassed by her racism and narrowness, and she is proud of his college education.

Some instances of convergence that I noticed: The mother’s ugly purple hat, described in detail at the very beginning of the story and a frequent topic of conversation, is echoed by the narrator’s description of the sky: “The sky was a dying violet and the houses stood out darkly against it, bulbous liver-colored monstrosities of a uniform ugliness though no two were alike.”

So – the hat and the sky converge? I say that with a complete lack of authority.

Later, the hat comes up again while they ride the bus. A black woman who sits down across from them is wearing the exact same hat as the mother. Despite racial and societal divide between them, they match. (The son is delighted by the irony of this convergence).

The black woman also has her own son. The mother plays with the little boy and condescendingly offers him a penny — which the black woman angrily rejects.

The mother’s intellectual ignorance is matched by her son’s emotional ignorance.

And the son’s persistent judgment and disgust throughout the story is completely reversed at the end to… well, I won’t spoil the ending. If you’ve ever read O’Connor, you know it will be interesting.

But it’s the title itself that continually arrests me – everything that rises must converge – and the following story acts like a lyric poem – responding to the entitle, enfleshing the title, challenging the title – but never really explaining the title. I don’t pretend to understand it.

Still, this short story gives me hope that no matter how twisted and damaged our attempts at truth are, they nevertheless eventually converge into the truth of God, rising little by little until they finally reach His peace.

tumblr_static_everything-that-rises-banner-2 — source: everythingthatrises.com

The Problem with Catholic Schools

July 23, 2015

I just went to a Young Catholic Professionals event in Denver, and at these events there are usually sponsors who set up tables to advertise their ministries. One table was for a Montessori school, and – being the education nerd that I am – I went right over to it because I know extremely little about Montessori and wanted to learn more.

One of the women at the table, after explaining some of the differences between typical American education and Montessori education, said something that stayed with me.

“We believe,” she said, “That all a child needs is already inside of him. So much of modern education reflects a top-down approach – from standards to curricula to teachers to students. But Montessori is really the opposite. We start with the child and go from there.”

Apart from being a very beautiful and simple summary of the Montessori philosophy, her statement is also a striking reminder that Montessori actually has a philosophy. It has a view of the human person, a view of the purpose of education, and a plan.

I think Catholic education in the United States does not.

Even though the Church itself has a beautiful vision of the human person, Catholic schools have failed to develop (or succeeded in completely losing) a view of the purpose of education and a plan.

Now I’m not about to “jump ship” and become a Montessori teacher – I am not sure exactly how well their methods would play out at the high school level, though I would be very interested to see that. And I don’t have any data about what effect Montessori schools have – or if they really are any better than your typical Catholic schools.

But at least they have a real definition of education.

Another caveat: a very few Catholic schools do have a philosophy of education that is grounded in Church teaching on the human person. But these are usually liberal arts colleges that nobody has ever heard of – and I bet you could count on one hand the number of secondary schools in this country who have such a vision.

MOST Catholic primary and secondary schools, in my experience of them, have no philosophy of education at all. They tend to do what the public schools do, just adding a little here and cutting out a little there. But there is no real sense that Catholic education is, or even ought to be, a qualitatively different thing.

catholic schools(1) — From the google search “Catholic Education.” Standard Catholic school advertising. via stgeorgeparish.org

Of course, many of us Catholic school people would protest. We like to say things like, “Oh, but a Catholic education involves the whole person [and public education involves what percent, exactly?].” Or, “But we are a school in the Jesuit Tradition and we educate the mind, the body and the soul […so you have typical academics, phys. ed. classes, and the occasional all-school Mass?]” Or “But we’re an authentically Catholic school because we have priests and even nuns!” Or even”The Cardinal Newman Guide loves us!”

But whatever we say, most of us (myself included) cannot articulate what really makes Catholic education different, or better.

So you get to talk about God in religion class. Is that really worth spending $12,000 per year on tuition when I could go to a decent public school, or better yet, a charter school and get the same classes minus religion? (And probably some more competent teachers who actually have teaching degrees?)

Even my education classes at Notre Dame were basically the same sort of fare you would get in any other education program. There were one or two about “teaching in a Catholic school,” but there was no sense at all that what we actually teach or how we actually teach it is fundamentally different. Toss in some talk of “values” and light spirituality and there you are – a Catholic education.

If we want to save Catholic primary and secondary schools in the United States, then we really need to step back and articulate a real philosophy of education. Only then can we make clear-headed decisions about curricula, solid teaching practices, and even the Common Core.

Of course, I teach in a Catholic school because I do believe they are fundamentally different – that they have something unique to offer, that they are special somehow. But like the farmer who, when asked about his religious beliefs, replied, “I believe whatever the Church teaches,” I too cannot yet fully explain to you the reasons why.