From IHM School

Our Lord Himself is the Educator par excellence and in the Great Commission, which was His last directions to the apostles before His ascension, He gave His Mystical Body a teaching mission: “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you.” (St. Matthew 28:19-20) Throughout history, the Church, in fulfilling this mission, has encountered people in every level of society, at every level of education. Her success often depended on the level of education she finds. The Greeks & Romans, with their liberal education, ordered societies, just laws and lofty ideals, proved the most fertile soil for the reception of Wisdom on the highest level. With others, works of charity had to come first so that people could lift their eyes above survival mode (as after the Barbarian invasions or in Post-Revolution France) — they have to be lifted above survival mode before they can see the beauty of eternal things.

I have some examples to show that, regardless of method or curriculum, the aim of the Church is the same: the formation of Catholic men and women in this world, for the next. It was painful to limit the examples because this is a constant theme throughout Church history. Remember the powers of life — REPEAT — and see how they apply spiritually –transcending the material (board): Nutrition, people are being fed knowledge; growth, knowledge is being actively applied; reproduction, the Faith is being spread in society. Remember also our definition of education: it includes the transmission of culture: an environment that will aid, support, nurture, sustain this natural & supernatural life as well as being an expression of their Faith which in turn will draw others to it.

First we’ll take survival education. And for my example here, I’d like to use the Iroquois in the seventeenth century — around the time of the Eight North American martyrs.

Pioneer Priests of North America – to the Iroquois pg. xiii ff. – gives a clear word picture of their life.

“They were an intelligent race, but unfortunately having determined to destroy or assimilate all other nations, they directed all their energies to the prosecution of war. They knew nothing of agriculture, and were satisfied with the maize, beans and squash raised by their squaws. The mystery of well-digging was too deep for them, so they had to keep close to the lakes and river courses to live. They have left no pottery of any value, and being ignorant of the textile arts, made their clothing of the skins of wild beasts. . . . [their long houses] were swarming with vermin and reeking with disease. They were divided into sections . . . but without any pretense or possibility of privacy. . . Their personal habits were filthy in the extreme. . . . They ate the most disgusting things, and boasted of their prowess in that regard. Yet, though voracious gluttons, they starved uncomplainingly when food was lacking–which was often. . . . Morally, the Iroquois were very degraded . . . [their abominations are only hinted at in the writings of the missionaries] . . . the children were never punished, and were allowed to grow up like animals . . . “

We have all heard of the tortures and cannibalism these Indians practiced on their prisoners. These sights were often introduction of the missionaries to their flocks. Father Chaumonot writes to his superior:

“Never could I imagine such hardheartedness as there is in a savage. You cannot convert him unless you pay him for it. But he is by no means stupid . . . the difficulty is with the sixth commandment . . . permanency of marriage is out of the question. Every time I go to their cabins I feel as if I were going to be hanged.” (pg. 127)

These people were obviously in a very low condition. They knew what they needed to survive, but the rest of their time was given to vice.

We must remember that the education of the missionaries was of the very highest: liberal education completely informed by the Faith. It was this background enabled them to learn the language, determine what elements of the Indian’s survival culture could be kept as compatible with the faith, how to teach the truths of the faith to these intellectually untrained pagans. What zeal for souls is shown by the sacrifices these men made in such uncongenial surroundings!

Father de Lamberville writes on the difficulties of converting those who cannot reason.

“It must be understood that the Iroquois are not capable of reasoning as do the Chinese and other civilized nations, to whom we [can] prove the truth of faith and the existence of God. The Iroquois are not guided by reasons. The reasons for credibility are not listened to here, and our greatest truths are called falsehoods. As a rule they believe only what they see.” He goes on to say: “Only the fear of some evil or the hope of some good can determine them to embrace our religion. It is nevertheless a great honor for us to be God’s agents and to cause Him to be adored by a small Church in a country where the Devil is so completely the master . . .” (pg 227)

Blessed Kateri Tekawitha

Now, the Jesuits did make converts, but most of them were deathbed (death skin or death stake?) conversions. If there were converts who weren’t dying, they quickly apostatized (at one point there were more apostates than Christians). So, the probation of the catechumens was extended until their education level could be raised and their environment, their culture, could be made to sustain the Faith. Even once the converting Indians had shown their sincerity and good will, they were under enormous pressure . . . and most of them would leave (as Blessed Kateri did) for the Catholic mission of Caughnawaga — where the culture sustained an exemplary Catholic life.

[W]e have an official letter of Bishop St. Valier which says that “the piety I saw there surpassed anything I had imagined, or that had been reported to me.” He gives instances of virtue little less than heroic, and adds: “What I say is not said to please. It is an exact account of the actual state of things. The French are so charmed with what they see that they often go to unite with the Indians in prayer, and to revive their own devotion by the sight of the fervor which they wonder at in a people who were savage such a short time ago.” These Caughnawagas were known among the Indians as “those who do not drink and who pray to God right.”

Eventually Ossernenon (Auriesville, NY) also had a large Catholic population — once it had been watered by the blood of three martyrs. But even these the converts moved to Caughnawaga, as many as a hundred per year. They recognized that their environment had to help them live their faith — so they moved to where they could find it. When the priests were “reproached with causing the depopulation of the villages, they replied that it was not religion, but war and vice with their train of destructive maladies and want that caused the ruin.”

“Become Christians,” they said [to the pagans], “and your tribe will prosper.” (page 289)

That covers the teaching (nutrition) and living (growth) of the Faith, but what about it’s transmission? I wish that I had time for more examples, because there are so many. Hot Ashes, one of the Indians who help Bl. Kateri get to Caughnawaga, refused to be chief of the Oneidas unless they became Christians. He and others worked as catechists. An Indian from Ossernanon went to war against the Illinois only to be on hand to baptize the children and prisoners before they were killed.

[There was also the Indian woman who was so insensed by the ill treatment -- mockery and ridicule -- the Catholic Indians received from the Protestant Dutch, she went into the meeting house in Albany in the midst of a Sunday meeting -- and, in a loud voice said the prayers taught to her by the Black Robes. She was "put out," but she "gloried in her exploit!"]

Almost 200 years later, the way was paved for the success of Father DeSmet by Iroquois from Caughnawaga. Old Ignatius was the chief of a band of Catholic Iroquois who moved west in the early 1800’s. They were the ones to meet the Flatheads, teach them the basics of the Faith, and adjust their culture.

Abundant Harvest — Life of Father De Smet, S.J. – by E. Laveille, S.J. (from FTH20, volume VIII, November 1, 1981 – page 54)

“Beneath his native ruggedness and rare intelligence, the soul of an apostle lay hidden in Old Ignatius. His courage and loyalty acquired for him an influence which he used for the good of the tribe. He often spoke to the Flatheads of the Catholic faith, of its beliefs, its prayers, and its ceremonies. The conclusion of his discourse was always the same appeal: to send for a Black Robe to instruct them and show them the way to heaven.

“The Flatheads listened attentively, and learned from him the principal mysteries of the Faith, the great precepts of Christianity, the Lord’s Prayer, the Sign of the Cross, and other religious practices. Their lives were regulated by this teaching [not the change of culture]; they said morning and night prayers, sanctified Sundays, baptized the dying, and placed a cross over the graves of their dead.”

The Flatheads (and even the surrounding tribes) were so moved to desire instruction that they sent four successive embassies to Saint Louis requesting a missionary — and refused to be taken in by the Protestants who came in the meantime. In fact, when Father DeSmet was given permission to go to the Indians of the Rockies, his guide was Young Ignatius, the son of the Iroquois chief from Caughnawaga.

The grave of Bl. Junipero Serra, the Father of California

It is interesting to contrast the different missions throughout the Americas (I had wanted to touch on the California Missions and the missions among the Eskimos — but in the interests of brevity and courtesy I don’t dare do that now). The stories of these missions all show us the same lesson: that no condition is hopeless, but that a lot of work is necessary to build the Faith on survival education alone, and that a culture sufficient for survival is not sufficient to sustain the Faith.

It has to be elevated first — and this is done by extensive, persevering education by zealous, educated, teachers.

Our next level of education is servile or vocational. We need to go to Italy, fifteenth century Italy, just before the Protestant Revolt. We have here a Catholic society, with years of history and traditions, but a society getting lax, on the downhill slide. Society is literate, with the possibility of higher education, but your average person is educated vocationally, along the lines of the various trades. It is the time of the Renaissance (which had it’s benefits as well as it’s train of errors), but its pagan ideas have filtered down to the girls, especially in the cities, and have resulted in a loss of morals that are breaking up families.

(Read quote on pg. 15-16 – Saint Angela of the Ursulines)

[The] new pagan thought [...] was sweeping over Italy. It was coloring men’s lives with its voluptuousness and blotting out completely the simplicity of the Gospel. Humanism they called it — the study of the Greek and Latin writers whose philosophy of life these moderns would make their own. It was going to men’s heads like old wine too freely taken and was making madmen of them. From the universities it was seeping down to the lower schools, and there seemed neither time nor inclination to temper it with the philosophy of Jesus. And to these lower schools went the young girls, the future mothers of the race, who would have no word of Christian teaching to impart to their little ones. It was the home that was losing. It was in the home that the remedy must be applied.

St. Angela Merici, Foundress of the Ursulines

Saint Angela Merici put her finger on the problem, and gathered around her other young women who would visit the homes of the poor and teach them their Christian doctrine. This project grew into schools for girls where Christian Doctrine and Domestic Arts were taught. This was the beginning of the Ursulines, a teaching order dedicated to the education of girls — the future mothers of society — an order that would grow throughout Europe and eventually spread around the world. (Under the patronage of St. Charles Borromeo the Ursulines played an important part in countering the Protestant Revolution by their life under vows.)

These Sisters also tie into my Iroquois example. In 1639 the Ursulines opened a school in Quebec with both boarding and day students under Venerable Marie of the Incarnation (whose favorite work was the education of Indian children and the religious instruction of their parents). The book I quoted from earlier: Saint Angela of the Ursulines, gives the course of studies when the school opened: religious; history, sacred and profane; arithmetic; French; spelling; writing; grammar; reading; and geography — in addition to music and the womanly arts.

The tomb of Bl. Marie of the Incarnation

Less than a hundred years later, in the 1700’s, the Ursulines were the first order to open schools in what is now the USA (unless you count the Spanish missions). I mentioned Father DeSmet — the Ursulines were one of the orders of Sisters who founded schools for the missions of the Rockies. (They also started the first women’s college in New York in the early 1900’s). Saint Angela’s daughters started with vocational training, and then broadened the girls’ formation with other studies. It is another interesting study to look at the curriculum as it was adjusted to meet the needs of each time and place — but, once again, that is a topic for another time.

What I wish to make clear is that a material society lays a better foundation for the Faith than does the society only bent on survival. The Sisters, of whom the Ursulines are just one example, taught girls of all levels of society and of all races — and, as soon at the basics are covered, expanded the girls’ education to fulfill their potential — raising them from just servile education (as important as that is) to liberal education — and with the Faith front and center and completely integrated. These young ladies became the heart of their own families, now knowing well how to provide a culture in their homes that would foster the Faith of the next generation.

Before I leave vocational education, I want to quickly touch on one other example closer to our time.

We’re still in Italy, but it is now the middle of the nineteenth century. The industrial revolution has made it’s way through Europe. Cities are getting bigger. Material education is definitely the norm and some professions even require a liberal education. But, thanks to freemasonry, the errors of the Enlightenment (that Gary Potter mentioned yesterday), especially anti-clericalism and indifferentism, are rampant. We have a formerly Catholic, established society that is disintegrating in revolution after revolution. And, as in every age, the Holy Ghost raises up saints and apostles to meet the needs of the time. (I think more religious orders were founded in this century than in any other — and many of them seem to be teaching orders.)

Don Bosco (Saint John Bosco)

Before I get too distracted, we will stop in Northern Italy, Turin, and pay a flying visit to Saint John Bosco. Everyone knows that Saint John Bosco took care of boys (did you know that Our Lady herself appeared to him and gave him that mission: of turning the wild beasts into lambs?), but you have to read at least some of the nineteen volumes of the Biographical Memoirs of Saint John Bosco to get an idea of how many other things he did — and what an important man he was of his time.

Well, it is 1851, and at the moment he has three Oratories (the newest one already has five hundred boys). The Oratories are places where the boys meet on Sundays and holy days for religious exercises, catechism classes, and outdoor games, but Don Bosco also has classes during the week in reading, writing, arithmetic, and the metric system. (Literacy is essential in an urban society.) He has a hospice for about forty poor boys (that would grow into the Salesian boarding schools), has laid the foundation of what would be come his order — the Salesians, has just acquired the Pinardi property and field and is fundraising to build a church in honor of Our Lady Help of Christians, the cornerstone of which has been laid. In the midst of this activity, he is also tutoring boys in their classical studies (Eventually he would have full boarding and day schools. There would be a common basis for all the boys in certain subjects, and then they had the choice to follow one of two tracks: either classical studies — to prepare for the priesthood or professional fields, or apprenticeships in various trades.)

But at the moment, all his boys go elsewhere for school and training, coming back to Don Bosco for tutoring as well as spiritual direction and guidance. For those of his boys who were apprentices, learning their trade in the various Turin workshops, he “not only continued to visit them at work to see if there was any moral danger or to check on their progress, but he also took the trouble to enter into formal contracts with their employers and to see to it that they were kept.” In Volume IV, pg 205, there is a contract he wrote up between one of his boys and a glassblower. I don’t have time to go through it now, but not only must the employer teach the boy the craft, employing him only in work related to the trade and within his physical capabilities, but he had to pay the boy on a scale that increased each year, give him Sundays and holy days off, and provide a written monthly report to Don Bosco. The boy promised work hard and attentively, be obedient, docile and respectful.

In this way, Don Bosco not only helped prepare these “at-risk” boys for society, but he integrated the Faith every step of the way . . . making sure that the vocational education didn’t disintegrate into just plain survival mode–no factory slaves here. At the same time, through the boys, Don Bosco was able to reach the tradesmen and the parents, not to mention the statesmen that he had to work with — and in every case he was on the look out for their souls’ welfare.