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Abstract
This essay responds to and develops ideas set out in Robert Davis' 1999 essay ‘Can there be a Catholic curriculum?’ It takes the measure of far-reaching changes that have taken place in curriculum studies and strategic educational thought in the intervening period as the process of globalisation has intensified. It re-engages with the traditions of the Catholic mind and their place in education, drawing upon the commitment of Pope Benedict XVI to a ‘new humanism’ in learning and teaching at all levels of Catholic educational practices. Revisiting the principles of the Catholic curriculum, the essay also sets these within a wider and timely Catholic construction of liberal education fit for the challenges of the modern era.
Notes
1. By this term we refer to the traditional Catholic view that all knowledge comes from God and that within the limited but extensive capacities of human reason our experience of the universe can be rendered intelligible in forms fully consonant with faith.
2. The most notable of these are those organised by the British Humanist Association and its formal ‘Campaign Against Faith Schools’, coordinated by Richy Thompson.
3. These would include the rise of the ‘neurodomains’ which aspire to study all human and social phenemona as expressions of deterministic constructions of the brain – and extend as far as the new post-Einsteinian cosmologies such as Superstring Theory.
4. See especially the Regensburg Lecture of 2006 and the dialogue with Jurgen Habermas of 2007.
5. This refers to the important venture launched by the Pope in 2011 and overseen by Cardinal Giovanni Ravasi, the President of the Pontifical Academy for Culture. Ravasi decided to launch the idea in Paris, the symbolic birthplace and home of the Enlightenment. At three institutions with notable secular credentials – UNESCO, the Sorbonne and the L'Institut de France – there were discussions and presentations by believers and non-believers on the fate of Europe. The whole event culminated in the square or ‘courtyard’ of Notre Dame Cathedral, where Pope Benedict gave a live televised address.
6. Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths.
7. See John Polkinghorne FRS: (Citation2011) ‘All human encounters with reality explore aspects of experience that are characterised by regularity and constraint and aspects of experience that are characterised by particularity and openness. Neither realm of experience has precedence over the other, for both are equally necessary for an adequate account and there must be exchanges of insight between them. Science concentrates on the domain of generality and religion on the domain of particularity.’
8. ‘If … we compare the support given to the study of nature by the early church with the support given by any other contemporary social institution, it will become apparent that the church was the major patron of scientific learning.’ (Lindberg Citation2007, 150)
9. Gould (Citation2002), 66 describes the ‘NOMA’ principle in these terms: the magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry.’
10. ‘The higher the “evolutionary development” climbs, the clearer it becomes what genuine real potentialities were comprised in the beginning. There is no danger, therefore, that evolution if it understood in a truly metaphysical and theologically correct way, will teach us to think less of the first human being than was thought in earlier ages.’ Rahner Citation1965, 108.
11. Tallis’ terms for the excessive and inappropriate use of evolutionary explanations for human choices and behaviours.
12. White and others consider well-being to be the rational replacement for the state of salvation. The sense of wholeness and unity of purpose in a capable, self-directed and autonomous life led in full moral harmony with the self-directed lives of others.
13. See Battle (Citation2006/2012).
14. This might include consideration of whether international aid agencies have bought in uncritically to DfID and other ‘development’ agendas, which frequently remain predicated on the consumer–producer matrix of economic and social development.
15. See the article by Gerald Grace in this issue of ISCE.
16. The Greek ideal of the education of the person in the polis, focused on socialisation and formation of the elites.