Doctor of Catholic Education, Part One – Catholic World Report

Editor’s note: The following is Part One (of two) of an address given to The Thomistic Institute of Fordham University on February 26, 2026.

Introductory Remarks

We are gathered in the month which marks the 225^th anniversary of the birth of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, which I take to be a felicitous, if not providential, coincidence.

Let me begin by stating that I am a proud product of Catholic schools from kindergarten through two doctorates. From 1954 to 1968, I attended three Catholic elementary and secondary schools, operated by three different religious communities in two dioceses. In that entire time, I received a superb education at every level, never saw a single child brutalized, and genuinely looked forward to every day of school. From high school, I immediately entered the seminary. With the stellar education I had received—human, spiritual, and academic—I walked into Seton Hall University ready for any challenge and actually completed my bachelor’s degree in three years with a double major—Classical Languages and French.

The greatest achievement of my elementary and secondary schooling, however, was not the academics (as impressive as they were) but that I had come to know and love Christ and His Church and was totally prepared to give my life to them both in the holy priesthood at the age of seventeen. I had learned not only isolated theological facts or catechism questions; I had been introduced to a Catholic culture, a way of life, that gave me the desire for more and the capacity to make decisions with firmness and conviction. For that I shall be eternally thankful, and now nearly forty-nine years in the priesthood, I must add, “And with no regrets.”

I should also note that I have spent my entire adult life involved in Catholic education, teaching and/or administering institutions at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate and seminary levels. Thus, from the age of four, I have sat on one side of a teacher’s desk or the other, and sometimes on both sides at once, being a teacher and a student simultaneously. This experience has convinced me that Catholic education is of one piece—a seamless garment, if you will.

At any rate, I am going to give you my conclusion now: one level of Catholic schooling feeds into the next, and each draws life from the levels that have preceded it. It is, therefore, regrettable when finances or demographics do not make possible a sixteen-year-plus sequence of Catholic schooling for our youth.

Catholic Schools in Historical and Juridical Perspective

This belief of mine, however, is not a personal idiosyncrasy; it comes from nothing other than the history, teaching, and law of the Church. From the moment the Church emerged from the catacombs, she committed herself to establishing and maintaining schools, beginning with the monastic and cathedral schools, eventually leading to the whole university system. Let us never forget that when St. Benedict embarked on his program to revitalize a dying Western civilization, it was precisely through founding schools. Interestingly, the Second Vatican Council was the first council in history to devote an entire document to Christian education.

In Gravissimum Educationis we find these strong statements regarding Catholic schools:

The influence of the Church in the field of education is shown in a special manner by the Catholic school. No less than other schools does the Catholic school pursue cultural goals and the human formation of youth. But its proper function is to create for the school community a special atmosphere animated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity, to help youth grow according to the new creatures they were made through baptism as they develop their own personalities, and finally to order the whole of human culture to the news of salvation so that the knowledge the students gradually acquire of the world, life and man is illumined by faith. . . . Since, therefore, the Catholic school can be such an aid to the fulfillment of the mission of the People of God and to the fostering of the dialogue between the Church and mankind, to the benefit of both, it retains even in our present circumstances the utmost importance. . . . The Council also reminds Catholic parents of the duty of entrusting their children to Catholic schools wherever and whenever it is possible and of supporting these schools to the best of their ability and of cooperating with them for the education of their children.

. . . This Sacred Council of the Church earnestly entreats pastors and all the faithful to spare no sacrifice in helping Catholic schools fulfill their function in a continually more perfect way, and especially in caring for the needs of those who are poor in the goods of this world or who are deprived of the assistance and affection of a family or who are strangers to the gift of faith. (nn. 8-9, passim)

Those statements of the Council then find juridical expression in the Code of Canon Law, where we read:

Can. 796:

§1. Among the means to foster education, the Christian faithful are to hold schools in esteem; schools are the principal assistance to parents in fulfilling the function of education.

§2. Parents must cooperate closely with the teachers of the schools to which they

entrust their children to be educated; moreover, teachers in fulfilling their duty are to collaborate very closely with parents, who are to be heard willingly and for whom associations or meetings are to be established and highly esteemed.

Can. 798:

Parents are to entrust their children to those schools which provide a Catholic education. . . .

Can. 800:

§2. The Christian faithful are to foster Catholic schools, assisting in their establishment and maintenance according to their means.

Can. 802:

§1. If schools which offer an education imbued with a Christian spirit are not available, it is for the diocesan bishop to take care that they are established.

Finally, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church reminds all of the collaborative and communal nature of Catholic education:

Parents are the first educators, not the only educators, of their children. It belongs to them, therefore, to exercise with responsibility their educational activity in close and vigilant cooperation with civil and ecclesial agencies. “Man’s community aspect itself—both civil and ecclesial—demands and leads to a broader and more articulated activity resulting from well-ordered collaboration between the various agents of education. All these agents are necessary, even though each can and should play its part in accordance with the special competence and contribution proper to itself” (n. 240, emphasis in original).

Let us now take a look at John Henry Newman’s involvement with Catholic education. Although Pope Benedict XVI made clear his conviction that beatifications ought not to be presided over by the Sovereign Pontiff—as a rule—so as not to cause confusion between that rite and canonization, on September 19, 2010, the Holy Father did in fact beatify the arguably most important convert to the Catholic Church in modern history. Newman was canonized by Pope Francis on 13 October 2019 and declared “Doctor of Catholic Education” by Pope Leo XIV on 1 November 2025—events in which I was privileged to participate.

In 1845, the leader of the Oxford Movement “swam the Tiber,” rocking the English-speaking world with his conversion. While many people are familiar with Cardinal Newman’s efforts to establish the Catholic University of Ireland and his magisterial work, Idea of a University, not many realize how staunch a promoter he was of Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Of course, this only makes sense since a Catholic university needs a natural “feeder,” as I have already pointed out.

Within fourteen years of Newman’s conversion, he established the Oratory School, intended as a Catholic Eton, “to create an intelligent and well-instructed laity.”¹ Michael Hickson then describes life at the institution that was undoubtedly “the apple of [Newman’s] eye”:

Newman took a leading role in each stage of the school’s development. Far from being the distant founder and aloof administrator, Newman was active in the everyday life of the school. Once a month, all the boys were required to sit through an examination given by Newman and the Headmaster, Ambrose St. John. Both Newman and St. John played instruments in the school’s orchestra, Newman taking the part of second fiddle. Most lively of all, however, was Newman’s participation in the school plays.

Let me provide some additional vignettes.

Lord Acton observed: “The School is beginning, with great hopes indeed, but in a small way.”² An “Old Boy” of the School, Arthur Hungerford Pollen recalled:

At the Oratory we saw a good deal of the Cardinal. Nothing pleased him more than making friends with the boys, and the many opportunities we had of personal contact with him made the friendship a real one. Of course, to us he was the greatest of heroes. Slight and bent with age, with head thrust forward, and a quick firm gait, the great Oratorian might often be seen going from corridor to corridor, or across the school grounds. His head was large, the pink biretta made it seem still more so, and he carried it as if the neck were not strong enough for the weight. . . . In the Latin plays which he had prepared for the boys to act he always took the keenest interest, insisting on the careful rendering of favourite passages, and himself giving hints in cases of histrionic difficulty. In the school chapel he from time to time appeared, giving a short address, and assisting at the afternoon service. It is curious that it should have been in connexion with these two widely different occupations that we should have seen most of him. It is, perhaps, characteristic of his disposition, in which playfulness and piety were so sweetly combined.³

And Cardinal Newman himself, in an 1862 letter to the President of the seminary at Maynooth, gave this estimate of the project:

I am overworked with various kinds of mental labour, and I cannot do as much as I once could. Yet it would be most ungrateful to complain, even if I were seriously incommoded, for my present overwork arises from the very success of a school which I began here shortly after I retired from the [Irish] University. When we began it was a simple experiment, and lookers-on seemed to be surprised when they found we had in half a year a dozen; but at the end of our third year we now have seventy. . . . As all other schools are increasing in number, it is a pleasant proof of the extension of Catholic education.⁴

So strong was Saint John Henry’s advocacy on behalf of Catholic schools that in 1879 the Archbishop of Sydney, Roger Bede Vaughan, solicited his assistance for the cause in Australia. To which the new Cardinal replied:

. . . I feel it a great honour on the part of Your Grace, that you have made use, in the Pastorals, which you have had the goodness to send me, of what I had occasion to say at Rome last May on the subject of the special religious evil of the day. It pleased me to find that you could make it serviceable in the anxious conflict in which you are at this time engaged in defence of Christian education. It is indeed the gravest of questions whether our people are to commence life with or without adequate instruction in those all-important truths which ought to colour all thought and to direct all action;—whether they are or are not to accept this visible world for their God and their all, its teaching as their only truth, and its prizes as their highest aims;—for, if they do not gain, when young, that sacred knowledge which comes to us from Revelation, when will they acquire it?⁵

How thrilling to encounter two churchmen so cognizant of the importance of a youthful introduction to the Christian Faith and likewise so determined to make that awareness a concrete reality.

Although the success of the Catholic school apostolate in the United States was the result of the combined efforts and sacrifices of the entire Catholic community—and especially those of the Sisters—strong, unrelenting leadership came from priests and bishops. That part of the equation is often missing today, and without it, many of our educational institutions are at sea. How necessary it is to encourage the clergy to support with words and actions the advancement of our schools, without which we would be but a shell of a Church.

Newman and John Paul II—Fellow Travelers

We are presently poised to move on to Newman’s thoughts on Catholic higher education and Pope John Paul II’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

Having taught courses in the philosophy of education in two of the largest Catholic universities of the country for twenty years, I have more than a passing interest in the field. When the invitation came to consider presenting a paper to your Thomistic Institute, I immediately thought of Newman’s magisterial work, Idea of a University. Which, in turn, triggered consideration of Pope John Paul II’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae, his attempt to reclaim Catholic higher education for the Church—a largely unsuccessful effort, sad to say. Could there, however, be a connection between the visions of Newman and Wojtyla?

Both men spent considerable portions of their lives as university professors and chaplains. Both wrote only one major work on the nature of a Catholic university: Newman to prepare for the opening of the Catholic University of Ireland; John Paul II to prevent the collapse of Catholic higher education worldwide. Both struggled to see their vision implemented: Newman failed; the jury is still out on Wojtyla.

Many have noted that Cardinal Newman was the “unseen father” at Vatican II, which is not much of an exaggeration. The sainted Holy Father, like every single one of his predecessors from the nineteenth century forward, made no secret of his esteem for the venerable convert on numerous occasions. So, I don’t think it far-fetched to suppose a Newmanian influence on the composition of Ex Corde; in fact, a glance at the footnotes surfaces three direct quotes. I submit, however, that closer examination of the document reveals distinct and loud echoes of Newman’s voice, as well as a tone which is unmistakably suffused with the thought and spirit of John Henry Newman. Allow me to ask not too irreverently, “Was Newman the ghostwriter for Ex Corde Ecclesiae?” and then to ask five other questions.

1. What is a Catholic university?

Newman launches into this matter with all deliberateness: “. . . when the Church founds a University,” he says, “she is not cherishing talent, genius or knowledge, for their own sake, but for the sake of her children, with a view to their spiritual welfare and their religious influence and usefulness, with the object of training them to fill their respective posts in life better, and of making them more intelligent, capable, active members of society.”⁶

The title of Pope John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation is carefully chosen; in fact, he referred to Catholic schools as “the very heart of the Church” at least since 1981, if my tracking has been accurate.⁷ The Holy Father sets the stage by locating the university as having been “born from the heart of the Church.” Indeed, he makes a point which most commentators, Catholic and secular alike, fail to recall: that it was the Catholic Church which created not Catholic universities but the entire concept and system of university education. So much for George Bernard Shaw’s snide remark that speaking of “a Catholic university is a contradiction in terms.”

“It is the honor and responsibility of a Catholic university to consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth,” teaches the Pope.⁸ And then, directly quoting Cardinal Newman, he speaks of the Church’s “intimate conviction that truth is its real ally. . . and that knowledge and reason are sure ministers to faith.”⁹

2. Why a Catholic university?

Cardinal Newman explains it thus: “. . . it is a matter of deep solicitude to Catholic prelates that their people should be taught a wisdom, safe from the excesses and vagaries of individuals, embodied in institutions which have stood the trial and received the sanction of ages. . . .”¹⁰

Ex Corde puts it this way: “In the world today, characterized by such rapid developments in science and technology, the tasks of a Catholic university assume an ever greater importance and urgency. . . . Its Christian inspiration enables it to include the moral, spiritual and religious dimension in its research, and to evaluate the attainments of science and technology in the perspective of the totality of the human person” (n. 7). John Paul II continues:

. . . I turn to the whole Church, convinced that Catholic universities are essential to her growth and to the development of Christian culture and human progress. For this reason, the entire ecclesial community is invited to give its support to [them] and to assist them in their process of development and renewal. It is invited in a special way to guard the rights and freedoms of these institutions in civil society. . . . (n. 11).

Along similar lines, it has been observed that Newman “urges the priority of literature over science in education,” lest the Church’s educational institutions produce little more than a generation of “technocrats.”¹¹ That does not mean that Newman was opposed to science; by no means. In fact, following in the mentality of his fellow Oratorian of the sixteenth century, Cardinal Baronius, Newman—like Wojtyla—had a profound respect for science and its autonomy and even contended that “many scientists have been hostile to religion because theologians have often overstepped their mark.”¹²

Endnotes: