What Is the Catholic Intellectual Tradition?

“Could you explain what the Catholic Intellectual Tradition means?”

This simple question from a superintendent reflected the renewal that is happening across the country. We’ve finally realized that Catholic education cannot simply follow along with current trends. Even if we can learn from contemporary methods, we stand within an unparalleled tradition reaching back thousands of years. The wisdom we have handed down through each generation is more relevant than ever as we face new challenges.

How will we figure out what to do with new technologies if we don’t understand what it means to be a human being and what human fulfillment means? Without some intellectual grounding, we’ll simply be swept away.

To answer this question posed to me, first of all, it’s necessary to reiterate that “intellectual” is not a bad word (as if it could be pushed aside as academic and arcane). The intellect is what makes us human, giving us the ability to understand the nature of things and to reason beyond immediate sensations. Like any other part of who we are, the intellect needs cultivation. We can either expand our minds by engaging with noble and difficult ideas found in the great works of human culture, or we can remain in simple, easy, and shallow sound bites that leave our minds unformed.

It’s too easy to dismiss old and difficult texts as irrelevant in a utilitarian world, but to do so would be to miss the very heart of education, the formation of the person.

Here are four aspects of the Catholic intellectual tradition that reflect how it has developed throughout history.

First, it’s founded on faith, received from God’s revelation; second, it draws upon reason by integrating the philosophical tradition of the Greeks; third, it extends to the imagination, expressing faith and exploring life through literature and the arts; and fourth, it encompasses the whole of reality, forming a worldview that draws also upon mathematics and science to form a coherent vision of human life.

The Bible stands at the foundation of the Catholic intellectual life. God made us in his image and likeness and draws us into communion with him by speaking to us. His revelation must be received and understood, which teaches us the ultimate truth about human life. This is why the Bible has always stimulated literacy as necessary to receive God’s message and probe its depths. It offers a narrative that situates us within the story of salvation history and teaches us a way of life grounded in divine wisdom.

In forming the mind, nothing has more power than the Word of God, as it draws us into a living relationship with God who conforms our minds to his. Students in Catholic schools need to possess Bible literacy, knowing how to access it, the general scaffolding of its story, and the distinct ways it communicates through its different genres.

The Word of God is not simply written. He became flesh within a particular cultural context that included the Pax Romana and Greek philosophical thought. The harmony of faith and reason stands as an unshakeable pillar of the Catholic intellectual tradition. Even in the understanding of God’s revelation, Greek philosophy provided an invaluable methodology. The Greeks taught early Christians how to think logically, contemplate the intelligibility of the universe, and understand how the virtues lead to human fulfillment in ways that complemented the Bible. Today, we desperately need this element of the intellectual tradition to help us contemplate the truth of reality more deeply again, attending to the nature of the human person and what it means to live a good life.

Educators know that simply reading the Bible and contemplating truth often does not stick with our students. This is why engaging the imagination is also an essential component of the intellectual tradition, using beauty to draw the mind toward truth and goodness. The imagination synthesizes the various things learned with human experience to form new ideas and pursue meaning.

Literature and stories often have a larger impact on students, moving their hearts and building an interest in learning. The arts help form a sacramental imagination that sees deeper meaning behind all things in the world. The Church has formed the greatest artistic tradition in human history, and our students simply must be formed by this treasury as an essential part of their formation.

In contrast to this imaginative synthesis, secularism seeks to keep faith apart from science, law, and economics, holding it to be a matter of subjective opinion. The final step in formation in the Catholic intellectual tradition, therefore, entails forming an entire worldview by connecting faith and reason to the full scope of human knowledge and life. The Church boldly asserts that faith and reason, including science, cannot contradict one another. The intellect formed by Scripture, reason, and the arts can boldly reach to any aspect of human life, bringing the wisdom of the great tradition to bear upon it. Newman asserted the “principle that all knowledge is a whole and the separate sciences parts of one,” and this unity must be recovered as part of a coherent intellectual formation.

The Catholic Intellectual Tradition exists as a great conversation that has continued unbroken for two thousand years. Our role is to keep it going, entering into it ourselves and drawing our children into it as well. It’s a conversation that continues to unfold throughout the world and which continues to engage new ideas and challenges. We can all be enriched by entering into what Matthew Arnold described as the “best which has been thought and said,” so that we can know the truth more deeply, the truth that will set us free (John 8:32).

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