Education and Formation

(Note: this was my "pastor's reflection" in the Good Shepherd Parish Bulletin, January 31, 2010.)

It would be very difficult to come to church this weekend without being aware that this is Catholic Schools Week. Please permit me some reflections on the purpose, value and meaning of Catholic Education.

A very real first question has to be, "Why?" Why have Catholic schools in the first place? Especially when we in our society have excellent alternatives readily available, both public and private.

Without a strong Catholic identity at the core, Catholic education is a meaningless contradiction, wasting resources that are needed for engaging in the mission of Christ and his Church. If the core is firmly Catholic, the Catholic school is an integral and essential component of the mission of the Church.

A solid core of Catholic identity provides an important tool to integrate all facets of knowledge -- science, the humanities and arts, social studies, history and culture, as well as life-skills -- into a unified whole. So much secular education is fragmented, concentrating only on what's needed to fulfill personal, limited, and worldly goals, such as maintaining a lifestyle or making money. On the other hand, a lot of sectarian religious education propagates a narrow view of reality that rejects legitimate science and reason in favor of a fundamentalist blind faith. Witness the silly arguments of both creationists and atheists who "believe" that everything is fundamentally chance and devoid of any ultimate meaning beyond itself.

The only valid real purpose of education has to be formation. Those two words might seem synonymous, but there's a literally a world of difference between them. "Education" come from a Latin word meaning "to lead forth." It really speaks more of an external process of acquiring learning, going from "not knowing" to "knowing" something. "Formation," however, is an internal process of, literally, becoming something new. Formation will result in transformation, the bringing forth of something new.

Education tends to focus on getting something to achieve a goal. Not a bad thing in itself, just incomplete and inadequate. Formation brings about transformation, of the individual person, of the relationships that constitute community and society, and ultimately, of the world itself. We can't merely dismiss that ideal and settle for mere education without abandoning our reason for being.

Today is also the beginning of the annual Archdiocesan appeal for Together in Mission. We as Catholics have to realize that an essential part of our faith is the difficult love of those who are disadvantaged, a love that has to manifest itself in action. Together in Mission is our opportunity to help support Catholic schools where this "formation" and "transformation" are most important. As we consider Together in Mission over the coming weeks, I ask that you pay attention to Jesus pointing to our own neighboring parishes and schools where it is also our responsibility to serve the "least" of his brothers and sisters.

Finally, this idea of formation has been my primary motivating for putting so much effort into preparing for and leading my Early Christian World Pilgrimage to Turkey, which is coming up in just two months, April 6-28.