The liberal arts student learns to think logically and to express himself clearly -skills absolutely necessary for one who wishes to influence his society for the better. He immerses himself in the great ideas and works of the Western tradition in order to appropriate that tradition and make his own contribution to it. He studies the past actions of mankind in history and the morality of individual and corporate deeds in order more prudently to determine his own actions, assess his society, and influence the course of events. For this very reason, no graduates are more eagerly sought in law, business, journalism, politics, teaching or other professions than the graduates of traditional liberal arts colleges such as Christendom.
A Catholic Education There is no understanding the nature of man, however, unless it includes man’s relation to God. No education is complete if it concentrates only on that part of the truth which man can come to know by natural means. Supernatural truth, the gift to man of a God who chooses to reveal Himself, must also be taken into account. And when it is accounted rightly, it does not sit in the curriculum like a foreign lump but orders and informs everything. The classical tradition of the liberal arts was based on a philosophic understanding of the innate dignity of man and the nobility of his intellect. The Church appropriated that tradition as conducive to the development of the intellectual faculties in submission to revealed Truth. As Newman stated, “Liberal education, viewed in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object is nothing more or less than intellectual excellence” (I.v.9). Newman, however, was also at pains to note that “Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman.” Newman continues, It is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life -these are the connatural qualities of a large knowledge . . . but still, I repeat, they are no guarantee for sanctity or even for conscientiousness. . . . Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and pride of man. (I.v.9) Clearly, liberal education for Catholics must entail the guiding hand and nourishing spirit of the Church in an integral manner, lest both students and faculty eventually fall away from the Truth, as Newman so prophetically described in The Idea of a University. Newman asserts,
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