A Rosminian Vision for Education Today
The Beatification of Rosmini is a great step forward for the Rosminian Family world-wide, including all the places of education that take their inspiration from his spirituality and teaching. The Church proclaims in a solemn way the holiness of his life rooted in the practice of “heroic virtues”, presenting him as a model to imitate, and a teacher of inspired spirituality, theology, and philosophy.
Rosmini is our great contemporary, and belongs to our spiritual and cultural milieu. He engages the people of today in a constant dialogue, using reason as the common tool, and offering solutions to the issues that trouble modern man: is there an “objective” truth? Is knowledge possible? Can reason prove the existence of God? What is the basis of our morality? Do we have a spiritual soul? What is the definition of person? What is the source of human rights? What is education?
The “big bang” theory of the formation of the universe has received a very bad press from some quarters, and it is not our intention even to wish to enter into the debate at the moment. But it certainly has a high degree of beauty: the thought that the multiplicity of all things in the universe has its source from a single, high density, compact, element is awe-inspiring and rationally and scientifically satisfying.
Rosmini produced his own “big bang” system of truth, this time supported by the most stringent rational investigation that leaves no room for doubt: the prodigious “idea of being” is the single idea that is the source of all our countless pieces of knowledge, and of all sciences, including morality, human rights, natural theology, anthropology, and education. Who would have thought that the one “humble, common” idea of being could be the mother of all ideas, the source and ultimate reason of all science, and that, moreover, is to be identified with truth?
Rosmini does not make any assumption, the discovery of the unique and all embracing consequences of the single idea of being is achieved by means of meticulous observation of facts:
The careful observation of facts leads reason to accept the above points, from a strictly logical point of view, with immense benefit to philosophy. Truth is affirmed, indeed it is found to be “innate”, with us from the moment of conception: “God has bound man to truth by his bowels”, says Rosmini in answer to the most profound scepticism about truth of modern man. The problem of epistemology that has plagued philosophy for centuries is solved by the acceptance of the innate idea of being. Equally, one can finally locate the basis for Morality in the idea of being .
There is nothing, however, in what Rosmini has proved about the idea of being that an atheist or agnostic should not be forced to accept by means of reason alone. However, the idea of being should cause a thinker to go further, to ask about the origin of such prodigious idea that has indeed the answer to so many philosophical problems. If he progresses in his quest, then he will have to admit that the idea of being cannot come from created things – all particulars – but must come from the Infinite Real Being, God. The Mind, therefore, that thinks the idea of being is the Mind of God – it cannot be otherwise. Hence the idea of being is the “divine in nature”, comes from God and should lead people back to God.
The consequences of such intuition are far reaching indeed: the idea of being in us is the divine element that shines before our mind, bestowing on it the dignity, the greatness, the openness to infinity on which human worth is found. The human person has an infinite dignity precisely because of this divine element in us; and since every human being receives the same light of being from conception, the consequence is that we have the duty to respect and treat all other human beings as ends, never as means.
The idea of being is, therefore, the link between reason and faith, nature and super-nature, science and religion: “It is the will of God – pope Pius VIII had told Rosmini – that you write books, so that you may take people by means of reason and lead them to religion”. Start from man to arrive at God, in line with the “itinerarium mentis in Deum” of St. Bonaventure (the way of the mind to God), and with St. Augustine’s moving prayer, “Fecisti nos Domine ad Te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te” (Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you).
This is the “intellectual” charity at the basis of Rosminian schools.
John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) praised Rosmini precisely on this point, on his contribution to a deeper understanding of the intimate link between reason and faith, the one passing spontaneously into the other, and vice-versa. “Fides quaerens intellectum et intellectus quaerens fidem”: reason taking one to faith and faith providing a fuller understanding of what reason has obtained. This is also the meaning of the “evangelisation of culture” which, the Pope said, was the special vocation of Rosmini and is today the special vocation of Rosminians.
In a recent audience to university lecturers, Benedict XVI said that he ought to add a new chapter to his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, a chapter on “intellectual charity”. For Rosminians, this is significant, given Rosmini’s insistence on the three forms of charity, temporal, intellectual, and spiritual, not to be seen in isolation but always together, with only the stress on the one or the other. The Institute of Charity embraces “universal” charity hence it embraces all three forms of charity.
A Rosminian school, therefore, is a work of intellectual charity, where reason and faith become the two wings that lift up the child to full human and super-natural maturity. Rosmini’s vocation, to “take people by means of reason to God”, to help them discover the “divine in nature”, is the vocation of anyone working in a Rosminian school.
Rosminian Education
The philosophical excursus was necessary to grasp the depth of Rosmini’s views on education, both in relation to the essence and purpose of Rosminian education and to the subject of education, the individual child. We shall deal with the subject of education, the child, later in the week; let us now unravel the fundamental principles of Rosminian education.
The “law of Germs” and the art of education
One of the great laws used by Divine Providence in the governance of the universe is the “law of germs”, whereby all things appear in this world in a basic state with the potential of developing fully and beautifully into their own perfection.
God is the great Educator of the human race; and the whole universe, both in its physical make up and in the succession of historical events and circumstances, is the “great text” given by Him by which we learn and grow. He instructed humanity by revealing Himself progressively, by giving laws and commands to guide human beings, like a teacher leading his pupils: “Like a father educates his child, so the Lord your God has educated you” (Deut.8, 5).
Education is a complex art whereby various parties work together to bring to full development all the faculties of the human subject, parents, teachers, society, religion. It is a noble art that carries with it the hopes of generations, but it is also a most difficult and controversial endeavour.
It is of fundamental importance to distinguish between the perfection of human nature and the perfection of person. By “human nature” we mean the various faculties, instincts, talents making up a human being, and each capable of drawing the human being to itself. One may be governed by “passions”, by “instincts”, by “reason”, for a purpose like pleasure or power or desire for excellence. Thus we can have excellent runners, musicians, architects, doctors, historians: they have perfected a side of their human nature, but they have not become necessarily morally good persons. A good painter may well be a bad person, and a brilliant musician may well be a morally bankrupt person.
This applies to the wider societies as well: they may be very advanced technologically, scientifically, or economically, but this does not mean that they are “morally good” societies, truly “civilised” societies. To achieve this purpose they ought to invest heavily on “persons”, who alone are capable of moral perfection, true wisdom, “civil” values.
The person, for Rosmini, is the centre of unity of the human being, and it resides in the higher faculties of intellect, freedom, and will. The free will, in particular is the seat of personhood, since it is the will that has the power of subjecting to itself all other human faculties; it is the command centre of the human being. All actions which are morally good originate from a good will; hence the purpose of education is to bring to perfection the goodness of the will.
But when is the will of a person good? We shall discuss this in the next lecture, but a preliminary answer is this: a will is good when it freely chooses to acknowledge the truth that the intellect presents to it, when knowledge is acknowledged and loved.
Education into Truth
Education is possible because objective truth is possible. It is symptomatic of our modern world that, because of the profound crisis over the existence of truth, education has become more and more fragmented, more and more technological, a mere acquisition of skills for utilitarian purposes. This fact explains, among many other things, the fascination with “league tables” and other means for “measuring” results.
We have seen that for Rosmini man cannot do without truth; he is intelligent only because of his constant vision of ideal being, of truth. He wrote in the “Philosophy of Right”: “God the Creator attached men to truth by their own bowels”, if men detach themselves from truth they mutilate, corrupt, destroy themselves. Human nature is for truth, and a person grows in maturity and perfection the more he searches for, discovers, and loves the truth.
For Rosmini man must tend to union with being, the whole of being, in order to reach his perfection. He defines man as a “potentiality with the tendency to develop and perfection himself by binding himself more and more, by means of his intellect and will, to being”. The more one embraces being the greater he becomes. It is not possible at this stage to go into a deeper understanding of “being”, but it suffices to say that to embrace being means to embrace the whole of being in its three forms or modes: real being, ideal being, and moral being. Being is of its essence “reality”, “truth”, and “goodness”, hence the perfection of man requires that he endeavours to unite himself to being (and ultimately to Absolute Being) in all its forms. It is “intelligence” that allow us to unite ourselves to “ideal being”, and hence to Truth.
For Rosmini, the wider the knowledge, the greater the possibility for love; knowledge is truth, and to love truth is to love all beings according to their order: God first, as Absolute Being, my neighbour second as a finite being but with infinite dignity reflected on him by the idea of being, and all other things in their intrinsic order.
In a letter to a friend, Rosmini stressed the great importance of truth in education: “The teacher must be convinced that to help children become good there is only one way, to insist on truth in all its extension, natural, incomplete truth, and supernatural, perfect truth. This latter truth is the grace of Jesus Christ, that operates in a hidden way, and from which alone comes salvation, all virtues, and human happiness”.
Rosminian schools, therefore, ought to pursue truth to its greatest extent, and become centres where truth is taught, valued, respected, demanded from everyone, and lived by everyone. From a religious point of view, truth is the Word of God: “I am the Truth”, said JESUS; hence to acknowledge, affirm, love truth is, implicitly, to acknowledge, affirm, and love the Truth that is the Son of God Himself.
Education, its origin and end
For Rosmini, then, God is the final purpose of education, the One who gives it unity, light, and goodness: “Education – he says – is either religious or is no education at all”. Ultimately, a child is a person because of the infinite value that is given him by the intuition of ideal being, of divine origin: without God, the source of being, it would be impossible to find another ground for this “infinite dignity” of man, that makes him “unique” in the world.
Education without God cannot be education, since it would lack the purpose, and the aim, that unifies all efforts. It may have “secondary” reasons, like passing examinations or placing the school higher in the league’s table, but the fundamental process of education would remain disconnected in its parts, and aimless.
The search for truth naturally leads a child to God, the source of all truth. The purpose of the school is, therefore, to be a workshop of truth – the study of all disciplines – with the nurturing of the will of the child to “acknowledge”, that is to freely love what has been discovered as true, thus embracing “being” more and more. It is “love of being” that becomes the philosophical foundation of the two great precepts of love: “Love God with all your mind, strength, heart (truth-reality-goodness) and your neighbour as you love yourself”: embrace Absolute Being in its three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Reality, Truth, Goodness), with an infinite love; embrace all other human beings who share in the divine life by the light of reason. The love of being necessarily becomes love for everything which is, the whole of nature.
In this sense, a school is a place where children are taught to “love”: God, neighbour, all things in the universe, according to order.
This result is still within the limit of reason and nature; it is still the domain of the philosophy of education. It applies, therefore, to any school in the world, and, in particular, to any child. But the “Catholic” school opens up the view to an immensely wider perspective, that of grace, and of the supernatural.
There is a real, ontological difference between a baptised and a non-baptised person. The world of the non-baptised person is the natural world, which, we have seen, may lead to God. But God, precisely because is acknowledged purely on the basis of “ideal being”, remains as distant as a colour is from a blind person. The blind person knows that there are colours and he may strive to achieve an idea of each of them, but since he has not experienced real colours he will only have a very uncertain idea. This is also the characteristic of the idea God in the natural sphere. We call this fact, “to have a negative knowledge of God”.
Let the eyes of the blind person open to the light and then he will experience the “real” colours and will have a full, satisfying knowledge of colours.
In Baptism, through the character and through grace, we open our eyes to the reality of God, and we perceive Him “really”, we acquire a “positive” knowledge of God. This is done not by ourselves, but by God Himself, who creates in us a new heart and a new mind, who gives us a new life. In Baptism we are born again.
In Baptism, God creates in us a “new fundamental feeling”, a “new intellect, and will”, and hence a “new person”: but the “new” does not destroy the “old” but it raises it up to faculties it did not have before, faculties that open up a new immense scope, the supernatural world. The baptised person “perceives” God, still confusedly, but in a real way: so we experience in our heart the immense power of the Father, the infinite Wisdom and Truth of the Son, the infinite Love of the Holy Spirit. It will be in the glory of heaven that we shall “see God face to face” and know Him as He is.
The needs of a “catholic” child, therefore, are greatly different from the needs of a non-baptised child; there are two world to cater for, the natural and the supernatural, the world of philosophy and the world of theology, the world of nature and the world of grace. Rosminian education is complete only when the natural leads spontaneously into the supernatural, when the theory becomes the fully lived supernatural life dominated by charity, through Sacraments, worship, and prayer.
The fundamental elements of Rosminian Education
1- Rosminian Ethos
The first and main Object of all Rosminian works of intellectual charity provides the starting point for an understanding of the purpose and finality of Rosminian Colleges and Schools:
“The Object is to advance education by conducting any boarding or day school for children of the Roman Catholic religion with or without other Christian or non-Christian children in the spirit and ethos of the Institute of Charity (Rosminians)”.
The spirit and ethos of the Institute of Charity was pursued with much vigour and success by the Fathers, Brothers, and Sisters who lived and taught at our Schools from the time of their opening until a few years ago. The Rosminian ethos was manifested by the living presence of the Rosminian Community, their spiritual and ethical values, their life of prayer, their devotions, their educational principles, the example of their life as individuals and as community, very much like the Benedictine or Jesuit ethos was and is manifested today by the presence of their respective communities in their schools.
Although the Rosminian presence is at present much reduced, it is, nonetheless, essential for a continuation of the Rosminian ethos at the Schools. This is the primary purpose of having a Rosminian presence, even a Rosminian Community, the presence of some Governors who are Ascribed members of the Institute of Charity, and the kind of meetings like the present one that can enable a School to draw the essential principles and contacts that are imbued with Rosminian philosophical and theological teaching.
With guidance from Rosminian Fathers, Brothers, Sisters, and Ascribed, the Rosminian Ethos can be known and pursued by Governors, Senior Managers, and staff in general in their School.
2- What is the “ethos” of a school?
By “ethos” we mean the fundamental spirit of the school that gives orientation to the energies of the school. What the soul is to the body so is the ethos to the school.
We may consider the character of the school at two levels. At one level we can view the school as a complex system or institution that deals with such matters as curriculum, academic results, finance, staffing, administration, buildings, etc. At a second, deeper level, the school is driven by its essential purpose, its vision, its core values.
Schools are authentic schools when the essential purpose and core values of level two give direction and penetrate every aspect of the features of level one; they become dysfunctional when the system dominates the ethos, in response perhaps to market forces or by adopting values which are in opposition to the core values of the specific ethos.
Ethos in a catholic school reaches beyond specific acts of worship, catholic sacraments, devotions, and catholic iconography; it guides also approaches to the curriculum, in all subjects, it defines responses to the various relevant ethical modern problems, it pursues education according to the doctrine of the Church, and invites the school community to foster and live by Gospel values, such as love for God and neighbour, profound respect for the infinite dignity of each person, truthfulness, honesty, concern for the poor, etc.
It is easy to see how dysfunctional a catholic school would become if academic results, position in the league tables, or purely business interests should be given priority over and above the requirements of the catholic ethos of the school.
3- What is “Rosminian ethos”?
A description of the spirit and ethos of the Institute of Charity can be found in many books written by its founder, Fr. Antonio Rosmini. The Constitutions of the Institute of Charity is the fundamental text, but other books contribute to a fuller understanding of it, in particular the Maxims of Christian Perfection, The Rule of Life, many of his published letters (over thirteen substantial volumes), and the over 100 volumes of philosophy and theology.
The Institute takes its name from “charity” since its members join together to pursue holiness through charity, that is, love of God and neighbour. The pursuit of love of God through contemplation is the preferential state of members, but they are prepared to engage in any work of charity indicated to them by Divine Providence.
Fr. Rosmini distinguishes three forms of charity: spiritual, intellectual, temporal. The three forms are often found together, but by spiritual charity one is to understand the spiritual, sacramental work in a parish, in a retreat centre, etc. with the direct purpose of guiding souls to salvation through the grace of God.; by intellectual charity is meant work in schools, or in the publication of books, etc. with the purpose of fostering sound Catholic education, and solid Christian philosophy, theology and spirituality; and finally by temporal charity is meant work in hospitals, orphanages, prisons etc. with the purpose of alleviating poverty, illnesses, despair. The Institute of Charity embraces all three forms of charity.
Rosminian Colleges and Schools are works of intellectual charity of the Institute.
From what has been said we can identify some specific values of the Rosminian Ethos:
4- Practical Applications of Rosminian Ethos
Each of the points above deserves a much deeper explanation and could become objects for reflection, for assemblies, for training of staff. They are also a rich source of specific approaches:
Points to consider
Main Text
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