Priest: What Catholic Education Meant to Me

By Reverend Stephen V. Hamilton

Thanks to the sacrifice and generosity of my parents and so many priests, religious sisters, and lay teachers, I have been privileged to be educated almost exclusively in the Catholic education system. I am an alumnus of Rosary Catholic School and Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School, both in Oklahoma City. My perspective on the value of Catholic education is formed by my experiences as an alumnus of Catholic schools, as a priest, and as a religion teacher at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School in Kingfisher.

My gratitude for my many years as a student in Catholic schools has only grown in the succeeding years. The mission of Catholic education is firmly rooted in what the Catholic Church believes about the dignity of the human person. The human person is created by God, in His image and likeness. As a being carrying the “thumbprint” of God the human person is not only composed of a body, but also a spiritual soul. Catholic education seeks to nourish the full reality of the human person. Now with greater maturity, I can reflect upon the gift I was given in Catholic education, seeing how teachers at Rosary and McGuinness ministered to both body and spirit as Catholic instructors. In other words, the breadth of the vision of Catholic education is marked by the formation of the whole person.

With only three years of my education not spent in a Catholic school, it is hard to narrow down my memories to a few. Nonetheless, a few do stand out.  I will admit that as a student I did not always welcome the requisite participation in grade school speech contests. But public speaking was a skill fostered both by Rosary and McGuinness - a skill that serves me well each and every day. The liturgical life of the Church was fostered most especially by weekly attendance at Holy Mass. In addition to that, I can recall one very formative lesson that taught me the importance of prayer at critical times. Twenty years ago, upon the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, my Rosary classmates and I were brought over to the church to pray. As those astronauts “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God,” so did we by means of our prayer. Attendance at McGuinness brought an appropriate broadening of horizons as education was no longer on the familiar turf of my home parish. I met new people and was exposed to other cultures through foreign language classes and clubs. I recall my interest in the physical sciences and my gratitude that we had good lab facilities for such studies. In addition, I found a new interest in philosophy and the search for truth.

What is the unique value of Catholic education? Why is Catholic education a gift I believe each parent should make the necessary sacrifice to give to their children? Since God is explicitly in the environment of the Catholic school, Catholic education is in a unique position to impart lessons of truth, beauty, and order. Just as the human person arrives at knowledge both by reason and faith, so Catholic schools need not artificially exclude God from the classroom, the very place where the mind created by God works.  In a Catholic institution knowledge is arrived at by the harmony of faith and reason. This is a distinct advantage of Catholic education. Objective truth and the reality of the world around us, is not something you and I create. Rather it is independent of us. Authentic knowledge requires that our minds, if properly formed, be conformed to the reality of things around us. How can this exercise possibly exclude God, the Creator of the very things the mind studies? If I were to look at your home and its surroundings, I could not help but also learn something about you, the one who orders that home. Likewise with God, when we examine the world around us we necessarily learn something of God. A Catholic education can acknowledge this, immerse itself in this reality, and celebrate it through the worship owed to God.

I consider what the first chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel shows us about Jesus’ formation of the Apostles, a group we might call the first Catholic school. This was a learning environment established by the Lord himself as he called together individuals of various backgrounds to learn from him and to follow him. This “first Catholic school” gives us a glimpse of what Catholic education is to be. It is an education and a preparation for life that has God at its center. It is learning from the Master himself, the maker of all things. It is not simply education in religious truths, but the development of the whole mind according to the order provided by God, an order that must include the knowledge acquired by faith. What a difference the graduates of that “first Catholic school” made as they went out to the whole world, proclaiming the truth of the gospel, and continuing the very work of Jesus! This is a task and a challenge given to each and every disciple - even you and me. It is a task for which Catholic schools are in a unique position to bring about.