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Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts
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Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 10432

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Leonardo Franchi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Education, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G3 6NH, UK
Interests: religious education; teacher formation; liberal arts

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Religions provides a necessary boost to exisiting literature on the Liberal Arts. It offers a unique opportunity to explore the argument that the Liberal Arts lie at the heart of the Catholic vision of education. Consequently, and in the context of the significant footprint of Catholic educational institutions worldwide, it is vital to reclaim their place in debates on the nature, scope and aims of education.

Inspiration for the vision of education contained in the Special Issue is found principally in the German philosopher Josep Pieper’s groundbreaking volume Leisure the Basis of Culture (Pieper 2009, first published in 1952). More recently, the Global Compact on Education (Pope Francis 2020) is grounded in the foundational principles of Christian Humanism. It is this worthy humanistic tradition which offers reasoned arguments for the coupling of Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts.

Catholic educational philosophy recognises both the importance of preparing for active service in the world and the value of critical engagement with inherited knowledge. At its best, it is a meaningful amalgam of vocational and classical liberal approaches to education. It places in the public square a theory of education which is not reserved for members of the Catholic Church but serves as an intentional bridge to all who seek the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. To do this, the Special Issue shows how key curricular domains express the "Way of Beauty" for students and teaching staff. It opens up avenues for further dialogue between Catholic educators and all who seek an education for human flourishing.

References

Pieper, Josef. 2009. Leisure: The Basis of Culture. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. First published in 1952.

Pope Francis. 2020. Global compact on education.Together to Look Beyond. Rome: Pontifical Lateran University.

Dr. Leonardo Franchi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • beauty
  • music
  • science
  • literature
  • history
  • teacher formation
  • Catholic education
  • liberal arts

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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4 pages, 170 KiB  
Editorial
Editorial: Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts
by Leonardo Franchi
Religions 2023, 14(4), 539; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040539 - 17 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1095
Abstract
This Special Issue of Religions offers a welcome opportunity to explore the argument that the Liberal Arts lie at the heart of the Catholic vision of education [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

11 pages, 214 KiB  
Article
Skole and Historia: A Role for the Study of History in a Catholic School of Leisure
by Andrew Seeley
Religions 2023, 14(4), 467; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040467 - 01 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1420
Abstract
Josef Pieper hoped to persuade his contemporaries to rebuild European society into a civilization of leisure. Catholic schools can make themselves into schools of leisure, and the approach they take to the study of history can facilitate this. In this essay, after looking [...] Read more.
Josef Pieper hoped to persuade his contemporaries to rebuild European society into a civilization of leisure. Catholic schools can make themselves into schools of leisure, and the approach they take to the study of history can facilitate this. In this essay, after looking to Pieper’s “Leisure, the Basis of Culture” for educational principles that would guide a school of leisure, I explore the educational plan of one Catholic school that has embodied them. The study of history fills the primary integrating and formative role in this school, so I look to The Religious Dimension of Education and contemporary Catholic teachers of history to see how the study of history can be formative while remaining true to the principles of its discipline. Finally, I suggest that studying history from a Catholic perspective performs an important service for the Church as a whole. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts)
8 pages, 212 KiB  
Article
Stratford Caldecott’s Idea of Education
by Rebekah Lamb
Religions 2022, 13(11), 1013; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111013 - 26 Oct 2022
Viewed by 1001
Abstract
This essay overviews key aspects of Stratford Caldecott’s idea of liberal arts education, within the Roman Catholic tradition and especially focuses on the centrality of the Eucharist in his thought. It also considers how, according to Caldecott, liberal arts education contains a kind [...] Read more.
This essay overviews key aspects of Stratford Caldecott’s idea of liberal arts education, within the Roman Catholic tradition and especially focuses on the centrality of the Eucharist in his thought. It also considers how, according to Caldecott, liberal arts education contains a kind of liturgical affordance or sympathy with the form and nature of worship (within Roman Catholicism). In so doing, this paper offers, to date, the most substantive scholarly introduction to key aspects of Caldecott’s Eucharistic idea of education, within the context of the liberal arts tradition (broadly conceived). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts)
19 pages, 1468 KiB  
Article
Music as a Liberal Art: The Poetry of the Universe
by Dominic A. Aquila
Religions 2022, 13(9), 792; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090792 - 29 Aug 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2069
Abstract
This article explores the place of music in the classical liberal arts curriculum, which consists of the trivium (the arts of language) and the quadrivium (the arts of number). Music is part of the quadrivial disciplines and studied as applied arithmetic. However, as [...] Read more.
This article explores the place of music in the classical liberal arts curriculum, which consists of the trivium (the arts of language) and the quadrivium (the arts of number). Music is part of the quadrivial disciplines and studied as applied arithmetic. However, as argued in this article, it is also a bridge to the discipline of rhetoric, which is part of the trivium. The article begins with a brief review of St. Augustine’s De Musica, the first in a planned (but unrealized) series of dialogs on the value of the classical liberal arts to the emerging Christian culture of Antiquity. It proceeds to a discussion of music and its relation to the contemporary American liberal arts curriculum. Two case studies follow that address the ontological reality of music as a time-bound medium, and attempts to mute this reality in the service of creating a sense of timelessness. Thus subsuming the temporal into the Divine–what Augustine called “a poem of the universe”. The first case study is Dante Alighieri’s Paradiso, which is a journey through the heavens with each planet representing one of the seven liberal arts as preparatory to the Beatific Vision. The second case study focuses on J.S. Bach’s attempts to create a sense of timelessness in the St. Matthew Passion by the use of musical forms and musical rhetorical devices that tend to abolish time. The article concludes with suggestions on how teachers can use 20th and 21st-century movements in Western art music as pathways to appreciate music’s pivotal role in the Catholic liberal arts tradition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts)
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12 pages, 563 KiB  
Article
Catholic Education and the Study of Science: The Mysticism of Scientific Pursuit
by Elisabetta Canetta
Religions 2022, 13(6), 528; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13060528 - 08 Jun 2022
Viewed by 1886
Abstract
In the past forty years, science has been gradually relegated to technology and utilitarian knowledge. To avoid forgetting what science truly is, it is paramount to train students to discern the difference between scientific knowledge and technological progress. Catholic education possesses the necessary [...] Read more.
In the past forty years, science has been gradually relegated to technology and utilitarian knowledge. To avoid forgetting what science truly is, it is paramount to train students to discern the difference between scientific knowledge and technological progress. Catholic education possesses the necessary tools to achieve such a goal and to give back, to science, its rightful place in human knowledge as a mystical instrument that can demonstrate the logic in the existence of a Creator beyond creation and enable humanity to climb the mountain of truth. The starting point of this ascent is to use scientific approaches to unravel the laws that govern the natural world. At the top of the mountain, the climber will contemplate the hidden mysteries of the Creator and His creation. In this paper, the development of science, from a united body of knowledge to a compartmentalized ensemble of different disciplines, will be presented. The difference between science as liberal knowledge and technology as utilitarian knowledge will also be discussed, and the fundamental role that Catholic education has to play in the restoration of scientific knowledge, as a liberal endeavour of the human mind, will be considered. The necessity of using the dialogue between faith and reason as a tool to train students in understanding the essence of scientific pursuit will be presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts)
16 pages, 247 KiB  
Article
Transcending the Technocratic Mentality through the Humanities
by John Sullivan
Religions 2021, 12(9), 676; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12090676 - 25 Aug 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2002
Abstract
Catholic education has a long tradition of engagement with the liberal arts and especially the humanities. The place of the humanities today in the curriculum is under threat for several reasons, one being the predominance of the technocratic mentality. This paper revisits (in [...] Read more.
Catholic education has a long tradition of engagement with the liberal arts and especially the humanities. The place of the humanities today in the curriculum is under threat for several reasons, one being the predominance of the technocratic mentality. This paper revisits (in three steps) the contested issue of the role of the humanities in education. First, I review arguments about the role of the humanities within education. Second, some of the defects of the technocratic mentality are pointed out. Third, a Christian lens for viewing the humanities is deployed. Here I propose that the humanities play a valuable role in nurturing the imagination, thereby contributing both to a capacity to transcend the technocratic outlook and to the development of the holistic and humanising education that is central to a Catholic worldview. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Catholic Education and the Liberal Arts)
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