A Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic
Liberal Education
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VIII. LIBERAL EDUCATION AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
Whether we consider liberal education as achieving freedom,
or as satisfying wonder, we see that theology is its principal
part. Contrary to what is often assumed, liberal education
does not take place in spite of or even apart from the Christian
faith. Rather, the Christian student, because of his faith,
can be liberally educated in the most perfect and complete
way. For the sciences which are the object of such an education
form an ordered whole. By its own essential character, theology
completes and perfects the intellectual life of a free man,
for it has in a pre-eminent way that which is desired in all
of them. Liberal education undertaken by Christians and ordered
to theology turns out to be liberal education in its fullness.
The religious college quite properly can claim to be the liberal
educator par excellence, because through wisdom based
on faith the student's natural appetite for the truth can
be perfectly satisfied. He might see "through a glass
darkly," those highest things which the non-believer
will not see at all.
Liberal education, then, begins in wonder and aims at wisdom.
It involves parts of greater and lesser worth and greater
and lesser difficulty, united by their common order to wisdom.
In keeping with the immeasurable value of its end, and the
discouraging remoteness of that end, it does not disdain the
study of those humbler disciplines which are the indispensable
first steps on a long road. Thus it begins with the liberal
arts, proceeds to the particular philosophical disciplines,
and terminates in wisdom.
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