Christian Education

By Edward Leen, CSSp What is education? To this demanding question, Edward Leen offers a robust and thorough answer. In the light of Christian inspiration, education is a “culture of the mind, the will and the emotions,” which forms in men and women the capability and condition to exercise their vocations while also disposing them for personal, social, and spiritual flourishing in the course of life’s joys and sufferings. The recipients of a true education, a properly Christian education, are able to test the worth of all things, whether of conduct, achievement, projects, art, literature, and institutions, by properly Christian virtues. Thus, having the minds of Christians, knowing the truth and appreciating the beautiful, they are set right in mind and will in relation to God, to the material world in which they live, to their fellow men and to themselves. Originally published as What Is Education? in 1944, Leen’s thoughtful reply came amidst Western civilization’s reckoning with its educational theories and practices, brought under scrutiny by the miseries of World War II. Emphatically practical in purpose, and fed by the streams of both the classical and Church traditions, Christian Education bears out the words of Pope Pius XI, that education “consists essentially in preparing man for what he must be and for what he must do here below, in order to attain the sublime end for which he was created.” Since God has revealed Himself to us in the Person of His only-begotten Son, who alone is “the way, the truth and the life,” there can be no ideally perfect education which is not Christian education. (Pope Pius XI) * * * Edward Leen (1885–1944), an Irish Catholic priest of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, was a missionary, scholar, and prolific, widely read author on spiritual matters. Besides Christian Education, his books include In the Likeness of Christ and The Vine and the Branches—both available from Cluny. Paperback: 272pp. ISBN: 978-1685954314