Recently I suggested that teachers, parents and clergy take advantage of New Year’s to read Pius XI’s 1929 encyclical on education, Divini illius magistri. I stand by the suggestion. But if you missed the turning of the year, don’t despair. It is an excellent text, worth reading at any time of year, and by Catholics of most any station—mother, father, teacher, administrator, school head, priest, professor, bishop.
Before diving in, however, caveat lector. We prisoners of the twenty-first century will initially find the style a challenge. Pius was no Hemingway. It is true that now and again an eminently tweetable line leaps off the page. But this was not a man who thought in tweets. At times his prose may best be characterised as—well, monarchical. His erudition is demandingly eclectic: he draws as readily from the Scriptures and the Fathers as from the Romans and a ruling of the United States Supreme Court, which in his Latin, in case you are curious, this becomes the rather ominous Summum Tribunal.
Moreover, the Vatican translation available online has some shortcomings. It gives us verse numbers, as it were, but no subheadings to help us make sense of the argument. In the translation, be aware that it is sometimes loose, as translations often are. In particular, do not be thrown off by the false friend ‘perfectum’, which is generally rendered as ‘perfect’. In fact, in Divini illius magistri, this word should less often be taken to mean ‘absolutely flawless’ than ‘having what it needs in order to work as it ought’.
Finally, and unfortunately, the letter also escaped inclusion in an otherwise admirable recent anthology of texts on Catholic education, where it might have been fruitfully elucidated.
So when you read it, as read it you should, do bear with Pius. His answers are worth it.
To help navigate the text, and to deprive the harried reader of excuses, I offer the road map below. This division of the texts is not arbitrary, but it is far from authoritative, and other topical divisions are possible. Still, it may be a useful place to start.
I. Pius opens, teleologically enough, by reminding us of man’s end in God and by declaring that the end of education is the same (paragraphs 1–10).
II. The first major exposition summarises Catholic social teaching on the rights and duties of the family, civil society, state, and Church as they related to children’s education (11–56, with the Church at 15–28, the family at 29–40, and civil authorities at 41–56). While education is the focus, this section also serves as a fine primer in the political theology of Leo XIII.
III. In a shorter but essential second section, Pius lays down clear principles of Christian anthropology: that is, to be human is to be made for the glory of God, but also to be badly fallen. He draws out the implications of these principles for pedagogy and puts us on guard against theories of technical and moral education (including sexual education) that fail in the classroom as in life (57–69).
IV. Next, Pius discusses institutional cooperation between family, Church and state, especially but not only in religious education. Here he has trenchant words for compulsory state schooling of the sort then freshly launched in the Soviet Union, but now the norm in states such as France and Germany: “a new slaughter of the Innocents, more horrific than the first”. Parents and all Catholics are to fight for Catholic education not as an optional project subject to political circumstances, but as a duty to God (70–85).
V. Pius then turns to curriculum, school management, and the nature of the teacher (86–92). The curriculum should have some flexibility but a mostly a stable core of the tried and tested disciplines, with Latin in particular enjoying pride of place. The school’s ethos, including leisure and recreation, should be consistent with its end. The character and abilities of the teacher are of the highest importance: he must know his subjects, love his students and their families, love his nation, love Jesus Christ, and love the Church (88). Pius might have said that ‘personnel is policy’.
VI. The Pope forcefully re-articulates the nature and end of Catholic education (93–100).
VII. He closes with an Augustinian flourish on the Church as Body of Christ (100–102).
Rather than ploughing straight into the introduction, it would not be a bad idea to begin with what I am calling Section VI first and to set your bearings by it. It contains, after all, the part the Pope himself flags as the most important. Here is a taste:
The proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and complete Christian.
That is, the purpose is to form Christ Himself in those reborn through Baptism…For the true Christian must live a supernatural life in Christ—“Christ who is your life”—and display it in all his actions, “so that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” (94)
The desperately harried reader could break off there and still have benefited from the encyclical.
From Section VI the reader might touch down lightly in paragraph 7 of Section I, then proceed to the equally indispensable Section III, on anthropological principles for education. (The moderately harried reader could perhaps stop there; still, I hope that the harried of all stripes will take those first dips only as down payments on a second visit for a more careful read.)
Every headmaster needs to spend some time in these paragraphs of III, to which, especially ahead of interviews, hiring committee meetings, and classroom observations, Section V should be added, and above all paragraph 88.
Political philosophers will be most keen on II and IV. Clergy and parents, too, will have a special interest in the first and second parts of Sections II (especially 29–40) and IV.
Or, of course, you could simply take the letter as written from first to last. You are, after all, amongst the addressees at the top of the page: for after the Venerabiles fratres, his bishops, the Pope addresses all the Christifideles—the faithful in Christ. That is not always the case with papal letters.
In short, whatever your involvement in Catholic education, there is something for you to find in Divini illius magistri that will enrich, enlarge, strengthen, reorder, challenge, or perhaps explode your understanding of the nature and purpose education.
