A Pontifical John Paul II Institute Partner Feature

released 1/14/2025

In this November 2024 lecture, Michael Hanby analyzes the history of and metaphysical assumptions behind the current crisis in education. Fundamentally, education is a quest for the nature of reality, but this quest has been prohibited by a secular society that desires not to understand the world but to change it. While sensitive to the societal challenges faced by the U. S. bishops who created the system of Catholic education in America, Hanby argues that Catholic schools have largely failed at initiating children into a comprehensive vision of reality. What is needed, he says, is to ask questions about the nature of reality: What difference might the existence of God make to the meaning of life or of nature? What must education be if Catholicism is true? What is a human being and is there such a thing as human nature? Education necessarily involves metaphysical and theological preconditions, and Hanby argues that our current education crisis is a result of society rejecting these preconditions. He concludes with a call to teach students “how we came to be” — our heritage of Christian civilization — so they can recover the rich inheritance of wisdom, knowledge, and ideas from which they’ve been exiled.

This lecture is provided courtesy of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute.

41 minutes

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