“True education aims to give people a formation which is directed towards their final end and the good of that society to which they belong and in which, as adults, they will have their share of duties to perform.” -Vatican Council II, Gravissimum Educationis (n. 1).
A few weeks ago, Queensland Thomas More Centre organiser Mark Makowiecki successfully staged in Brisbane at the newly formed TMC Men’s Debating Club a lively debate on the topic, “The Catholic education system is the key to re-evangelising Australia”.
The adjudicator of the debate is a man who has layers of skin in the game. He is the energetic literary history scholar, Christian teacher and educational writer, Kenneth (Difff) Crowther, who is the relatively young Founding Principal of the parent-engaged, co-educational, independent St John Henry Newman College which was launched just over a year ago in Brisbane and which is planned to open with students in 2026.
The new college website describes the key aims of the bold new undertaking: “It will provide a classical education that immerses students in the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness of God and His world, forming them in wisdom and virtue to become faithful Catholics prepared to contribute to God’s work in the world.”
“Difff” has worked in education for over 15 years, combining his literary studies and teaching with PhD research on virtues in Shakespeare’s plays and in discussions about the wider culture of Christians in education.
It was obviously a well-fought debate as Difff awarded the negative team in the Brisbane debate with a win by only one point.
It was interesting that when Mark reported the debate on social media, there were various comments made which suggest that people are aware of a multi-dimensional series of crises in school education.
In the first place the crisis has a broadly sociological aspect. Problems can be measured in figures relating to family disruption and professional disillusion. Teacher shortages widely reported can be attributed to many factors: burn out, stress and lack of educational vision.
Then there are deep and complex pedagogical issues: falling student literacy, numeracy and a loss of cultural coherence, worsening student “mental health” and behavioural issues, and the imposition of bureaucratic and sometimes ideologically driven coercion from educational QANGOs.
For Christians there are other deeper theological and spiritual issues across different educational “systems”. It gets down to the question of how well, if at all, does the “Catholic education system” catechise, evangelise or even model faithful Christian life?
This question has been pressing for many decades.
In 1989, the year in which the Thomas More Centre was founded, B.A. Santamaria repeated in the religious journal AD2000 – of which he was founding editor – the call of his ally, the philosopher and Archbishop of Hobart Eric D’Arcy, who said: “We urgently need a renaissance in the doctrinal dimension of education-in-faith.”
Archbishop D’Arcy (1924-2005) was a notable intellect and his studies in Rome and Oxford produced in his fruitful appreciation for Thomist and the British Analytical traditions of thought. He was a pioneer Australian philosopher, the first to obtain a doctorate from Oxford University.
Archbishop D’Arcy was later appointed to the Pontifical Congregation for Catholic Education and was an articulate supporter of Pope St John Paul II’s important post-synodal exhortation, Catechesi Tradendae, which was published just ten years before in 1979.
Archbishop D’Arcy outlined his own insights and those of Pope John Paul II in arguing that a Catholic education worthy of the name needed to teach the sound doctrinal foundations and reasons for Christian belief while incorporating several other important tasks.
Such education would need to:
- Emphasise a Christological evangelisation – that it is needed to develop a sacramental, moral and personal relationship with Christ (n. 5-9);
- Engage students to use their critical faculties in the cultural and societal questions of the day equipped with an understanding of the reasons for Catholic teaching;
- Bring a living historical immersion and use of memory in the tradition of the Church into play;
- Deploy imaginative methods of catechesis which engage the imaginations of the students;
- Stress the importance of the catechist or teacher, not merely as an information source but as witness to the faith.
Clearly by 1989, both Archbishop D’Arcy and B.A. Santamaria were concerned that the desire for reform to a more effective evangelisation/catechesis in schools was 20 years overdue, and was showing signs of being hampered either by institutional red tape or by deliberate resistance.
Archbishop D’Arcy wrote of disconnection, non-practice and religious illiteracy of many Catholic school students at the time: “Teachers are not to blame for this – parents still less so. The fault lies in deep and systematic flaws in the experientialist model catechetic itself; in some of its philosophical assumptions; and, consequently, throughout the curricula, theories, and programs built upon it.”
B.A Santamaria asked sharply who was minding the minders, the “administrative” staff who would respond to the calls for reform and improvement. He wrote:
“Will it go to those who ensured that the orthodox beliefs contained in the Universal Catholic Directory, issued by the Holy See more than a decade ago, might as well have remained deposited on the steps of St Peter’s? Will it go to those who deliberately ignored the content of the encyclical Catechesi Tradendae from the moment of its publication?”
In part it was the attempt to “tell the truth” about this situation in religious education that the journal AD2000: A Journal of Religious Opinion was founded and by late 1989 had garnered over 5,000 subscribers.
It was also in part to re-integrate a force of well-formed, intelligent, imaginative and inspiring Christian professionals, tradespeople and lay people in the face of cultural, theological and educational crisis that The Thomas More Centre was founded.
Given the findings and observations of such research as is available about Catholic educational institutions in Dr Philippa Martyr’s book Witness: The Future Catholic Church in Australia (Connor Court, 2025) – which we will examine in our next newsletter – we realise that while many issues have become more dire for the Church, there is also a growing recognition that creative, personally engaged and intelligent responses are needed and that the Thomas More Centre is needed once again.
R.I.P. Bishop Peter Elliott – legendary teacher and patron
Thank you to so many of our readers who wrote, phoned and messaged condolences on the news of the death of Bishop Peter J. Elliott.
Your thoughts and memories really enriched our appreciation of his pastoral as well as his very significant contributions to Catholic liturgical dignity and form, and for his efforts over the decades to revive a Catholic education renaissance.
It is still possible to view the video of the Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass for Bishop Elliott, celebrated by Archbishop Peter A. Comensoli and other bishops and priests at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne.
The quality of the music, the liturgical solemnity and the readings were all very fitting – including a particularly fine homily preached by the retired Bishop of Lismore Geoffrey Jarrett – and are all worth listening to and watching.
In 1990, Bishop Peter Elliott – as the Roman correspondent for AD2000– noted the celebrations for Cardinal John Henry Newman in Rome.
Bishop Elliott lived to hear and be delighted at the recent publication of Pope Leo XIV’s plans to declare Newman as a Doctor of the Universal Church.
More to come!
Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
