Freedom Through Beauty

Pope St. John Paul II summarized in a single sentence the deepest purpose of Catholic education. He said to American bishops: 

“Catholic education aims not only to communicate facts but also to transmit a coherent, comprehensive vision of life, in the conviction that the truths contained in that vision liberate students in the most profound meaning of human freedom.”

I visited Coeur du Christ Academy for the first time in November of 2022, and found a coherent, comprehensive vision of life being communicated to the students. This effort of building holy culture begins in the family, and is continued and supported in excellent schools. Culture-building is not a single kind of effort, it has to permeate everything, from curriculum, pedagogy, extracurricular activities, the tone and methods of teachers, and both individual and group formation of students. 

Art in Catholic Education

Academics, though, are worth some time and attention. How can the curriculum and pedagogy of a school contribute to holy culture? Specifically for the fine arts, how can beauty lead a young man or woman to the most profound meaning of human freedom?

The Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Curriculum Standards uses a term that I believe deserves increased attention in Catholic educational circles: “poetic knowledge.” A first look at this term might evoke the knowledge of poetry but that’s neither totally wrong nor quite right. Poetic refers to a kind of knowledge—as articulated by the Catholic tradition of education—that connotes something like knowledge of truths “grasped intuitively as when you trust another’s love.”[1] It is a kind of intuition that is born out of experience, sympathy, and delight. Poetic knowledge doesn’t come from memorizing facts and formulas, but from living and living well.

St. Cecilia of Rome is patroness of CDCA’s fine arts programs. She serves to highlight not only the importance of the arts as a key component of an integrated program of formation, but also the specific importance of music and song in the process of enculturation we intend to promote, given her particular patronage of music through the ages. Whether in cultivating a deep appreciation for the artistic heritage of Western Civilization through studying the art and architecture of medieval Christendom, gathering as a community for folk music and song, or students lifting their voices in sacred polyphony, St. Cecilia’s inspiration as patroness is at the forefront of so much that we do.

These activities of creating, singing, dancing, and acting embody, or make physical, our emotional lives as well as the human condition. This creates a lived experience whereby the student begins to see the world, themselves, and God in a new light; it is a uniquely Catholic way of looking at the world.

The Arts at Coeur du Christ Academy

Coeur du Christ Academy’s Art courses (Ancient Art, Medieval Art, and Art Theory) are an integral part of our core curriculum; that is, they aren’t elective. In these classes (98 minutes, once per week), our incredible faculty member, Mrs. Leanne Conaty, guides students through both an experiential knowledge of the methods and materials, as well as analytical and historical discussions of the most beautiful and influential art of western Christian culture and civilization. Our students begin by creating cave paintings, stone carvings, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. They craft their own illuminated manuscripts, watercolor paintings, and much more to develop poetic knowledge of what it takes for human nature to both express and appreciate beauty.

Coeur du Christ does offer distinctive electives in the performative arts as well. Our Choir elective is taught by master teachers from our local Music Conservatory, principally Mrs. Emily Sana. In Choir our students sing sacred music, from chant and polyphony to more contemporary hymns and those from the English tradition of liturgical music. With their voices, they embody the doctrines of the Church. This embodiment is not in the sense of lists, creeds, or analytical knowledge (as important as such things are), but as expressive beauty and expressed love. 

Mr. Kieran DuFrain, our Drama teacher, offers students a profound and intimate lived experience of human nature, both in the good and the evil. Citing Plato, C.S. Lewis explained what true education is, saying that it should enable the pupil to “see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart.” [2] Embodiment of (for example) “ill-made works of man” through Drama and theater offers our teens that vision into human nature which helps them to make such distinctions. This year, our students will dramatically embody the virtues of St. Thomas More (another of our patron saints) and the vices of Henry VIII. 

Our Catholic Culture elective is without a doubt the most distinctive of our electives. Coeur du Christ Saints sing; not with the precision and solemnity required for sacred music, but with the joy and spontaneity handed down informally throughout the ages. They dance; not for the sake of romance or even fun. But to embody in a chaste, healthy, and age-appropriate manner the complementarity of the sexes and the joy of communal life. In the Catholic Culture elective, we discuss true masculinity and femininity: the beauty of each as God created us and the complementarity of both. So many young men and women today are burdened by popular culture with unhealthy views of the opposite sex (and even one’s own sex). Coeur du Christ offers a liberating vision of each of the sexes that is ordered toward both healthy marriages and priestly and religious vocations. 

The integrated vision of beauty and human nature that I’ve described takes inspiration from Stratford Caldecott’s magisterial Beauty in the Word. In it, he has much to say about embodied learning—i.e., poetic knowledge—through drama, singing, and the visual arts. Most crucially, he states, “...the best way to communicate morality is not through endless dry lists of what should and should not be done, but once again through the imagination— through stories, drama, and living examples capable of engaging the will and the emotions…” I love teaching Moral Theology and I believe it is of supreme importance, but human persons are not sanctified—made virtuous—by a purely analytical account of obligations and prohibitions. That’s how you train a robot or an animal. For the human person, a son or daughter of the King of kings, their whole life must be engaged. They must be taught to see and to love all that is true, good, and beautiful. Beauty matters. Embodying all that is true and good matters. 

Pope Benedict XVI was right when he told American Catholic educators that “While we have sought diligently to engage the intellect of our young, perhaps we have neglected the will.” This is the battle-ground in the midst of each human heart, especially the hearts of teenagers: what is truly beautiful? What is worth loving? Sin and vice are as simple as disordered love and affections. Virtue is quite simply, “ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it.” [3]  Therefore, education is nothing other than the ordering of our affections, the cultivation of virtue. This is accomplished by handing on a culture, transmitting a comprehensive vision of life.

You will know the tree by its fruits...

After our athletic competitions, our teams and spectators gather together to sing Non nobis domine (not to us, Lord…). Our students are active in playing the piano during breaks, and they create their own artistic works of beauty. One student even has a comic book in the works. 

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