Joseph Veale (1921-2022) was a Jesuit Priest and teacher whose work, at its heart, emphasised the practice of education and expression over the strictures of more ‘limiting’ educational tools such as examinations. Considered to be an exceptional educator, he contributed a number of significant articles regarding the Irish education system to Studies, one of which – ‘Christian Responsibility’ (1964) – is extracted below.
While it could be said that the overarching premise of ‘Christian Responsibility’ is the examination of the quality of Catholic religious education in 1960s Ireland (highlighting on the side of educators the potential for complacency in their instruction, and on the side of students the risks of developing a passivity of faith), the article also warns at large against the contemporary Catholic’s internal contradictions – such as the fear of sin leading to a lack of theological exploration; shallow relationships to faith; and the concerns of arguing for ‘proof’ versus the development of personal faith. Written in the context of a then-ongoing Vatican II, above all the heart of the article could be said to be its focus on the “transition from passive religion to positive faith”.
Further information on Joseph Veale can be found online at the Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Joseph Veale, ‘Christian Responsibility’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 53, No. 210 (Summer, 1964), 118-135. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30088824
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It was at the heart of Pope John’s concern for the world that the countenance of Christ in his Church might be revealed more effectively to all men of good will. The human means we use in teaching Christ and his message must change from age to age. It is necessary, then, that we re-examine the means we use to teach Christianity within the Church.
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Are there reasons why a teacher of religion in Ireland should examine his conscience? We have been asked at various times why university undergraduates are so inarticulate on matters of doctrine, so hazy and inaccurate in their knowledge, so blasé or unconcerned about their faith. People ask why some of the more thoughtful among them ‘lose the faith’; why so many university graduates shrug off with unconcern the great moral issues of the century; why serious human and social responsibilities are evaded with the defense-mechanism of the jibe or joke; whether frivolousness may not be a cloak for irresponsibility. I am not here concerned with questions of fact but with the kind of questions we are asked; and therefore with questions we must ask ourselves. Frank Sheed has said that many Catholics have not so much Catholic minds as worldly minds with Catholic patches. I think it is fair to say that Irish society is indistinguishable from any modern secularized society but with, perhaps, larger Catholic patches.
…Yet it is quite certain that we could say, as Father Jungmann said of continental Europe in 1936, ‘Countless Catholics have received in our schools a more extensive and conceptually precise exposition of the doctrines of the faith than did priests in the Early Church and well on into the Middle Ages.’ So we must in conscience face the question: What is lacking? What is wrong?
Here is one example of the sort of impression religious teaching can make on those taught. It is written by a student who has been through an ‘extensive and conceptually precise exposition of the doctrines of the faith’ in an Irish school.
The Deity who made me loves me infinitely; yet He wishes first to put me on trial, in order that I may earn my happiness. He has made a set of rules that I must conform to; and He has given me a free will so that I can break these rules if I want to. He has allowed me to accept grace, which helps me to keep His rules. But He has also allowed me to be tempted to break the rules. He has given me weaknesses of mind and body so that I can be more easily tempted against Him. If I do not keep His rules, I will be punished very severely, even if I repent. If I do not repent, and die having broken one of His rules, without sorrow, this Deity, who loves me infinitely, will torture and torment me eternally, for ever and ever and ever. This is called justice.
Turn from that sad account of Christianity to the catechesis of St Peter:
Blessed be that God, that Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in His great mercy has begotten us anew, making hope live in us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We are to share an inheritance that is incorruptible, inviolable, unfading. It is stored up for you in heaven, and meanwhile, through your faith, the power of God affords you safe conduct till you reach it, this salvation which is waiting to be disclosed at the end of time. Then you will be triumphant. What if you have trials of many sorts to sadden your hearts in this brief interval? This must needs happen, so that you may give proof of your faith, a much more precious thing than the gold we test by fire; proof which will bring you praise, and glory, and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. You never saw Him, but you learned to love Him; you may not see Him even now, but you believe in Him; and, if you continue to believe in Him, how you will triumph. How ineffable your joy will be, and how sublime, when you reap the fruit of that faith of yours, the salvation of your souls. (I Peter 1: 3·9).
What has happened in between? What has come between the exulting faith of the first Christians, ‘Jesus Christ is risen and is Lord and Saviour,’ and the negative, fearful, tormented religion of many well instructed Catholics to-day?
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In such a Catholic consciousness, sin and the commandments loom large in the forefront on the mind; religion becomes primarily a kind of morality and that often indistinguishable from a stoic or natural ethic; the sacraments are seen as aids to keeping out of sin…Mass is something one goes to or must go to under pain of sin; faith is only an assent to statements, not a profound personal commitment to a person. Mysteries seem to be unaccountable puzzles to which, the mind darkly or grimly assents, often with an unresolved and nagging uneasiness…I do not think that the picture is exaggerated. If you talk to a student who has recently finished a secondary school course in Christian Doctrine you will frequently find that he is preoccupied with proving. Truths of faith are like propositions in geometry – statements that must be proved.
… “Apologetics” taught with a wrong emphasis confirms this preoccupation with proving. Christianity is felt as being somehow on the defensive: hemmed in by enemies whose counter-proofs do not always seem to be quite as foolish or easily dismissed as the text book suggests. The high exercise of intelligence is felt to be ‘a danger to one’s faith.’ The act of faith is felt to be the conclusion of a rational argument and dependent on the strength of the argument. Since rational proof seems so important and looms so large, the student may well feel, when he eventually meets a rigorously argued alternative, that it is a case of six of one and half a dozen of another. If his mind is conditioned to expect pat answers then later on another set of pat answers may prove just as convincing. Or the searching and subtle, although perhaps sprawling, analysis of the human condition by an existentialist writer will be felt as more convincing, than the tidy categories half-remembered from school-days.
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It is observable that teachers who are religious frequently express reluctance or distaste for the task of teaching religion. They ask ‘how on earth do you fill in the forty minutes of class?’ This is surprising and demands explanation. I suggest that a clue to the puzzle is to be found in a well-known essay by Alfred North Whitehead. He treats of ‘the central problem of all education,’ ‘the problem of keeping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert.’ He analyses the cause and effects of knowledge of this kind. I am not here immediately concerned with his argument or analysis. We all know from experience what ‘inert knowledge’ is and how stultifying its effect on the mind and heart. In no sphere does it do more harm than in religion, where what is at stake is the student’s personal response in his deepest being to God’s self-revelation and to that most private invitation to a fully free and adult commitment in faith. It were better that teachers did successfully evade the duty of teaching religion if they themselves have only an ‘inert knowledge’ of theology, even when such knowledge co-exists with an admirable personal piety, prayerfulness, and sanctity. It was to this, I think, that Dom Joseph Dowdall, O.S.B., referred in the January issue of Doctrine and Life.
Many religious do not fully understand (that is, do not accept in a vital, concrete and personal way) the basic principles of their religious life. They have accepted the truths in a notional and passive way, but they do not become personal convictions eliciting a personal response. This lack of personal response does not allow them to be conveyed to others whom they teach in their schools, or to produce in themselves a fully integrated and satisfying religious life.
Where growth in supernatural faith is in question, this progress from regulation to formation is probably the most delicate work demanded of any teacher. He needs himself to have a serene and secure faith, human sympathy and tact, detachment from and self-effacement before the freedom and the sacred privacy of the human being in relation to God and, as well, a strong nerve. He must refrain from storming the student’s will by mere personality. Above all, he must not allow loyalty to the faith to become confused with loyalty to himself. He must have as thorough a knowledge as modern studies can give him of that transition from childish faith to adult faith which is often called the ‘crisis of faith.’…All education is vicious that prepares a boy to live in an unreal world. All Christian education is vicious that in 1964 trains a man to live a good Christian life in the Middle Ages.
…The problem of helping in the formation of a mature faith is sometimes seen in these terms: that too many educated Catholics are experts in physics or law or letters or economics but have only a school-boy’s knowledge of theology. The oftener that is said the better. But we should not fall into the Socratic error and suppose that knowledge solves everything. We must also examine all the factors in the growth of the integrated personality, especially that decisive step by which a man freely accepts and chooses his responsibilities as a human being. His stature as a man will be in proportion to the consciousness and freedom of his choice. For a Catholic, vitality and maturity as a Christian will be proportioned to the freedom and intelligence of his decision to accept Christian responsibility.
The process of transition from a passive religion (taken for granted as something one has because one’s parents have it) to positive faith, ‘a free and responsible answer to the call of God within him,’ is a process of growth and cannot be forced…Anything that would savour of mental conditioning or character manipulation is an invasion of the inviolable human person…We should expect the ‘crisis of faith’ so that we may by sympathy and tact encourage the growth of faith and refrain from stifling it and perhaps keeping it puerile.
Just as it is easy to fall into the error of thinking that a better teaching of religious knowledge will solve all problems of Christian formation, so it is easy to fall into the error of supposing that the Christian doctrine class is a sealed compartment and that we may ignore the rest of education. I believe there are some practices in Irish education that militate against a better Christian education. It is for that reason that I should like to suggest a few practical corollaries to all that I have said. If we are really serious about the work of forming complete Christians, I think we should re-examine some of those practices that we easily take for granted.
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