Sample Pages from Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home by Francis Crotty

"It should be the objective and is definitely the responsibility of every rational Catholic mother and father to see that the child is educated, so that he can be truly Catholic with the consent of all his faculties." -- Francis Crotty, Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home Introduction

HOME EDUCATION: There's appearing, on the horizon of education, a dim but ery definite and most promising light. The light is coming from the homes of families that have placed their staff in the soil and given notice: thus far and no farther.

Home education is a growing potential that is both frightening and promising; frightening to those who have lost sight of the reason for education and who have attempted to reweave society into something inherently evil, and promising to those who have tried it and have not found it wanting.

The product of Catholic home education has to be seen not only in its contemporary context of a healthy and intelligent child being nurtured, but it must also be seen in its historical sense.

Historically, it is both interesting and essential to recall the reason the Roman civilization lived for seven centuries. The center and stability of this civilization was the home, the family. Then there was the older and wiser Hebrew world, similar to the Roman, with education also built into the home. Both civilizations were to suffer the loss of their worlds through the cultural effects of allowing others to teach their children.

Most historians agree that Rome's decline started with the importation of Greek slaves, who brought alien ideas from Greece to Rome. The Roman fathers gave over their responsibility to their Greek captives, who taught the Roman children a philosophy alien to the "natural law" philosophy of the Roman.

The natural qualities of modesty, bravery, constancy, prudence, and industry of the Roman home and hearth collapsed under the teachings of the Stoics. Moral and intellectual errors set in and the Roman world started its decline.

Similarly, albeit different in circumstances, the Hebrew civilization suffered the same fate. Seventy-five years before its fall, this civilization sounded its own death knell by decree requiring compulsory education: the children taken out of the home.

Another point, and perhaps the most salient, is that of the three cultures from which Western Civilization draws its heritage, the Greek culture was the only one which held woman in low esteem, not worthy of education.

In America the scene is different but the effect is the same. No matter the scene, the present day secular humanism that is rampant throughout all the parts of our culture mimics the Greek stoicism that helped destroy Rome. Our compulsory education brings in alien and atheistic philosophy that is destroying America by destroying first the home.

Home education is the clearest indication that a new day is coming in America, and in the world. It is "the end of the beginning" in America; a new age of wonder in God's creaiton is opening before us in the third millennium.

At Kolbe Academy we desire to assist the home to achieve the end for which it is created, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (to the greater glory of God).

It should be the objective and is definitely the responsibility of every rational Catholic mother and father to see that the child is educated, so that he can be truly Catholic with the consent of all his faculties.

Why Ignatian methods and procedures of education? This question can be answered by reviewing the historical consequences of the work of the Society of Jesus. THE SOCIETY OF JESUS began in the year 1540 A.D> Ignatius of Loyola and a handful of young students at the University of Paris formed the nucleus of what was to become the greatest religious order in the world.

Within 200 years, the Jesuits would have over 670 colleges, 200 high schools and a hundred seminaries thriving throughout the world. The Jesuits reached into the jungles of Paraguay, the duchies of Prussia, the steppes of Russia and into the back streets of Calcutta.

What amde these schools so prevalent and successful was, first, their signum fidei: "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam" or AMDG, around which The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius were built, second, their Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societas Iesu, which literally translates to "Plan and Organization of Studies in the Schools of the Society of Jess." Today, it is simply referred to as the Ratio Studiorum.

Along with the Ratio Studiorum came the Constitutions. The Constitutions guided the work of thousands upon thousands of Jesuits, who met and collaborated with intense charity and devotion to their vocation and under the sign of their order, AMDG. Their collaboration produced the plan of studies upon which their schools were built, and helped much of the culture and society of Europe to flourish.

These men came to their general meetings and for decades honed their methods. It was found, no matter where they taught, be it China or Luxembourg, that their method always produced the same, fine result. Their empirical data, which has never been equaled in either quantity or quality, developed a way of studies that, to this day, is unequalled in either product or success.

Whether in citing the principal capacities of human personality, underscoring the importance of student self-activity, describing how a student is best prepared for living in his world or providing the three purposes of the Prelection, the end objective was always kept in sight: eloquentia perfecta.

"ELOQUENTIA PERFECTA" is simply the Ignatian term for the concepts that go back to Tertullian and Cicero. For the school of the Roman, it was Rhetoric. Both Rhetoric and eloquentia perfecta meant the student who was able to "write, speak, and act well." It meant the person who would be able to live up to his fullest potential and bring to his society a cultured, balanced and productive citizen.

So it was with the "blackrobes," as they were called. They synthesized a method that stopped the Protestant revolution in its tracks and simultaneously stabilized Catholicism through the impact of their assistance at the great doctrinal Council of Trent, and gave the world men of culture and learning.

There is nothing mysterious or difficult about the principles involved in Ignatian education! What they did for the men in black can be done for the home. It will be seen, after reading this manual, that Ignatian education is comprised of much common sense. Why, then is it necessary to use it? We must begin to recognize the facility and promise that it contains.

These methods and objectives were developed under the influence of the two great works: (1) The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which one pontiff called "the Eighth Sacrament," and (2) the philosophical writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. These works were carefully developed by men who understood and implemented ordered thinking in their work.

The Jesuits were suppressed in 1773 by act of Pope Clement XIV. Thus, by the hand of the pontiff, all the schools, houses, funds and materials of the Society of Jesus were taken away. The order of 23,000 men was disbanded, and their fate struck into the granite of history.

Although the restoration of 1814 brought the order back, little was left with which to resume the work of their predecessors. It took a hundred years to bring the order back to full manpower, its educational capacity and vigor never returned.

Let us study the significance of our entry into the third millennium of history, in the midst of a number of converget and coincident events. Our Age of the Laity is ushered in during the two-thousandth year of the birth and childhood of Mary; during the five hundred years of the birth of St. Ignatius and of our hemisphere of America, and of the three-hundredth anniversary of the appearance of Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary in Paray-le-Monial, France. Her feast day is celebrated October 16, and during the 50th anniversary of the death of our co-patron Maximillian Kolbe.

We see great things unfold following the "Marian Year." We must seek a vantage point to see these things in perspective; perhaps that vantage point is the family.

Remember, God has called you and has great things in store for you. Let us work together in the motto of St. Pius X, Instaurare Omnia in Christo, and as we approach the third millennium, let us ponder the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: "Are we preparing something beautiful for God?"

Francis Crotty
September 15, 1989
Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows

Excerpted from Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home by Francis Crotty 1995/1998, Kolbe Academy, Used with permission.