Charlotte Mason & the Catholic Conundrum, Part 2

The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas

The fresco pictured here, "The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas," is to be found in Florence, Italy, in the Spanish Chapel of the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella. Please see Art Middlekauff's article, "Thomas Aquinas and the Great Recognition," as our reference point for this discussion (http://charlottemasonpoetry.org/thomas-aquinas-and-the-great-recognition/).

Art tells us, "Thought to be executed by Andrea di Bonaiuto in the fourteenth century, these frescos unabashedly delight in the great achievements of the Domincan order." 

"The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas" is the fresco beloved by Charlotte Mason which I mentioned in Part 1, a copy of which she had in her House of Education and which she said formed her "educational creed."

Rather than paraphrase Art's entire article, I just want to sum up what I think are the issues in what he has brought out for the Catholic CM educator. First, Charlotte never once in all of her writings mentions the name of Thomas Aquinas. In chapter 25 of Parents and Children, she calls the fresco in question, "The Descent of the Holy Spirit." According to Art, she does at times call it Filosofica della Religione Cattolica (Philosophy of the Catholic Religion), but in chapter 25 there is no acknowledgement that this fresco has anything to do with St. Thomas, the Dominican order, or the Catholic Faith. This is despite the fact that Thomas is the central figure of the painting; that he is in fact larger than all of the other figures and is seated on a throne; and that it is intended to represent the supremacy of the teaching authority of the Catholic Church!

Further evidence of her intentional avoidance of St. Thomas is the way that CM discusses the Florentines, the "Florentine mind," and the Medieval scholastics in chapter 25. She attributes the ideas that she sees exemplified in the painting, which captures her notion of the "great recognition" in picture form, as seemingly flowering from the people of Florence in general, rather than from the tradition of the Catholic Church.  

And what is this great recognition? It's the idea that the parents/teachers of children must recognize that the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator in all things, religious and secular, and that we must cooperate with the Spirit in order to effectively teach. There seems to be nothing "off" in this part of CM's philosophy. Yet she goes so far in chapter 25 as to suggest that a particular educational method might either "invite" or "repel" the Holy Spirit. The logic goes that since the Spirit is the giver of life, he would not cooperate with a teaching approach which is dry as dust, which is not living. The implication is that it is her method which will best invite the Spirit. 

The Catholic Church adopted the educational philosophy and method of Thomas Aquinas, who is regarded as the Angelic Doctor of unparalleled esteem, not that of Charlotte Mason. The Holy Spirit does his work through Holy Mother Church. The education of our children is supposed to be based upon Catholic Faith Formation. Charlotte Mason interpreted the fresco to her own liking, but more problematic, she based her notion of the Holy Spirit's cooperation on her own interpretation of the Bible, and her philosophy follows suit. 

Charlotte applied Jesus' saying, "Let the children be, and do not hinder them from coming to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," directly to her method. She tells us that we hinder the child by getting too much between him and the ideas found in living books. Let's consider narration, for example, a key CM method, which in itself is a practical tool for assimilating and remembering what is read. We are discouraged from having any influence on how the child's mind conceives of what he has taken in. We are to allow him to come to his own conclusions. Furthermore, the personality of the teacher should not have any play upon the child in his education. Her "charm" should be concealed, not used to any advantage. While St. Thomas would agree that discovery on one's own is the best way to learn anything, he also recognized that some things simply could not be learned without the guidance of the teacher, and that most people would have neither the time nor the courage to do so.

St. Thomas' method was distinguished by its conversational approach, presenting the material in engaging ways and leading the mind of the student to right thinking (the marriage of faith with reason). If we allow the books to be the primary educators of our children, then we are not following the Church's declaration that it is the parents who are the primary educators of their children! Yes, we do this with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. But Charlotte's notion that a method of education itself will either invite or repel the Spirit isn't Catholic. We invite the Holy Spirit through prayer. We receive the graces of the Spirit through the sacraments and life of the Church. And teaching is an art that we need to do well. 

Charlotte's conception of the Spirit reminds me of the New Age "Universe," an impersonal energy that can be attracted (as in, the "law of attraction") and bent to one's will.

Some will say that none of this matters. That one can use CM's educational techniques, taking what one likes and leaving the rest. Homeschoolers subscribe to Charlotte's philosophy and method in varying ways and to greater and lesser degrees, so I certainly can't decree whether a Catholic can use her approach in good conscience or not. As I've written before, there can't be anything inherently heretical with using methods like copy work, narration, dictation, short lessons, and observational nature study. 

At the same time, Charlotte herself insisted that simply using some of her teaching techniques was not enough, that we must indeed understand and apply the underlying philosophy. The method flows from the philosophy. If the philosophy is marked by serious error, then we do take a risk in employing the method. 

It's ridiculous to imagine that the Holy Spirit might be repelled by, say, the use of textbooks and workbooks. This gets back to the over-emphasis on methods. What I think we need to do is to read what the Church has written on the education of youth. Remember that we are the primary educators of our children, and act accordingly. Provide them with a curriculum which presents a unified, Catholic worldview--a curriculum with faith formation at its core, which will serve in the formation of the Catholic mind. 

You might take some aspects of the CM method to accomplish your goals. I think I have done this effectively in my own homeschool, but I also think that it could be done better, and without the potential baggage that CM might bring. Future posts will concentrate upon my findings.

Charlotte Mason & the Catholic Conundrum, Part 1

O Angelic Doctor St. Thomas, prince of theologians and model of philosophers, bright ornament of the Christian world and light of the Church; O heavenly patron of all Catholic schools, who didst learn wisdom without guile and dost communicate it without envy, intercede for us with the Son of God, Wisdom itself, that the spirit of wisdom may descend upon us, and enable us to understand clearly that which thou hast taught, and fulfill it by imitating thy deeds; to become partakers of that doctrine and virtue which caused thee to shine like the sun on earth; and at last to rejoice with thee forever in their most sweet fruits in heaven, together praising the Divine Wisdom for all eternity. Amen.


Here is today's question: What would happen if I simply dropped Charlotte Mason from my homeschooling philosophy? Why am I asking this question? I think it's the fault of St. Thomas Aquinas. After reading a couple of internet articles yesterday, I started wondering what had gotten me on the St. Thomas path in the first place. I could not remember. It just seemed as though his name kept mysteriously popping up. But then I realized the obvious reason. I had been praying ardently over my homeschooling vocation. Remember when I was saying that I just want to be a Catholic homeschooler and quit obsessing over methods? Evidently the answer is Thomas Aquinas.

Finding any information on what would constitute an Aquinas-based homeschooling method, however, is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The most one will typically find is the term "traditional," usually meaning having text/workbooks for every subject, with the Catholic Faith running through everything. It seems rather dull to many people, and to Charlotte Mason homeschoolers in particular, who contrast living books with the dry dust of textbooks. But from my studies so far, Aquinas was not all about uninspiring textbooks which merely give summaries and facts, and copious fill-in-the-blank questions. He did indeed write textbooks, but as a university professor, his teaching method focused upon sincere dialogue. His scholasticism of the 13th century reconciled the reason of Aristotle with the Catholic religion--no easy feat! If he had not accomplished this miracle, the Church would have experienced an extreme crisis, a massive loss of Christian faith, so popular were Aristotle's ideas taking hold.

What I fear I've discovered is that Charlotte Mason pitted herself philosophically against the teaching authority of the Catholic Church that St. Thomas so clearly represents. For right now I'm just going to present you with the trail of my reading yesterday, the articles which led me to see the Catholic conundrum in regard to CM more clearly. First I read "The Formation of the Catholic Mind" by Dr. Ronald P. McArthur, which clearly illustrates the primacy of Aquinas in Catholic philosophy, theology, and education (https://thomasaquinas.edu/a-liberating-education/formation-catholic-mind). As Catholic homeschoolers we are most certainly concerned with the formation of the Catholic mind in our children. That must be our first priority.

Then I found Art Middlekauff's article, "Thomas Aquinas and the Great Recognition" (http://charlottemasonpoetry.org/thomas-aquinas-and-the-great-recognition/). You may remember that I had suspected some connection between Charlotte Mason and the scholasticism of St. Thomas, wondering if she had indeed been inspired by it. Middlekauff has shown that there is a connection, but his conclusion is that CM intentionally chose to distance herself from Aquinas and the Catholic Church. He refers to chapter 25 in CM's Vol. 2, Parents and Children, which addresses a certain Dominican fresco and the "great recognition" that CM says is imperative for parent-teachers. My reading of this chapter confirmed Middlekauff's conclusions. (You can find a link to all CM's volumes on Ambleside Online's introduction page.)

Now, Middlekauff has argued against the idea that CM's method is "classical," in opposition to Karen Glass' linking of CM to the classical tradition of antiquity in her book Consider This. I've written about this before and decided that it didn't matter whether or not CM is "classical," that it didn't affect how I homeschooled my child one way or another. But it seems with this Thomas Aquinas article that his concern may be that putting CM in the Classical Christian category would necessarily associate her with the Catholic scholastics of the Middle Ages.

What I suggest is that you read the two articles I mentioned and then read chapter 25 in Parents and Children, and we can come back to discuss the details in Part 2.