Is it a job, or is it discipleship?

A number of MOJ postings over the last few days regarding education and Catholic identity; politics and Catholics in public life; and the core of personal identity have helped me adjust my thinking cap. What brings this post to fruition was an experience I had in class today in my course entitled “Christian Ethics and the International Order.” Of late, my students have been examining Pacem in Terris and Paul VI’s October, 1965 address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in the context of the objectives of that organization as viewed through the lens of Catholicism. The reference to the Cuban missile crisis made by John XXIII in Pacem in Terris intrigued the students. I realized that none of them were alive when the showdown between the US and the USSR occurred and this became quite evident as the discussion continued. I not only had to deal with the difficulties of expressing myself in a foreign language, but I also had to address an experience through which I had lived to a group of young, well-educated people who had little or no experience of the Cold War. I realized that part of my task was to pass on to them the difficulties of the time and how John XXIII and Paul VI chose to tackle them.

I also realized that this is the task of any educator who wishes to remain true to the vocation of education: to pass on wisdom amassed through human history to a succeeding generation whose members would one day have the responsibility of doing the same to their succeeding generation. In the context of Catholic and Christian education, this task grows in that the amassed wisdom includes that of a particular community of faith, the Church. Cardinal Dulles explained this exceedingly well in a presentation he gave at Boston College during the past academic year [HERE]. I realized today that I was not only trying to teach something about Christian ethics and its application to the international law and the international order, I was also participating in passing on something about the faith to a diverse group of young Catholics who one day will do the same across the world.

But I realized that my task was not restricted to this responsibility alone. I was also helping to form future members of a wide and diversified group of political communities. All of these young people are Catholics, but they come from different countries. At least five of my students in this particular course are Americans. But I began to comprehend that I was preparing them and others to be not only disciples of Christ but Catholic citizens who would one day return to the US, Russia, Colombia, Mexico, Vietnam, France, Thailand, Spain, Brazil, Madagascar, Croatia, and Korea and presumably participate in the public life of their respective countries. I became more conscious of what I am passing on to them as I realized that I was not only helping to form Christian consciences but Christian consciences that would exercise a multitude of roles in some democratic and some not-so-democratic societies. Then, I came to the third part of my realization: how do they see themselves. Are they Catholics; are they citizens of particular countries; are they something else? From my perspective, I see them as the very People of God who, according to the Church and its magisterium, have a vocation to be the leaven in the world. Theirs will be the responsibility of making the Peace of Christ, the Kingdom of God more of the rule rather than the exception—for they are and will always be simultaneously citizens of two cities.

And then, I encountered my fourth insight of the day: one does not have to be teaching in Rome to acknowledge these responsibilities. One could just as easily labor most of the time in South Bend, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, New York and environs, suburban Philadelphia, Valparaiso, Ithaca, Los Angeles, Norman, or Atlanta and also share in this vocation. And, the more we acknowledge and implement these obligations of our profession and our faith, the more shall His will rather than mine or yours be done. RJA sj