By Dr Andrew Kania
I am going to reveal my age now. As a toddler, I can remember sitting in front of a black and white television set and watching my favourite singer, Johnny Cash, who at that time had his own weekly television show.
I could not understand the lyrics of most of his songs, but his deep voice, and the catchy music captured me.
One of the songs that I particularly enjoyed was, “A Boy Named Sue”.
It was only when I grew older that I began to understand the meaning behind this song.
For those who don’t know, the song tells the story of a boy and his mother who have been abandoned by a man who can’t handle the responsibilities of being a husband and a father.
But before he leaves his family, the rake’s parting gesture, is to register his son with the name ‘Sue’.
“Sue’ sings the song and narrates his life story.
His ambition in life is to ‘hunt down the man who gave him that awful name’; awful that is for a man to bear.
Eventually he finds his father in a bar; a fight breaks out, ‘Sue’ pours years of pent up frustration into every punch, and his father gives back as good as he is receiving from his long, and deliberately lost son.
Exhausted, both men sit in the mud outside the bar.
The father turns to ‘Sue’ and tells him: “Son, this world is rough, And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough, And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along. So I give ya that name and I said goodbye, I knew you’d have to get tough or die, And it’s the name that helped to make you strong. He said: Now you just fought one hell of a fight, And I know you hate me, and you got the right, To kill me now, and I wouldn’t blame you if you do. But ya ought to thank me, before I die, For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye, Cause I’m the [Expletive Deleted] that named you ‘Sue’”.
When I began my theological studies over two decades ago, I can recall reading a passage from the Eastern Father of the Church, St Basil the Great, who long before the age of our modern, expansive, Catholic Education system, once wrote, that to him the proposition of developing Catholic parochial schools could potentially be one means by which the child could lose their Faith.
This may sound nonsensical, for how could schools that teach the Faith be a vehicle by which the Faith is actually lost? How could a Catholic Bishop of the Church, and founder of monasticism, negate something that seems so self-evident to us moderns as to the promulgation of the Catholic Faith?
St Basil the Great’s reasoning was as wise as it was realistic.
If my memory holds true, he mused that if a child is placed in an environment that either challenges or is hostile to their faith – the child will have to either defend their faith and thus become much stronger in it; or run from that school.
When a child is in an environment where there is no such challenge to their Faith – they could, St Basil rationalised, become complacent, and quickly lose It.
Critically, St Basil the Great was not speaking out of mere supposition and theory; he and his childhood friend, St Gregory of Nazianzen, had attended as young men, the University of Athens, and the treatment that both had received at this esteemed place of learning, is now legendary.
Derided, spat upon, heckled and continually criticised, both Basil and Gregory lasted a decade at the University, only eventually to find that the staff and students of the University begged them to stay longer; for in the interim they had converted so many to Christianity, by their witness.
Those who had been hostile to the Faith, had in the end come to understand that there must be something real in Christianity, for both Basil and Gregory to be so ardent and determined.
St Basil later explained that his faith had become so strong, because it had been sharpened against the vitriolic barbs and teachings of paganism.
His Catholic and personal identity were shaped by self-preservation; he fought for the Faith with the same energy as he had fought for his personal integrity.
Faith and character had eventually become intermeshed in St Basil.
Intellectual challenges to the Faith, provide the student with the necessary tools, by which to form responses, and by which to grow.
Thus in his text, Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature, St Basil teaches that the pagan works of old, provide in large part for the foundation of sound thinking skills.
St Basil’s tract was written at a time when many in the Church were criticising pagan writings, because they were written by people who did not know the Christian God.
But St Basil’s approach to the world of Ancient Greek Literature was profoundly nuanced.
A good Christian thinker should not feel threatened, but must sift through all that he or she reads and hears in order to find wisdom.
St Basil writes: “For just as bees know how to extract honey from flowers, which to men are agreeable only for their fragrance and color, even so here also those who look for something more than pleasure and enjoyment in such writers may derive profit for their souls.”
The key to this pursuit of wisdom, is not only the reading of ancient secular sources – but the putting on of spectacles that perceives all in the light of a higher Reality.
The Christian thirsts for knowledge in order to know the wisdom of God more – and God’s wisdom is found even in non-Christian sources; for God has created all minds.
So one should not be surprised at the beauty found in secular sources.
St Basil continues: “Since we must needs attain to the life to come through virtue, our attention is to be chiefly fastened upon those many passages from the poets, from the historians, and especially from the philosophers, in which virtue itself is praised.”
Thus St Basil, true to his experiences at the University of Athens, asks the student to discriminate from all that is before them – to cut their teeth on, but not to fall prey by eating and swallowing everything they see, and sense.
He writes: “For it would be shameful should we reject injurious foods, yet should take no thought about the studies which nourish our souls, but as a torrent should sweep along all that came near our path and appropriate it.”
This is a vital skill, for children of the Faith – the profound ability to discriminate.
One can easily be corrupted by the world, and worldly things; and that is exactly why, St Basil says that one of the highest skills that a Christian child must obtain, is the ability to discern.
Without discernment we can easily be loSt Discernment can only come by exposure to challenges.
If the individual hides in Plato’s cave then one day they may well be blinded, when a broader reality is presented to them; alternately, if one is guided to see the secular world in the light of Christ, then this process of the mind being sharpened as the knife at the whetstone, will lead the individual to a more profound intellect and a richer, deeper, Christian Faith. St Basil concludes: “To be sure, we shall become more intimately acquainted with these precepts in the sacred writings, but it incumbent upon us, for the present, to trace, as it were, the silhouette of virtue in the pagan authors. For those who carefully gather the useful from each book are wont, like mighty rivers, to gain accessions on every hand. For the precept of the poet which bids us add little to little must be taken as applying not so much to the accumulation of riches, as [to] the various branches of learning.”
Thus St Basil is not against parochial education per se, but rather he speaks as to the Christian being immersed and engaged in the world, but not of it.
He wants the Christian of the future to be challenged, so as to understand their role and purpose in the world.
One can fathom his concern that a parochial education may in fact narrow the intellect, if the student is not made aware of the riches found in broader scholarship.
For this reason St Basil purported the notion that before the individual is educated in Scripture they must first be exposed to the secular; for secular knowledge is a stepping stone to an even higher Truth that is Revealed to the world by God, for humanity’s salvation.
Thus to St Basil the Great – all that is not sinful, has a marque of the Sacred, and all our studies must eventually lead to this goal.