145. The main qualification for religion teachers
145. THE MAIN QUALIFICATION FOR RELIGION TEACHERS
In many Catholic universities, the theologians seem to believe less than their students. In some parishes, the laity seem to believe more than their priest. Is this normal?
Divine revelation reaches those of lower degree through those who are over them, in a certain order: to men, for instance, through the angels, and to the lower angels through the higher. . . . In like manner, therefore, the unfolding of faith must needs reach men of lower degree through those of higher degree. Consequently, just as the higher angels, who enlighten those who are below them, have a fuller knowledge of divine things than the lower angels . . . so too men of higher degree, whose business it is to teach others, are under obligation to have fuller knowledge in matters of faith, and to believe them more explicitly (II-II,2,6).
Leave it to St. Thomas to say the obvious and commonsensical truths that only PhDs could possibly forget or deny. The first qualification for anyone whose job is to teach the faith is that they have the faith. Because the law of cause and effect says that you can’t give what you don’t have.
Between 50 and 75% of entering freshmen at large Catholic universities typically identify themselves as believing and practicing Catholics. Only 25-50% of graduating seniors do the same. Obviously, what is being taught most effectively there is unfaith rather than faith, or at least a lesser faith rather than a greater one. When I ask my “Catholic” students what they would say to God if they died tonight and God asked them why He should let them into Heaven, fewer than 5% ever even mention Jesus Christ. This is more scandalous than sex scandals.
The disappearance of these schools would be a tragedy indeed—from the viewpoint of the War Room in Hell.
This current situation is definitely not normal or natural. Yet it has existed and increased ever since the 18th century and the “Enlightenment” (although God certainly does not call it that). However, the tide may be turning in the Church, beginning with the pontificate of John Paul the Great. Catholic teachers are turning to Catholicism, of all things. Instead of editing, correcting, and diminishing the Tradition which was passed on to them from Christ and His apostles, they are increasingly believing it and teaching it.
For of course you can’t honestly teach what you don’t believe. You can’t give what you don’t have. The first qualification for religion teachers, then, is faith. If their faith is stronger than that of their students, the result will be an increase in the faith of the students, and in the understanding of that faith. If it is less, the result will be less. For effects come to resemble their causes.
Suppose one of the higher angels, whose task was to enlighten lower angels with some of the light of God, believed and understood less of God than this angel’s student. The result of this supposed “enlightening” would be a diminishing of the divine light in the mind of the student rather than its amplification. That would be a situation as absurd as me teaching Einstein math, or Josef Stalin teaching virtue to Mother Teresa.
Such an upside down situation is inherently unstable, and must inevitably fall. Darkness cannot conquer light, in the long run.