In today’s episode I want to talk about the difference between a Christocentric school and an anthropocentric school. They are radically different places and can create radically different outcomes. The call on our lives is to keep Jesus as the absolute centre of our schools. It’s a heroic and holy task and deeply needed at this moment in history.
Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome aboard as always to the Catholic teacher daily podcast.
Speaker:Well, if you listened in yesterday, we went deep.
Speaker:We went deep into continental philosophy.
Speaker:We talked about Emmanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, all in under 10 minutes.
Speaker:So if you miss that day, you might want to check yesterday's cause
Speaker:it was, uh, it was deep and, uh, I think that's okay because we have,
Speaker:you know, beautiful Catholic faith.
Speaker:We have treasures new and old.
Speaker:We have the constant indwelling daily presence of the holy spirit,
Speaker:renewing creation, renewing us, giving us new insights and creativity.
Speaker:But of course we have this incredible deposit of the faith.
Speaker:The thousands of years of holy men and women who brought us so much.
Speaker:So one of the most beautiful things for me about being Catholic is belonging to
Speaker:something so vastly greater than myself.
Speaker:And being able to defer to that, you know, there's this, uh, w the priest
Speaker:that really played a big part in my.
Speaker:I guess returned to faith.
Speaker:Many years ago, I had this beautiful line about to the
Speaker:magisterium, to being dosed style.
Speaker:To the magisterium, but always stayed with me that line.
Speaker:And it's carried me for many years, this deep trust in the
Speaker:teaching authority of the faith.
Speaker:It's not a surrender of our own intellect.
Speaker:It's not a surrender of our reason.
Speaker:For me, it's a, it's a dependence.
Speaker:It's a trust in the brilliant men and women who wrestled with
Speaker:the great questions of existence and faith long before me.
Speaker:So that's quite an introduction today.
Speaker:I'd love to talk to you briefly about, uh, another relatively.
Speaker:I guess a serious sounding word.
Speaker:It's the, uh, it's the term anthropocentrism anthropocentrism.
Speaker:I want to talk to you about that because I think it's rampant in many, many of,
Speaker:uh, churches and dioceses and schools.
Speaker:And I think it's something we really need to identify enter percent.
Speaker:N anthropocentrism.
Speaker:Comes of course from the Greek term and for POS, which is roughly
Speaker:translated as man, the human person.
Speaker:Enterprise is really interesting.
Speaker:It translates most directly as the star gazer.
Speaker:So when you hear the word and for apology, and we, we sort of
Speaker:think of that as the study of.
Speaker:Humanity or the human person.
Speaker:Anthropos really means the one who gazes at the stars.
Speaker:I always liked that.
Speaker:Cause all the other animals look at the ground or they look at what's
Speaker:around the more, you know, they look up wherever the threats are.
Speaker:But the human person was the first created being to begin to look up.
Speaker:And saw the stars and began to ponder.
Speaker:About what it could all mean.
Speaker:Which of course led.
Speaker:To this great revelation of the, of the person of God, and then
Speaker:eventually his son, Jesus Christ.
Speaker:So we are the stargazers.
Speaker:We are the ones who looked up.
Speaker:So that's a good thing.
Speaker:Like it's quite a beautiful term.
Speaker:I think anthroposophy the stargazer.
Speaker:But the problem we face now is something called anthropocentrism.
Speaker:Which is really placing the human person, placing ourselves
Speaker:at the center of reality.
Speaker:You can see how that word comes together.
Speaker:Anthropocentrism.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Anthropocentrism is kind of a huge problem in theology and in faith and in.
Speaker:You know, and I should have.
Speaker:Shared journey of spiritual practice in our Catholic faith, because.
Speaker:There's a strong case to be made that over a significant period of time.
Speaker:We have slowly begun to place ourselves at the center of the faith.
Speaker:Instead of a Christocentric faith, what we tend to have as an anthropocentric faith.
Speaker:And this has enormous, enormous implications.
Speaker:Of course, I think since original sin, it's always been a problem.
Speaker:You look at the original sin.
Speaker:Of Lucifer was pride seeking to place himself in the place of God.
Speaker:And that original sin of course flows right through
Speaker:the middle of the human heart.
Speaker:All of us at some level.
Speaker:I'm going to wrestle with that.
Speaker:It's very subtle for, you know, for most of us, it's very subtle.
Speaker:But one of the places that it shows up, and I think it's done a huge
Speaker:amount of damage is in the liturgy.
Speaker:And I want to share with you today.
Speaker:Quote from.
Speaker:Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
Speaker:Some of you will be familiar with that name.
Speaker:He's a, he's somebody who's done a huge amount of work on the liturgy.
Speaker:And, um, I guess in some ways, following Pope Benedict 16, he's got
Speaker:a strong thesis that how we worship.
Speaker:Really shapes how we experience God.
Speaker:How we understand ourselves, how we understand the mission of the church.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:His thesis is that the liturgy itself become more and more
Speaker:anthropocentric, especially since the second Vatican council.
Speaker:That often we have placed ourselves and our own subjective experiences at
Speaker:the center of the liturgy, which he would argue has done enormous damage.
Speaker:To believe as into the church itself.
Speaker:One of the ways I like to explain it to teachers in the education spaces.
Speaker:I spent a fair bit of time as a, as a youth minister many, many years ago.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:I was right from the get go.
Speaker:I was sensitized to the problem of trying to be entertaining to young people.
Speaker:So much youth ministry seem to be around.
Speaker:You know, being as entertaining or more entertaining than the culture around it.
Speaker:And I realized really quickly, we could never do that.
Speaker:I mean, you can only have so many movie nights and pizza nights when
Speaker:you were competing against, you know, incredible computer graphics and
Speaker:destructive technologies and, and a, you know, a massive media and music
Speaker:industries that surrounded young people.
Speaker:So right from the get go, I realized that if we were going to place entertainment
Speaker:and subjective, emotional experiences, right at the heart of how we reached
Speaker:out to young people, I sensed that that was going to create some problems.
Speaker:Now let's not be silly here.
Speaker:Of course we have subjective experiences.
Speaker:I mean, if we didn't, why bother with the Sistine chapel, right?
Speaker:While by the creating phenomenal music, we are sensory beings.
Speaker:We do desk Def definitely and desperately need to be surrounded by beauty.
Speaker:And I think the church understood that for a very, very long time.
Speaker:That being surrounded with beautiful things, did help the person lift their
Speaker:heart, their mind, their spirit to God.
Speaker:But again, we're talking about something different here.
Speaker:We're talking about.
Speaker:Rather than creating a reality where the environment lifts us towards God.
Speaker:We may have created a aspect of our current church experience and education
Speaker:experience, where we really have placed.
Speaker:The individual at the center of the cosmological spiritual reality.
Speaker:Let me give you this quote from Archbishop Schneider, he was asked a question.
Speaker:He said the deepest reason.
Speaker:In my opinion for the current liturgical crisis is anthropocentrism since
Speaker:secularism started with anthropocentrism, which for its part is subjectivism.
Speaker:In the religious sphere.
Speaker:Man declared himself the center, and this is subjectivism.
Speaker:A lot of isms there.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But you can see the basic idea.
Speaker:It's a movement away from God at the center.
Speaker:To us at the center and it's very subtle and it can just slowly creep in.
Speaker:So friends I'm calling for something radical.
Speaker:I think that the great Catholic schools.
Speaker:The great Catholic parishes, the great Catholic diocese.
Speaker:Are going to be the places that radically continually fight for Christo centrism.
Speaker:That in every possible way.
Speaker:We placed Christ at the center, the center of our classrooms, the
Speaker:center of every principal listening.
Speaker:You have to be under Christ.
Speaker:You cannot lead.
Speaker:You cannot lead your teachers.
Speaker:If you are not under Christ.
Speaker:If you do not get up every day on your knees, praying for Christ
Speaker:to guide you and lead you and the Christ will be the center of your
Speaker:school, the center of conversations.
Speaker:The center of the physical environment, the center of the liturgical and musical
Speaker:environment that exists in your school.
Speaker:We don't get this perfect.
Speaker:We've were.
Speaker:We were fallible, broken people.
Speaker:But I think God really honors the basic movement of our heart.
Speaker:You know, if you go into your classroom and you just say, Jesus, I want you to
Speaker:be at the center of this classroom today.
Speaker:I want you to be in, in my words, I want you to be in how I plan.
Speaker:I want you to be in how I deal with difficult moments.
Speaker:You start your class with prayer.
Speaker:That's Christo centrism.
Speaker:We're so much of what's, you know, yesterday I looked
Speaker:at a teacher's magazine.
Speaker:From another part of the world for, from a Catholic diocese, I was curious.
Speaker:Because we're looking at maybe doing something like that, creating a, a really
Speaker:beautiful magazine for Catholic teachers.
Speaker:And for this particular I looked at, I was stunned.
Speaker:It was literally like glossy and beautiful, and it was like 40 pages.
Speaker:And I can promise you, there was not a single mention of
Speaker:God, of Jesus, of prayer, of faith, of spirituality, nothing.
Speaker:There was politics.
Speaker:There was, there was more politics.
Speaker:There was some politics and it was relentless.
Speaker:It was just this.
Speaker:I, it was like reading something out of the communist manifesto.
Speaker:I was like, uh, can, can, is there a chance that Jesus
Speaker:might get a mention here?
Speaker:So friends.
Speaker:It's it's everywhere.
Speaker:It's happening.
Speaker:Anthropocentrism it can happen in our families and our marriages.
Speaker:You know, I've just come into the studio from morning prayer, you know, every
Speaker:single day I'm praying the rosary for my kids for, for Karen, for our marriage.
Speaker:We've married 21 years and I just keep bringing that marriage.
Speaker:I keep going.
Speaker:Look.
Speaker:I'm a fallen, broken person, you know, and I want Christ to be
Speaker:at the center of my marriage.
Speaker:I want Christ to be at the center of my parenting.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I'm going to get it wrong.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I'm going to make mistakes, but I'm going to keep gravitating back to that reality.
Speaker:That's my.
Speaker:That's my bedrock.
Speaker:That's my north star.
Speaker:So all I can say to anybody still listening is that's
Speaker:what we have to rebuild.
Speaker:We have to rebuild Catholic schools that are Christocentric.
Speaker:And the only way that happens is if each individual teacher in
Speaker:that school seeks to become more Christocentric and the principal
Speaker:seeks to become more Christocentric.
Speaker:And they create events where parents can come to things and be exposed to something
Speaker:more Christocentric and partner with the school in something more Christocentric.
Speaker:So friends.
Speaker:We are not going to save the world necessarily.
Speaker:We're not going to change everything.
Speaker:We're not going to fix every single place, but what we can do.
Speaker:Is bring Christ into the exact place.
Speaker:Where we are.
Speaker:For me.
Speaker:That means right now this studio being in this studio right now is
Speaker:trying to preach Christ to anyone.
Speaker:Who'll listen.
Speaker:That's why that's.
Speaker:That's the Cristo centrist, Cristo centricity of what
Speaker:I'm trying to do right now.
Speaker:Now, wherever you're listening to this, you're going to go into a classroom
Speaker:sometime in the next probably 24 hours.
Speaker:And you've just got to bring Christ.
Speaker:How do you do it?
Speaker:Where you have to pray.
Speaker:You have to read the scriptures each morning.
Speaker:You have to have him at the center of your life.
Speaker:So then you can bring him.
Speaker:You know, like Mary bringing forth Jesus to the world.
Speaker:We have to be like her and bring Christ into the world.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I got to stop.
Speaker:Always trying to keep these short and getting excited.
Speaker:God bless your friends.
Speaker:God bless you.
Speaker:Thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker:Stay close to Jesus.
Speaker:Stay close to his mother.
Speaker:Stay close to the heart of the faith and share that beautiful faith with
Speaker:young people i hope you'll subscribe i hope you'll share this message with
Speaker:others my name's jonathan doyle this has been the catholic teacher daily
Speaker:podcast god bless your friends i'll have another message for you tomorrow
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