EDUCATING MINDS AND HEARTS

To assist his follower’s work as educators in the faith, Moreau wrote a short book, Christian Pedagogy, which integrated religious insights (about essential traits for teachers, like patience, prudence, and firmness) with advice on practical challenges (like “self-centered young people” or “young people in weak health”). In the book and in letters he penned, he promoted education as “the art of helping young people to completeness,” with the goal of preparing “useful citizens for society” as well as “citizens for heaven.”

“We wish to accept science without prejudice, and in a manner adapted to the needs of our times,” he added. “We do not want our students to be ignorant of anything they should know. To this end, we shall avoid no sacrifice. We shall always place education side-by-side with instruction; the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.”

These instructions and values describe the Holy Cross mission that Father Edward Sorin, his confreres, and his successors brought to a school founded in 1842 and named the University of Notre Dame. It is not necessary here to retell the many ways in which the values personified and imbedded at this school through all the years of legendary people and endeavors. .

IN MOREAU’S WORDS …

“We shall always place education side by side with instruction; the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart. While we prepare useful citizens for society, we shall likewise do our utmost to prepare citizens for heaven.” -- Circular Letter 36

“Our rules certainly ensure the necessary training for the mind, but their first and foremost concern is with the formation of the heart through the development of those religious dispositions which alone can make a good person and a Christian.” -- Circular Letter 79

“Education is the art of helping young people to completeness; for the Christian, this means education is helping a young person to be more like Christ, the model of all Christians.” --Christian Pedagogy