As Befits Redeemed Creatures

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Sloth is one of the seven deadly or capital sins. Each of us suffers from sloth. Oh, I shudder to think how much time I wasted as a boy and as a young man watching television when I should have been reading about the lives of the saints. While I did my school work well enough and read all of my assignments with alacrity, I simply did not realize that I was to be about the business of independent study at all times. Unfortunately, I was a product of the novelty of television in the 1950s, believing that "free time" was spent in front of the television watching this or that program ad nauseam. Recognizing that all happens in God's Providence and that there is no recapturing the past, I do rue the fact that growing up in a fairly secularized household kept me from learning more about the lives of the saints until I was older. A good deal of sloth was engendered by the mere fact that I accepted as just "part of life" that human beings were meant to spend their times watching television. I really do shudder when I think of the time I could have spent as a boy before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer when I was venerating the "tabernacle" called the television, something that I haven't missed in the slightest since we gave it up for good in early-2003.

One steeped in the fullness of the Catholic Faith must come to deplore sloth and to use one's time profitably as befits a redeemed creature. This does not mean that one has to "work" all of the time. We are indeed entitled to legitimate leisure activities that truly benefit both body and soul. It is not slothful to use free time to pursue some noble hobby or interest as long as it does not interfere with one's interior life of prayer and the duties one is required to fulfill as part of his freely chosen state-in-life. It is slothful, however, to believe that it is impossible to attend to one's interior life of prayer and one's daily duties while at the same time pursuing excellence in our intellectual formation of Catholics. We can make all kinds of time for "chat rooms" and telephone conversations and social engagements. Well, we can make time for studying our Faith as part and parcel of our lives.

The habit of studying the Faith begins in early childhood. Parents should begin reading stories about the lives of the saints to their children when they are infants. They will come to expect such stories as natural. The minds of children are sponges, soaking up whatever we place before them. They will absorb junk if we put that before them. They will absorb the solid food of the Faith if we put it before them, reinforcing that instruction with the images of the Blessed Mother, Saint Joseph, and other saints, playing the glorious strains of Gregorian chant and other Traditional Catholic hymns over and over and over again. Children will develop a hunger for the things of the Faith. The supernatural will become the norm, not the exception, for them. Home-schooling begins, as most of you know, when our children are in the womb.

My own study of the Faith as a child was limited to the Baltimore Catechism as it was taught at Saint Aloysius School in Great Neck, New York, and as I studied at home. The Baltimore Catechism was--and remains--a very good means to learn the basics of the Faith in such a way as to be retained for the rest of one's life. It is not perfect. It has flaws. However, the rote of memorization helped me to first of all know what the Church taught as an essential foundation to understand her teaching more fully. Memorization is indeed the first tool to learning. Our understanding of what we have memorized deepens over time. However, I learned both as a student and as an educator that the first path to mastery of subject-matter comprehension was memorization, something that can take a great deal of time and effort. Our home-schooled children, therefore, can begin to memorize the stories we read to them at a very early age, preparing them for the systematic study that will begin at age four or five.

We live in a world of such sloth, though, that it fell to me during my thirty years of formal classroom teaching in various colleges and universities to explain to college students the basic elements of good study habits. With very few exceptions, especially in the last ten years of my teaching career, most of the students I taught had never been challenged to develop good study habits. Rather, they had been taught that life is a gigantic entitlement program, that there was nothing they could do which could retard their social "advancement" through the various grade levels in elementary and high schools. This is, of course, a logical consequence of what happens in a world where Christ does not reign as King through His true Church. Sloth is going to emerge triumphant when people do not live and work for the honor and glory of the Blessed Trinity, when they do not seek to work hard for the salvation of their immortal souls and to use every moment of their lives as an offering to God through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Thus it was that I had to teach my students how to learn. That is, I had to take the time in a political science course to explain to students that they were to take attend class every day, making sure to arrive on time and to have their notebooks opened before the start of class. They had to be told to listen to each lecture attentively, to take good notes, to review those notes on the day on which they were taken--and to re-write those notes in an organized manner night after night. Reviewing their lecture notes when the lecture was still fresh in their minds would jog their memories to recall other things that they had not written down but were brought to minds by the notes. You think that this is not necessary in a college course? Quite the contrary is true. Even after attempting to drill the importance of good note-taking into the minds of my charges I would have to stop lectures in mid-stream to ask students why they were not taking notes. You see, most students today have been so unused to being challenged to pursue excellence that they believe there will be zero adverse consequences for not paying attention and not knowing the material for which they are supposedly desiring to receive academic credit at the end of a semester.

Indeed, there was one student I had at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University in the Spring Semester of 2000 who rarely showed up for class. He usually came in quite late in the back of a large lecture hall in the Humanities Building, sitting in the back with a nondescript baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. I confronted him prior to the last class of the semester prior to the final examination, finding him in his seat way in the back of the lecture hall, asking him why he rarely attended class.

"I got stuff to do," the student, we will call him Eric, blurted out sullenly

"Stuff to do?" I replied rather indignantly. "The stuff you to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 9:30 a.m. and 10:50 a.m. is to be in this room for class on time, to listen to the lectures, to take good notes, to review those notes regularly, to complete the reading assignments and then to be prepared to master the subject matter under study so as to write competent essays. This is your duty in your state-in-life as a student. This is your duty before Christ the King as His redeemed creature."

I never saw him again. He didn't show up for the final examination.

This poor young man was far from alone, though. Although most students attended class now and again their reading skills were almost nonexistent. Most students in college have very limited vocabularies. College-level texts containing words that should be known by ninth or tenth grade produce the MEGO (Mine Eyes Glaze Over) effect on many students. Vain was the effort, at least in most instances, to get students to read their assignments before they were to be discussed in class, although I stressed on the very first day that one must read an assignment once for a general sense, a second time for a deeper understanding and then a third time before one starts to outline the material and take marginal notes that are then placed onto index cards (or onto computers). The goal is to integrate the reading material with the lectures so that students are able to write coherent essays to explain the material that has been covered in such a manner as to "teach" the reader of the essay the meaning of said material. Well, that's the goal. The products of Masonic public schools and Modernist Catholic schools failed to grasp how to achieve that goal in most instances, especially as the years wore on. It is no wonder that employers must spend millions of dollars to train college graduates to perform basic tasks.

Home-schooling is supposed to provide an antidote to the sloth that exists in both public schools and allegedly "Catholic" schools. And I can attest from my own experience in the past twenty years that most home-schooled students are far and away better prepared to pursue academic excellence as befits redeemed creatures because their parents have sought to inspire in them a love of the things of the mind in concert with the dictates of the Holy Faith. I knew twin brothers, now twenty-three years of age, who could speak Latin to each other when they were eleven. Other home-schooled students I met--and taught in various programs--over the years knew vast amounts of history and theology and could write essays that were far, far superior to any of those that were written by my college students. Parents are the principal educators of their children. So many Catholic parents have discharged their duties in such an exemplary way in the past two decades or so, understanding that they have the obligation to produce defenders and propagators of the Faith in the midst of the domestic cell of the Church that is the family.

Study is hard work. Good habits are hard to form and easy to break. Bad habits are easy to form and very hard to break. This is why a regimented structure is essential to the development of good study habits that will last a lifetime.

Obviously, part of a regimented structure is home-schooling is the sacramental life. Every day should begin with the Immemorial Mass of Tradition and a bit of time spent before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer after Mass. Prayers must precede each particular lesson. Time must be taken out for the family Rosary and for the Angelus, outside of Paschaltide (the Regina Caeli during Paschaltide).

Making sure to put First Things first, though, a home-schooling program must have predictability and stability as far as is humanly possible. A student's principal obligation as befits his state as a student is to work hard at his studies. Academic work never killed anyone. Look at Giuseppe Melchior Sarto and Giovanni Bosco. Both of these future saints got their start in the pursuit of sanctity by working hard at their studies while at the same time they attended to their family chores. Both were willing to make sacrifices to do this. They are, you see, the models for our own children today. They were able to perform well in school and to discharge their duties at home without doing a disservice to either.

The same is no less possible in our own homes. The graces that flow forth from the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony make it possible for parents to see to it that the highest standards of academic rigor are maintained while their children have time for their chores and to pursue legitimate leisure pursuits and/or to develop musical and other talents as their studies permit. The studies, though, must come before the leisure pursuits. A haphazard, helter-skelter schedule that leaves little time for studies while emphasizing what would be called "extra-curricular" activities in a school will have devastating effects on the ability of a child to function well in any kind of structure later in life, including the structure of religious life itself. Children who do not learn to study hard and to study in a structured environment will not, barring a miracle of grace, be able to create such a structure in their own homes if they choose to enter into Holy Matrimony themselves.

It is thus a little alarming to see something of an anti-intellectual trend in some traditional Catholic circles that eschews academically rigorous home-schooling programs as "too hard" and requiring "too much work." We are called to work hard, first at saving our souls as Catholics, second at making sure we use all of the talents that God has given us to their utmost so that we can indeed become informed defenders and propagators of the Holy Faith. A contentment with a spirit of mediocrity even permeates some schools run by traditional Catholics. Mediocrity has nothing to do with the Catholic Faith. Every young Catholic should be challenged to push himself as far as his natural intelligence, enlightened and strengthened by sanctifying and actual grace, will take him. This might mean a bit of hard work and a disciplined structure for the parents. Well, parents are called to save their souls in large measure by shaping the souls of their children. A contentment with academic mediocrity might well lead to a contentment with spiritual lukewarmness later in life.

To be sure, events intervene in our daily lives. Field trips and pilgrimages might be planned. Illnesses crop up when we least expect them, cutting into our productivity and ability to function. Feast days should be celebrated as such in the course of the school year, replete with lessons focusing on the lives of  the saint (or saints) of the day. Sure, yes, one's carefully planned daily routine may be difficult to keep now and again. The interruptions, though, should be the exception rather than the norm. We must learn to pursue excellence in all our endeavors. God really expects nothing less from us. He expects the creatures that He redeemed by the shedding of His own Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to cooperate with the graces He won for them in everything they do. Our Lord held back nothing to redeem us. We must hold back nothing to help Him redeem the world by working as hard as we can in our state-in-life to give to Him all of our efforts through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother.

Pope Pius XI wrote an entire encyclical letter to discuss the Christian Education of Youth, Divini Illius Magistri, issued on December 31,1929. He noted that Catholics must have a clear idea as to what constitutes the proper education of the youth, stressing the fact that everything about Catholic education revolves around preparing us for the moment of our Particular Judgment. Mediocrity has nothing to do with that terrible moment each of us is going to face much sooner than we would like it to occur! As Pope Pius XI noted:

The proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is, to form Christ Himself in those regenerated by Baptism, according to the emphatic expression of the Apostle: "My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you." For the true Christian must live a supernatural life in Christ: "Christ who is your life," and display it in all his actions: "That the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

For precisely this reason, Christian education takes in the whole aggregate of human life, physical and spiritual, intellectual and moral, individual, domestic and social, not with a view of reducing it in any way, but in order to elevate, regulate and perfect it, in accordance with the example and teaching of Christ.

Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the current term, the true and finished man of character. For, it is not every kind of consistency and firmness of conduct based on subjective principles that makes true character, but only constancy in following the eternal principles of justice, as is admitted even by the pagan poet when he praises as one and the same "the man who is just and firm of purpose." And on the other hand, there cannot be full justice except in giving to God what is due to God, as the true Christian does.

The scope and aim of Christian education as here described, appears to the worldly as an abstraction, or rather as something that cannot be attained without the suppression or dwarfing of the natural faculties, and without a renunciation of the activities of the present life, and hence inimical to social life and temporal prosperity, and contrary to all progress in letters, arts and sciences, and all the other elements of civilization. To a like objection raised by the ignorance and the prejudice of even cultured pagans of a former day, and repeated with greater frequency and insistence in modern times, Tertullian has replied as follows:

We are not strangers to life.We are fully aware of the gratitude we owe to God, our Lord and Creator. We reject none of the fruits of His handiwork; we only abstain from their immoderate or unlawful use. We are living in the world with you; we do not shun your forum, your markets, your baths, your shops, your factories, your stables, your places of business and traffic. We take shop with you and we serve in your armies; we are farmers and merchants with you; we interchange skilled labor and display our works in public for your service. How we can seem unprofitable to you with whom we live and of whom we are, I know not.

The true Christian does not renounce the activities of this life, he does not stunt his natural faculties; but he develops and perfects them, by coordinating them with the supernatural. He thus ennobles what is merely natural in life and secures for it new strength in the material and temporal order, no less then in the spiritual and eternal.

This fact is proved by the whole history of Christianity and its institutions, which is nothing else but the history of true civilization and progress up to the present day. It stands out conspicuously in the lives of the numerous Saints, whom the Church, and she alone, produces, in whom is perfectly realized the purpose of Christian education, and who have in every way ennobled and benefited human society. Indeed, the Saints have ever been, are, and ever will be the greatest benefactors of society, and perfect models for every class and profession, for every state and condition of life, from the simple and uncultured peasant to the master of sciences and letters, from the humble artisan to the commander of armies, from the father of a family to the ruler of peoples and nations, from simple maidens and matrons of the domestic hearth to queens and empresses. What shall we say of the immense work which has been accomplished even for the temporal well-being of men by missionaries of the Gospel, who have brought and still bring to barbarous tribes the benefits of civilization together with the light of the Faith? What of the founders of so many social and charitable institutions, of the vast numbers of saintly educators, men and women, who have perpetuated and multiplied their life work, by leaving after them prolific institutions of Christian education, in aid of families and for the inestimable advantage of nations?

Such are the fruits of Christian education. Their price and value is derived from the supernatural virtue and life in Christ which Christian education forms and develops in man. Of this life and virtue Christ our Lord and Master is the source and dispenser. By His example He is at the same time the universal model accessible to all, especially to the young in the period of His hidden life, a life of labor and obedience, adorned with all virtues, personal, domestic and social, before God and men.

Christ the King College exists to try to build on the foundations that home-schooling parents and truly Traditional Catholic schools committed to the absolutely highest standards of academic excelllence have given young Catholics. We hope and pray that our efforts, which have been limited to distance learning for the past two years, might be carried out in an actual physical environment before too long, a development about which we might have some news at some point in the next few weeks. Our small efforts at Christ the King College are aimed at helping Catholics of all ages, but especially the young, to work hard as befits redeemed creatures so that a few seeds can be planted for the restoration of Tradition in the Church and for the Social Reign of Christ the King in the world. We want all Catholics to know the perennial truths of the true Faith so that they can pass on those truths, whether in a religious vocation or to their own children, as they have been handed down to us from the Apostles themselves. We want all Catholics to understand that the most important book of learning is the Cross, at which stood Our Lady herself. How can we not embrace the cross of hard work to cooperate with grace to get ourselves home to Heaven?

There is no end to the work of study no matter how old we get. We must continue to learn as long as we are mentally and physically able to do so. Indeed, God keeps us some of us slackers alive so that we might learn a few more things before we die than we might otherwise have learned if He called us at an earlier age. Saint Thomas Aquinas, who devoted himself tirelessly to the study of the Faith, was called at forty-nine. Saint Anthony of Padua, the Hammer of Heretics, was called at thirty-six. They were ready. They had devoted lives to the Faith. Those of us who have wasted time in the past have a solemn obligation to use whatever time we have now and in the future to work hard and to study constantly so that we will be better able to help others to cooperate with sanctifying and actual grace to know, to love and to serve God as He has revealed Himself solely through the Catholic Church until our dying breaths.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Justin Martyr, pray for us.

Saint Jerome, pray for us.

Saint Ambrose, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Nicholas of Myra, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Dominic, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Albert the Great, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.

Saint Charles Borromeo, pray for us.

Saint Robert Bellarmine, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa Avila, pray for us.

Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Louis Grignon de Montfort, pray for us.

Saint John Baptist de Lasalle, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, pray for us.

Saint Katherine Drexel, pray for us.

Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, pray for us.

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.