Anton C. Pegis And Étienne Gilson, Disputed Questions In Education The Eminence Of Teaching

Anton C. Pegis And Étienne Gilson, Disputed Questions In Education The Eminence Of Teaching

Author: Anton C Pegis - Étienne Gilson

Year: 1910

Anton C. Pegis marks the fiftieth anniversary of the National Catholic Educational Association by insisting that Catholic education must do more than restate eternal principles—it must incarnate them in American life. He warns against succumbing to secular critiques that label Catholic schooling as “antiquated,” “authoritarian,” or “anti-human.” Instead, educators should highlight how supernatural aims embrace and perfect human nature and temporal society. Pegis gathers secular voices to show contemporary naturalism: from outright denial of any realm beyond nature, to claims that moral and spiritual life can flourish without reference to the divine. He acknowledges the sincerity of these views, then turns to St. Thomas Aquinas to bridge the gap between secular aspirations—justice, truth, love—and their divine source. Drawing on Aquinas’s doctrine of the six ages of man, Pegis observes that human maturation is a long, gradual process. Man must “grow into himself” by humanizing the world—building science, art, social structures—before fully realizing his own humanity. Catholic education, therefore, engages both the world of time (preparing citizens to shape society) and the horizon o