The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— / Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
Wordsworth’s lament about consumer culture replacing the wonder-filled contemplation of the natural world could well be the lyric description of what Pope Francis called the “technocratic paradigm.” That paradigm, a term he coined in Laudato Si’, is one that defines our relationship to the natural world and to other human beings exclusively by efficiency, profit, and power. Such an inhuman understanding fosters a throwaway culture of rampant consumerism and a deep and abiding disregard for human dignity. Francis’s solution is to propose a holistic educational model that integrates our Catholic faith with the disciplines of human knowledge, immersing students in the goodness of nature and asking them to abstain from the ubiquitous screens and unreality of the digital world that surrounds them.
When Leo XIV promised continuity with Francis, I was hopeful that he would similarly emphasize his predecessor’s vision of education. In choosing to focus on the renewal of Catholic education in his first apostolic letter, Drawing New Maps of Hope, Leo is doing just that.
Leo writes that education is not a peripheral activity for the Church, but one that “forms the very fabric of evangelization: it is the concrete way in which the Gospel becomes . . . a culture,” providing a map of hope for the world:
We live in a complex, fragmented, digitized educational environment. [We must] pause and refocus our gaze on the “cosmology of Christian paideia”. . . Since its origins, the Gospel has generated “educational constellations”: experiences that are both humble and powerful, capable of interpreting the times, of preserving the unity between faith and reason, between thought and life, between knowledge and justice. . . . A beacon in the night to guide navigation.
Catholic education urges students to break free from the mundane utilitarian paradigm and to turn to the stars: “As God said to Abraham, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars’ . . . know how to ask yourselves where you are going, and why.” Two days after the release of his letter, Leo gave an address to students: “Do not remain fixated on your smartphones and their fleeting bursts of images; instead, look to the sky, to the heights.”
This last phrase explicitly echoes St. Pier Giorgio Frassati’s famous motto, Verso l’alto, through which Leo highlights the lifelong work of the recently canonized saint. He also cites John Henry Newman, the newly confirmed Doctor of the Church. By pairing the two, Leo is calling our youth out of the technocratic paradigm and drawing them to the heights of Christian witness. He writes in his letter:
Education does not measure its value only on the axis of efficiency: it measures it according to dignity, justice, the capacity to serve the common good. This integral anthropological vision must remain the cornerstone of Catholic pedagogy. Following in the wake of the thought of Saint John Henry Newman, it goes against a strictly mercantilist approach that often forces education today to be measured in terms of functionality and practical utility.
Not only must Catholic education turn its students to the stars, it must also embody the transcendent light that it communicates. Through this embodiment, the educational community becomes an instrument of the education, serving as a polestar that guides its students (and the world at large) to an authentically human vision of life and society. No one educates alone, and throughout its history, Catholic education has created constellations of partners, using its gravitational pull to join parishes, educational institutions, political and civic societies, and countless industries in the task of offering prophetic witness to the world—a witness that is not characterized by activism but by its “mere” existence as a community that forms its students into free men and women, and into servant citizens and apostolic believers.
Throughout history, the shape of these educational constellations has adjusted according to the needs and character of the time, balancing the Desert Fathers’ call to contemplation and personal renewal with the missionary call to engage with the modern culture. In the context of our own time, Leo calls Catholic education to focus on three priorities. Firstly, to educate our youth in the interior life. As he tells the assembled students: “Without silence, without listening, without prayer, even the light of the stars goes out.” Leo notes specifically that spiritual inspiration is fulfilled and strengthened by the silence of nature and by seeing God’s reflection in the beauty of creation.
Secondly, to form our youth so that they can rightly relate to technology and AI, “placing the person before the algorithm and harmonizing technical, emotional, social, spiritual and ecological intelligence.” A philosophical and theological framework must help technologies serve humans, not replace them; they must enrich the learning process, not impoverish our relationships and communities. “No algorithm can replace that which makes education truly human: poetry . . . art, imagination, and the joy of discovery. . . . The decisive point, therefore, is not technology, but the use we make of it.” In his address, Leo notes the example of St. Carlo Acutis, who disciplined his use of technology to remain free from addiction and isolation, and in so doing, was able to humanize the digital sphere.
Thirdly, Leo calls for a peaceful education—an education that provides authentic human encounter and conversation rather than inflaming conflict and open hostility. Universities must not conform to the standards of the day, neither tolerating violent demonstrations and vulgarity nor offering a country club environment for the wealthy. Instead, they must offer accessible study that revives the imagination, is imbued with a spirit of service, and that begets a loving discourse dedicated to the truth.
The world is much too much with us, and we are laying waste to it and to one another through our technocratic obsession with “getting and spending,” polarizing conflicts, radicalizing positions, and dopamine addiction. In this pivotal moment, Leo’s letter is calling us to a new kind of Catholic education, one that responds to the needs of our day—by following St. Frassati in calling students to greatness and service through the contemplation of nature, by following St. Acutis in moderating our use of tech through humane and humanizing engagement, and by following St. Newman in providing an integrated Catholic education. New constellations are forming; the renewal is growing. To the heights!
Image by Riccardo De Luca via Alamy
