Catholic Candle note: Below is part 7 of the article concerning the best type of education – which is a Catholic Liberal Education. Do not confuse this education with many university programs called “liberal arts” but which are full of fluff, falsehood, and aimless so-called “cultural enrichment” courses and “humanities”.

A liberal education also does not refer to liberalism, nor is a true liberal education an indoctrination into that error of liberalism or political correctness. In fact, a true Catholic Liberal Education is the best antidote to the errors of liberalism.

As context for this seventh article, let us recall what we saw in the earlier six articles:

Previously, in part 1 of this article,¹ we examined the problems we see in modern education:

• Modern colleges do not improve the quality of their students’ minds (and their thinking ability) much or at all.

  
  

• Most “education” is merely job training, fluff courses, and/or leftist indoctrination.

  
  

• The students are taught to sound like someone in their field but they do more memorizing and little thinking.

  
  

• Grade “inflation” and degree “inflation” is rampant. Grades and academic degrees do not mean much anymore.

In part 2 of this article,² we examined, in general, what education is. We considered the human soul and the perfection of its highest faculty (power) – the intellect – which is immaterial. We saw that our intellects are perfected through knowing eternal, unchangeable truths and their causes.

In part 3 of this article,³ after having seen what true education is, we examined the question who should perfect his intellect.

In part 4 of this article,⁴ having seen that modern universities do not provide a true education, we consider whether there is ever any reason for men or women to attend them.

In part 5 of this article,⁵ having seen that women and girls should pursue a True Catholic Liberal Education – just as men and boys should, too – we then considered what the best environment is in which women and girls should do this.

In part 6 of this article, we addressed the objection that, having seen the great value of a True Catholic Liberal Education, we should be afraid that the great blessing of this education would be a danger to our souls because it might make us proud.⁶

Below, in part 7, we consider more fully the difference between the education which is appropriate for a free man as contrasted to the education which is appropriate for a slave.

The Blessing of a True, Catholic Liberal Education

Part 7

How is it that a true Catholic Liberal Education elevates and perfects a man? To see this better, let us contrast a liberal education – a free man’s education – with the work and the education of a slave. First, let’s start with a slave’s work.

What is a Slave’s Work?

The central idea of slavery is that a slave is someone else’s property⁷ – just like a hammer or a car is someone’s property. A man uses a hammer, a car, or any other property for his own benefit. Likewise, he uses a slave for his own benefit. He does not use any of his property for the benefit of that property, except as a means of benefitting himself. So, a man might polish his shoes to protect them or he might buy new tires for his car. But he does this so that these shoes or the car might last longer and benefit him longer. Likewise, a slave’s work is for the purpose of benefiting the master, not the slave himself.

A slave would most often benefit his master by works of the body, such as cooking meals, cleaning the gutters of a house, repairing a faucet, digging a hole, weeding a garden, etc. It is certainly possible for a slave to enjoy such activities but that is not the point. That does not change the fact that those jobs are servile, i.e., they are jobs proper to a slave. Instead, the fundamental characteristic of a slave’s work is that it is for the benefit of his master rather than to benefit himself.

The slave does receive something in return – food, clothing, shelter, etc. – otherwise he would die. But his work is for the benefit of others, not himself. Thus, in our society, a man generally works a job which is slavish, in exchange for the money he needs to provide for his family.

A man could enjoy his work, e.g., composing sonatas for sale. But for most men, their work is slavish regardless of whether they enjoy the work. This is true regardless of whether the work he does is “professional” or not. So, the work of an engineer, an architect, a software engineer, and a lawyer are servile, as are the work of a truck driver, a plumber, a house painter, and a grocery store clerk.

The fact that a man’s job is servile does not make it sinful or something to despise. A man’s work – which is slavish in itself – can (and should) be elevated by the high purpose of this work, which is to do his duty before God (which is hopefully his motive) and to provide for the material needs of his family, whom he loves.

But not all physical work is slavish. For example, it is not slavish for a man to hike up a mountain for the fresh air and exercise. It is not slavish for him to go jogging and to do pushups to promote his own health. It is not slavish for a person to practice a musical instrument to perfect his talent and his mastery of the art of music.

Whereas most (but not all) physical labor is servile work, similarly most (but not all) intellectual work is not slavish, e.g., reading a novel, learning the catechism, writing a letter to a friend or composing a treatise on astronomy, sketching a sunset, and studying geometry are not servile. This is why those activities are not forbidden on days when servile work is forbidden. They are not the work of a slave but are undertaken to perfect the non-slave (the free man) engaging in the activity.

But some intellectual activities are servile. The practice of the professions, e.g., medicine, law, accounting, pharmacology, and architecture, are slavish pursuits even though they are primarily intellectual. Likewise, it is slavish to balance one’s checkbook or to prepare one’s income tax return. One sign that medicine and pharmacology are slavish pursuits is the fact that, in ancient times, rich Roman families would buy slaves who were physicians and pharmacists in order to provide for those families’ health. Likewise, a lawyer does not practice law principally for enjoyment or self-improvement but rather to benefit his client (who is his “master” for that task).

What is a Slave’s Education?

A slave’s education is that which trains him to be capable of performing slavish work well and to benefit his master more. So, the purpose of a slave’s education is to enable him to perform any of those jobs of a slave. A slave might be taught to practice medicine, to bind books, to give haircuts, to make sausage, to paint a house, or anything else that the master wants to accomplish.

Next, Let Us Consider the Reality that All of Us Are on Earth to Work.

Above, we have been considering how a true Catholic Liberal Education elevates and perfects a man. To see this better, we first looked at the work and the education of a slave so we can better understand a liberal education in contrast to this.

Now let us consider that fundamental truth that God puts everyone on earth to work. Then, after that, let us consider what work and education are appropriate for a free man.

God Put Man on Earth to Work.

God made us and He owns us. We see the way that the simplest catechism explains why we are on earth. The first Baltimore Catechism (used for the youngest children) teaches us:

Q. Why did God make you?

A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches this same truth in his Principle and Foundation:

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. All other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him fulfill the end for which he is created. From this it follows that man is to use these things to the extent that they will help him to attain his end. Likewise, he must rid himself of them insofar as they prevent him from attaining it.

Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, insofar as it is left to the choice of our free will and is not forbidden. Acting accordingly, for our part, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short one, and so in all things we should desire and choose only those things which will best help us attain the end for which we are created.

So, anything we do which is not serving God is not part of the reason why we are on earth, but is idleness, and is a wasted part of our life. Our Lord warned us “that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment.” St. Matthew’s Gospel, 12:36.

Thus, even in our tenderest years, even in our oldest age, even when sick or an invalid, God owns us and we must work for Him every day, every moment, to the best of our ability given our condition of life.

Does this mean that we must never sleep or eat? No. God made us the type of creatures who need these things in order to maintain our strength and health so that we can serve Him. Thus, it is part of serving God when we take a reasonable rest and meals.

Does it mean that we can never do anything “fun” or social? No. God made us social creatures and made us to need a reasonable amount of recreation, so that, being refreshed, we can more vigorously serve Him. Thus, we are serving God when we take this reasonable recreation because we are acting according to the way that He created us to act.

But God’s ownership of us does mean that food, sleep, recreation, and everything else must be ordered to, and be a part of, knowing, loving, and serving Him. Any other life would be an unhappy failure and would anger God.

So we see that God wants us to engage in reasonable and wholesome recreation when it is time for that activity. Although, a life devoted to entertainment and “fun” is an evil life, by contrast, a life devoted to serving God – but which includes reasonable recreation – is a happy life well-spent.

So, we see that at all times of our life, we must work for God. We must serve Him. But what work should we do? Well, we should do the duties that God placed in our state in life. So, a man must be the selfless head of his family and work to support the wife and children that God gave to him. This work (in order to earn money) is usually slavish. That is, this work involves a man agreeing to serve an employer “like a slave” (in a way) doing his employer’s work, in exchange for the money needed to support his family. Four, of countless examples of such work, are being a truck driver, a mechanic, a lawyer, and an engineer. Of course, the father’s work, although slavish in itself, is good and pleases God because of its end (goal), i.e., it is ordered to him being the breadwinner for his family as a means of serving God.

Likewise, God intended a woman to have many homemaker duties, e.g., washing the dishes, vacuuming the house, etc. That homemaker work is good and pleases God because it is ordered to her being the heart and maker of the family home as a haven of beauty and goodness. She and her husband are (or should be) happy even in their slavish work, because they are doing this work out of love for God and for the good of the family they love.

But when this man and woman are no longer required to devote as much of their time to performing such slavish, practical work because their children are adults and pursuing their own vocations, or because they have saved enough money to provide for their own material needs, they must still work. God gives us additional years of life because he wants us to do additional work for Him, not merely so that we can live for our own amusement.

However, when the practical needs are taken care of, people can devote themselves to serving God by performing different work which is not slavish, which is better in itself and not merely good because of its end (viz., supplying the material needs of their family).

What kind of work is that? It is work that perfects the worker himself, e.g., prayer, works of charity, acts of virtue, and perfecting his mind.

Although of course, all persons must pray throughout their lives, people with more leisure can (and should) give themselves more fully to a life of prayer. This is work but is not slavish, i.e., suitable to assign to a slave to relieve the master of the duty involved. Notice, that if, hypothetically, a man had a slave, there are many things that the man would tell his slave to do to benefit that man himself (i.e., the master). That master could, for example, tell his slave to do all of the grocery shopping or cut all of the firewood needed to keep the house warm. In this way, the master might never have to go shopping or cut firewood and his time would thus be freed up for other work. But, by contrast, it would be wrong and ridiculous for the master to tell his slave to pray in the master’s place so that the master did not need to pray. This is a sign that prayer is worthwhile in itself and is a free man’s activity; the master himself must pray in order to receive the benefit of prayer.

Similarly, the master could possibly cause the slave to learn shoemaking or pharmacology so that the master and his family could get the benefit of those activities without needing to learn them or engage in those activities themselves. But there are other fields of knowledge, the study of which is high, valuable, and perfects the knower of that knowledge, e.g., the Catholic Faith and the high matters of philosophy. It would be wrong and ridiculous for a master to direct his slave to study the Catholic Faith or other high truth, so that the master himself would be “free” to be an ignorant Catholic or a stupid man.

Now Let Us Consider the Free Man

Seeing what a slave’s work and education are and seeing that everyone is on earth to work, let us now consider what a free man’s work is and then what a free man’s education is.

What is a Free Man’s Work?

Above, we saw that the central idea of a slave’s work is that this work is ordered to benefiting the master (i.e., someone else and not the worker himself). By contrast, the work of a free man is work which makes the man himself better. A man is truly free when he lives a disciplined life devoted to learning high truth, e.g., about God. As Our Lord teaches us, “the Truth will make you free”. St. John’s Gospel, 8:32. So we are made free by the Truth.

• A free man’s work is not the pursuit of the pleasures of the world. Freedom is not merely licentiousness. When someone devotes himself to a life of pleasure or wild parties, we don’t call him free but rather dissolute and bestial. In fact, the licentious man is really a slave to his passions and emotions, which bully his reason and his will and obstruct him from enjoying the freedom of abiding in the truth.

  
  

• A free man’s work is not to devote himself to material goods. Freedom is not merely devoting oneself to becoming a business mogul or what the world would call financial “success”. Beyond earning money to provide for necessary and modest⁸ material needs, it is perverse to devote one’s life to building a “corporate empire” or even to making his small business (e.g., a doughnut shop) a great success. After all, “what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?” St. Mark’s Gospel, 8:36.

  
  

• A free man’s work is not to achieve the goals of the world. Freedom is not “chasing some dream” such as setting a world record in some sport or event. Freedom is not seeking worldly triumphs or exploits admired by the world.

Instead, a free man’s work is to serve God in the best way he can and to use the talents that God gave him – especially his highest talents – in the best way he can for the glory of God. A man should perfect his soul. This means that a man should especially:

• Perfect his mind with intellectual virtue about the highest truths; and

  
  

• Perfect his will with the moral virtues.

What is a Free Man’s Education?

As we saw, a slave’s education is training which enables him to perform slavish work well and to benefit his master more. So, the purpose of a slave’s education is to enable him to perform any of those jobs which are slavish.

By contrast, a free man’s education is to develop his mind related to work which is a free man’s work and is not slavish. (In this discussion, let us keep in mind that everyone, including a free man, is on earth to work.) A Catholic Liberal Education is most of all a free man’s education. Its aim is to develop the mind of the student, to cause him to possess the highest truths which are the greatest perfection of our mind, and to make his mind apt to be further perfected.

Let us look a little deeper into the nature of a true education – viz., a free man’s education. To do this, let us look a little more fully at Our Lord’s words quoted above. Notice that Our Lord uses “free” in this same sense in which it is used when referring to a liberal education. Here are His words in the Gospel:

Jesus said to those Jews, who believed him: If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

St. John’s Gospel, 8:31-32.

This is freedom in a spiritual sense of the word. This important freedom is the absence of interior enslavement through ignorance. This is the freedom to direct one’s self wisely on the clear, good path instead of the path of confusion and the darkness of ignorance.

This meaning of freedom is far more important than the meaning of freedom which is to avoid subjugation through enslavement by another man.

When a person is enslaved by another man, his principle of directing his actions is not within himself but is outside himself (in his master). Similarly, when a person is enslaved by ignorance he does not have within himself the principle of directing his actions because he does not know clearly what he should do.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Doctor of the Catholic Church, explains how ignorance removes from a man his power of directing himself to his proper end. St. Thomas starts with a prophesy of Isaiah, as quoted in St. Matthew’s Gospel:

The people that sat in darkness, hath seen great light: and to them that sat in the region of the shadow of death, light is sprung up.

St. Matthew’s Gospel, 4:16.

St. Thomas then quotes and adopts St. John Chrysostom’s explanation as follows:

But that you may learn that he [viz., Isaiah] speaks not of natural day and night, he calls the light, “a great light”, which is in other places called “the true light”; and he adds, “the shadow of death”, to explain what he means by darkness. The words “arose”, and “shined”, show, that they found it not of their own seeking, but God Himself appeared to them, they did not first run to the light; for men were in the greatest miseries before Christ’s coming; they did not walk but sat in darkness; which was a sign that they did not hope for deliverance; for as not knowing what way they should go, shut in by darkness they sat down, having now no power to stand. By darkness he means here, error and ungodliness.⁹

This is like a man who is lost in the wilderness, who does not know which way to travel to safety. If in each direction he could choose, it would be equally likely to make his rescue harder and more unlikely, he would sit down and wait, not go in any direction to try to find the way out of the wilderness. Similarly, the Doctors of the Church explain that, as fallen man was spiritually lost and hopeless, he “sits down”. In other words, when a person is in the darkness of ignorance and does not know the truth, it removes his “power to stand” since there is “no good way” for him to choose to go.

But when Our Lord taught the Jews that the truth would make them free, notice their carnal understanding of freedom in their reply:

They answered him: We are the seed of Abraham, and we have never been slaves to any man: how sayest thou: you shall be free?

St. John’s Gospel, 8:31-34.

For the present discussion, we leave aside the lie that the Jews told here, viz., that they had never been enslaved, e.g., by the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and others.

But notice that the Jews make a reply which shows they focus on freedom in the carnal sense, not in the sense of being free through the possession of the truth and through not being a slave through error.

So, we see that a Catholic Liberal Education is the freedom of mind that makes us free in the way that Our Lord makes us free. This is fitting because the truth is liberating and Our Lord is the Truth Who came to free us from ignorance and interior slavery.

Finally, note that the freedom a person achieves through this Catholic Liberal Education is ordered to being a disciple of Our Lord.

Recap of the Article

God put us on this earth to work. We perform practical, slavish work when this work is our duty and is necessary. This work is not a disgrace and should not be despised because this work is ennobled by it being performed in the service of Christ the King.

But when our practical needs are taken care of, we must still work. But that work should be serving God by performing different work which is not slavish, which is better in itself and not merely good because of its end (viz., supplying the material needs of one’s family).

We should engage in higher work that is not slavish, e.g., prayer, works of charity, and perfecting our minds. We should pursue the Truth, which makes us free. We should serve God in the best way we can and to use the talents that God gave us – especially our highest talents – in the best way we can for the glory of God. We should perfect our souls. This means that we should especially:

• Perfect our minds with intellectual virtue about the highest truths; and

  
  

• Perfect our wills with the moral virtues.

Perfecting our highest faculties is the purpose of a Catholic Liberal Education. This education makes us free in a spiritual sense. This is why Our Lord came to earth: to make us free. This is the freedom to wisely direct one’s self on the clear, good path instead of the path of confusion and the darkness of ignorance.