CAMPUS

More on Wisdom vs. Knowledge

In the book, Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition (edited by Father Matthew Lamb and Matthew Levering, 2008 Oxford University Press), there is an essay on the Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis, by Don J. Briel, who is the founder of the Catholic Studies department at the University of St. Thomas, MN. Twice he speaks about John Henry Cardinal Newman’s view of the university. Both support my statements about wisdom vs. knowledge.

“In its 1982 statement on the role of lay faculty in Catholic schools the congregation reiterated Newman’s distinction between professional instruction in which one transmits a body of knowledge and education which aims to form the human person as a whole” (392).

“[In Gravissimum Educationis], There was a clear recognition, as Newman had pointed out a century earlier, that great ideas are grown into and not learned by heart…” (395)