12 February 1989
Bathurst, Australia

My Lord Bishop, the Honorable Member for Clare, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It was G.K. Chesterton who remarked once that there is a Catholic way of teaching everything, even the alphabet, if only to teach it in such a way as at the same time to teach those who learn it that they must not look down on those who don't. If that be a definition, however broad, of Catholic education, then St. Vincent de Paul was a superb educator, for he spent his life trying to teach and convince people, particularly those who had material goods or who were gifted in mind, that they should not only not look down on others, but that they should share their riches with those less fortunate. The true educator is one who starts with the conviction that the student is not a container into which one must pour information, but rather one who has inherent powers of reasoning and imagination that are waiting to be awakened. To be a true educator, one must be a humble person, and humility is an outstanding facet in the character of St. Vincent de Paul.

It was the humility of St. Vincent de Paul that lay at the root of his respect for persons. That respect was extended also to academic institutions. We have proof of that in the fact that he studied for degrees in two French universities and kept as a treasured possession to the end of his days the parchments attesting to the fact that he had obtained degrees in theology and canon law. His experience in the classroom was very limited. It could be said that he was a tutor rather than a professor. The two boys of the De Gondi family perhaps knew him best as an educator and that only for a short time.

St. Vincent, as an educator, was not bound by the walls of a classroom. In the large school of life he taught Queens and Princes, Cardinals and Bishops, simple country folk and children of the inner city of Paris. He taught all these people much more than the alphabet. He taught them the alphabet of charity which is the language of the kingdom of heaven, and he taught it humbly. The secret of learning that alphabet is to become a child, for only those who are children can enter the kingdom of heaven. For that reason, when St. Vincent listed the requirements for those who would join him in teaching others, the alphabet of charity, the virtues or values of simplicity and humility took first place.

Speaking to those whom we might describe as undergraduates in his school of charity, namely students of philosophy, he said: "May the philosophy that you are going to learn help you to love and to serve the good God even more than you did previously; may it help to elevate you to Him by love; and while you study the science and philosophy of Aristotle and learn all his divisions, may you learn the science and philosophy of Our Lord and His maxims, and put them into practice with the result that what you learn will not serve to puff up your hearts but rather enable you better to serve God and His Church." (Coste XII, Fr. ed., pp. 63-64).

What the students learn in the classroom must not "puff up" their hearts. They will not have learned Catholic philosophy if, in doing, so they are looking down on those who have never studied the works of Aristotle or Aquinas. Not that St. Vincent was simplistic in his approach to education. Towards the end of his life in one of his conferences he told the Daughters of Charity: "Now, it is necessary for Daughters of Charity to teach the poor...and, therefore, Sisters should first of all be instructed before they can teach others." (Conf. Eng. ed., 16 March 1659, p. 1183).

He agreed, even though a little diffidently, with a proposition made by St. Louise de Marillac, that the Sisters should be sent to the Ursuline Nuns to learn the art of teaching, for the Ursuline Nuns were the most professional of women teachers in the France of the seventeenth century. (cf. Coste I, Eng. ed., ltr. 279, p. 427). Two months before he died, St. Vincent said to the Sisters at a conference: "A few days ago I had a letter from Narbonne in which I was told of the wonderful things our Sisters are doing. Sister Frances has been to a city, far away from Narbonne, to which she was sent by the Bishop of Narbonne to learn an excellent method that is practiced there for the education of the young. She learned it and is now applying it to the great edification of all." (Conf. Eng. ed., 24 July 1660, p. 1278).

In an age that was dominated by the study of the ancient classics, it is interesting to note how open St. Vincent's mind was to other fields of learning. He was sensitive to the fact that there is a wide diversity of talents in the young, and he recognized that a student who may not have a gift for languages and literature may be richly endowed to work in the area we would call today technology. Writing to Father Coglée, Superior of the Mission at Sedan, he remarks:

I think it is inadvisable to continue the special money grant, because as a rule it is of very little use for boys to begin the study of Latin when there is no opportunity of going on with it; and this is the case when their parents cannot supply what is required. An exception, perhaps, could be made in the case of an intelligent boy who might excite the interest of some charitable person to help him on. Apart from that, most of these boys stop halfway. It is far better for them to learn some craft or other as soon as they can. You should do this kindness to these poor boys of Sedan by urging their parents to apprentice them to some trade or other.... (Coste V, Fr. ed. p. 491).

In a letter to St. Louise de Marillac, written in February or March 1641, he refers to a past pupil of the Ursuline nuns of the parish of St. James, in Paris, who had learned to weave tapestry in the convent. He suggested to St. Louise that this girl should reside with the Daughters of Charity in La Chapelle for two or three months in order to teach the Sisters tapestry-weaving so that they might, in turn, instruct the children in their schools. (cf. Coste II, Eng. ed., ltr. 517, p. 186).