Lucia Silecchia: Holy Father Poses Thought-Provoking Questions for Teachers and Students
In anticipation of Pope Francis’s visit to the United States, I have watched with interest his current travels and his pastoral outreach to our southern neighbors. Last week, Pope Francis visited the Catholic Pontifical University of Ecuador. His remarks to those assembled there received much attention for the statements he made with respect to the natural environment — a topic of current interest in light of Laudato Si’ and of professional interest to me as a professor of environmental law here at Catholic University.
Lucia Silecchia
But, of greater personal interest to me was a series of questions that Pope Francis posed to those gathered at the University — questions that I will reflect on as a teacher preparing for Pope Francis’s visit to our own pontifical university. He asked:
“My question to you, as educators, is this: Do you watch over your students, helping them to develop a critical sense, an open mind capable of caring for today’s world? A spirit capable of seeking new answers to the varied challenges that society sets before humanity today? Are you able to encourage them not to disregard the world around them, what is happening all over? Can you encourage them to do that? To make that possible, you need to take them outside the university lecture hall; their minds need to leave the classroom, their hearts must go out of the classroom. Does our life, with its uncertainties, its mysteries and its questions, find a place in the university curriculum or different academic activities? Do we enable and support a constructive debate which fosters dialogue in the pursuit of a more humane world?… How do we help our young people not to see a university degree as synonymous with higher status, with more money or social prestige? It is not synonymous with that. How can we help make their education a mark of greater responsibility in the face of today’s problems, the needs of the poor, concern for the environment?”
Those are questions harder than any I have ever asked on an exam (my students may dispute that!) and questions that could take a lifetime to answer. They are questions that ask me to think about the heart of my vocation as a teacher, particularly at a university with our own unique mission and identity. All are questions worth pondering, not only in anticipation of our third papal visit, but in anticipation of the start of a new academic year.
This will be the 25th August that I have started a new academic year here. And, yet, the questions Pope Francis posed to my colleagues in Ecuador last week are fresh, new questions for me to pose to myself. In particular, he asks me to think about what I do as a teacher to assist students not merely in preparation for their careers, but in preparation for lives well led. So, in the weeks to come as I prepare both to start a new school year and to welcome Pope Francis to Catholic University, these will be my questions for prayer and reflection.
And, lest you students reading this blog believe Pope Francis had challenges only for us, your teachers, you are out of luck! He posed a question or two for you, as well. And, just as I will be thinking about his questions for educators, I invite you to think of the question he passionately asks you: “Do you realize that this time of study is not only a right, but also a privilege which you have? How many of your friends, known or unknown, would like to have a place in this house but, for various reasons, do not? To what extent do our studies help us and bring us to feel solidarity with them? Ask these questions, dear students.”
Pope Francis has given us all the gift of great questions and here’s hoping that in this exciting time of prayerful preparation and refection, we might be blessed with some answers to these questions as well!
– Lucia Silecchia is a professor of law at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. She also is director of the International Human Rights Summer Law Program in Rome.
