Father Paul Scalia, son of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, gave a wonderful (sometime over my head) talk on the role that emotions play in education.
Our doctrines are not to be held just intellectually, but with our emotions as well. We should feel with the Church and through the development of a sound conscious develop a gut instinct for what the Faith holds.
Two errors of the passions:
defect-a stoic attitude that trivializes the emotions
excess-viewing of emotions as the end-all-be-all
Disordered passions cripple our ability to think, but with trained emotions everything works more serenely. To teach our children we first need to train our own- discern what is a proper emotional response.
3 goals of education:
intellect- know what is truth
will- do what is good
emotion- passions trained to delight in and be pained by things that we ought
How do we train the passions?
We need to preserve the capacity to wonder by exposing our children to the fine arts. Learning about classic music, painting, literature, poetry, and sculpture teach children a standard of beauty and how to respond to them properly. With our emotions properly formed we are drawn to goodness and moved by the greatness of the Incarnation. The purpose of educating our children is to assist them in reaching Heaven and the goals above do this by helping them know, love, and serve God in this world so they can be happy with him forever.
It is certainly humbling to realize that Father Scalia is the same age as I am and has accomplished so much. What do I have to show for my years of study and work? Then I realize that God gave us far different vocations and therefore distinct gifts to produce success. My goal in this life is to teach my children to long for Heaven and help them attain eternal life as well as assisting my spouse to do the same. If I do my job to the best of my ability then one day I will hear Our Lord say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
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