 Tom, you, of course, have written several seminal works on religious education and spiritual practices. Why did you write this book and why did you write it at this particular time? Well, thank you, Jan, and thank you for doing this good interview with me. I appreciate it very much. A great question. Why at this particular time? I'll come back to that in a moment, but let me first say that Catholic education is enormously significant, not just for the life of the church, but for the life of the world. There are over, there are more than 455,000 Catholic schools in 200 different countries serving 150 million students. So this educational system is enormously significant, and that we do it as we promise, as Catholic, we promise the world, we advertise, we're offering Catholic education, and my question is, are we, and how do we see to it that we are, and offering the best of good Catholic education? Now, in some ways, the title of the book, What Makes Education Catholic, that is the question. The subtitle suggests the answer, Spiritual Foundations. In other words, Catholic education is grounded in great spiritual foundations that arise out of the heart and soul of Catholic faith, but can enrich the life of any person of good will. The late great Benazir Bhutto, God rest her soul, twice-selected Prime Minister of Pakistan, she always said that she learned her Muslim faith at Jesus and Mary Convent School in Karachi, but she also learned that someday she could be as a woman, that she could be Prime Minister of Pakistan, and she might not have learned that in a traditional Muslim school. They're enormously significant. Now, to the life of the world. Now, I said the title is the question, the subtitle is the answer, Spiritual Foundations. And you see, I think it's a new question for our time, because when you go back a little bit, now you think of 1965 in the United States, 93, 94% of the faculty and staff of Catholic schools were vowed religious, brothers, sisters, and priests. And they were the good stewards of the Spiritual Foundations. They were typically well-formed spiritually themselves. And so we didn't even ask what makes Catholic schools, what makes education Catholic, because the schools were loaded with vowed religious. That's totally gone. In some parts of this country, in some parts of the world, the vowed religious in our schools is down to less than 1%. So it's a whole new leadership, and are these leaders, do they have the resources to be good stewards of those Spiritual Foundations? One reason why it's a new question is that Catholic schools are booming throughout the world. And any place where Catholic schools are well-funded by public resources, they're actually going off the charts. And so they're expanding and attracting students that are not Catholic. Those Muslim schools of Pakistan over 500, premier schools, Catholic schools in Pakistan, but 90% of the students are non-Catholic, 90% of the faculty are non-Catholic. And you have the same in Hong Kong and Korea and throughout the world. So how do we deliver what we promise? And especially now that the student body has changed so significantly. And even in this country, I would say most Catholic high schools now are probably 50% non-Catholic. And even the Catholics in our schools are very often more cultural Catholics than practicing ones. So how do we see to it that this is truly a genuine Catholic education? Well, we need a cadre of leaders, principals and some support members as well, who know well the Spiritual Foundations and can see to their implementation. Quick story. I was a lecture I was giving publicly recently at the break time, a young newly appointed principal of a Catholic high school came up to me and said, Tom, I think I finally figured out what my real job is. My real job is to be a spiritual leader. He says now budget and faculty and parents and all this kind of stuff, that's my job as principal. But my real job as principal is to be a spiritual leader of the schools who see to the Spiritual Foundations and that indeed they do permeate this whole educational system. So in a sense, that's why I wrote the book. It seems to me that one of the more delicate challenges you address is the matter of educating students for faith who may not have a religious background or are from a different faith tradition. What do you think is the most important takeaway for teachers and school administrators undertaking this task? I think it's a whole new challenge for us and we're just beginning to figure out how to do it, how to run a truly Catholic school and yet to respect the faith identity of the other students and not in any way to proselytize. Pope Francis was asked about this recently and about all the non-Catholic students that are coming to our Catholic schools. He said, welcome them all. It's our contribution to the common good of the world. And then was probed a little about the Catholicity and the catechesis we might offer. And he said, no way should we proselytize these students from other traditions that Muslim students who come to our schools should leave our schools better Muslims than they came in. That's a very challenging thing to do and we're just beginning to learn how to do it. But I do think we have some insights. Typically we thought of that religion is either taught objectively or very subjectively. In other words, for example, the English Religious Education Act of 1943 said that religion was to be taught in all the schools of England, Scotland and Wales, but to be taught objectively. In other words, you never try to influence people's personal religious spiritual identity. So you learn that there are five pillars to Islam, you know, how to recite them and you get an A in the exam, but it's objective. The second mode is totally subjective. In other words, the kind of catechesis we carry on in our parish religious education programs. We are trying to make these kids or these people to become good Catholics, no ifs ands or buts about it. We're beginning to realize that there's a middle ground, rather than simply to learn about it or to be inculcated and cultureated into it, that there is a middle ground where we not only learn about it but people can learn from it. And you set up the curriculum. It's a very challenging thing for religious education or schools where everybody can learn from it. Now you hope the Catholics may learn into it, but that everybody, all the people there can indeed be enriched in their own faith. I taught undergrads here at Boston College for over 30 years and I taught a course called Catholicism. I had many students from different traditions take that course, but I would say to the Muslim students, now I want you to become a better Muslim and to the Jewish students, I want you to become a better Jew. And to the Catholics, I'd say, and Murphy, I hope you become a better Catholic from taking this course, that your own faith tradition can be enriched. And then you find the correlations between the traditions. For example, the beautiful Muslim tradition of Zagat is a huge reflection or is reflected deeply in Matthew 25. I was hungry, you gave me to eat, I was thirsty, you gave me to drink. So you find the points of correlation between these great traditions. And you raise up so that the Muslim students can be enriched and cherishing their own faith by being exposed to this Catholic faith. I think it's possible. It's very challenging. It takes well-trained teachers. But it is, it is the challenge of our time to do this and to do it well and do it faithfully and yet without proselytizing people. What are the spiritual foundations of Catholic education? That's a great question, Jen, and my answer is going to sound so obvious that you're going to wonder why you even interviewed me. Because I think the heart of our Catholic education has to be Jesus. Now that may sound strange, but because as Catholics, we don't typically talk much about Jesus. And there's a long-winded story why we don't. The old Baltimore Catechism, which you did not grow up with, but I did and your parents did, they had no question on Jesus because the old Catechisms were based on the Apostles Creed and they took each heart article of the Creed and catechized them. But the Creed goes from born of the Virgin Mary to suffered under Pontius Pilate. So they left out his life. So there's nothing in the Baltimore Catechism about the historical Jesus, his miracles of loaves and fishes, the great stories he told, the stories about him, etc. So we're pretty slim on Jesus. But when you stop and think about it, the heart and center of our faith is Jesus, who was indeed the Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, but that carpenter who walked the roads of Galilee, I think he's our model for Catholic education. And when you start looking at the values that he championed, his great symbol of the reign of God, calling people to a fullness of life and to justice and compassion and outreach to the neighbor. Maybe it was radical law that he could possibly make as the law of love, to love the Lord or God with all our mind, heart and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself. Now, if Jesus had just simply said, love God and love yourself, we'd be off the hook, but we have to love our neighbor as ourselves. So Jesus left this tremendous call to a life that is powerfully life-giving for oneself and for others. And I think the values that he championed throughout his life, inclusivity, for example, one of the reasons the scholars say he was put to death was because of the people he was eating with. He was welcoming everybody to the table. Saints and sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, all were welcomed. In the word of the time, the table, pardon me, was a tremendously significant symbol to be invited to the table was to be fully included. Now, how do our Catholic schools practice that kind of inclusivity, that kind of radical inclusivity, or take another one? His compassion, his compassion especially for the poor. There's only six, there's only two miracles that are recorded six times in the four gospels, the miracle of the resurrection and the miracle of the loaves and fishes. It's in Mark, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that it's twice in Matthew, twice in Mark, how he multiplied loaves and fishes to feed thousands and thousands of hungry people. How do we in a Catholic school offer that kind of nurture to people's lives? How do we care for their deep passions and needs? How do we prepare them to go out into the world with deep compassion for the hungry and the downtrodden and the excluded? How do we give them that kind of social justice commitment that we send them out into the world? Or another example, and one more, his tremendous empowerment of people. He constantly gave people their own agency and restored them within their social context. It's fascinating that he says to poor peasant people, you're the light of the world, you're the salt of the earth. Or how he raised, how he included women at the table and affirmed them and had them as a part of his inner court, his inner core of disciples. Tremendous inclusivity and affirmation of people. Very often, when he worked a miracle, he would say, your faith saved you. The woman with the bleeding for 12 years, he said to her, sister, it's daughter, your faith saved you. He never says I saved you. But the tremendous empowerment and affirmation of people's potential that we see in Jesus. How do we replicate that in our Catholic high schools and grade schools? How do we repeat that kind of affirmation of the human person and empowerment of their possibilities and give them a wonderful horizon to live into for the rest of their lives? This great transcendent, ultimate horizon, which is God and a God who's in love with us. So there's tremendous, when we think about the historical Jesus, there's tremendous resources and inspiring values there that we need to implement, replicate in today's Catholic schools. Is there something that you would like to say in summary about this book that is important for readers to understand? Well, of course, the first couple of chapters are on Jesus, on Jesus, the Christ, the risen Christ, and so on. But then there's 10 chapters in the book. So what do I do in the other eight chapters? I basically go back into what we call the Catholic intellectual tradition, the CIT, because we have been doing this for 2,000 years. And I take so little of the wisdom from different eras, people, generations, and from some surprising people, Julian of Norwich, Mary Ward, Angela de Morici, some of the great women who have shaped Catholic education throughout its history. And of course, the obvious character is Augustine and Benedict and Aquinas, et cetera, as well. And there's a tremendously rich tradition there. And it actually began in the very early church. There was a great debate in the early church, sometime around the year 200, 250, should the church be involved in education? Why would these new Christian community have to care about education? Jesus gave the great mandate on that hillside in Galilee, go to evangelize, to baptize, and to teach. Well, the question was, did teaching mean teaching, reading, writing, and arithmetic, the four R's? Or did it simply require us to teach the gospel? And there was a great debate. There were some scholars that said, no, let's just stay with the gospel and the revelation. We have the Word of God and sacred scripture. So why do we need to be learning from the Greek philosophers and poets and all this kind of stuff? And as well as that, some of those people are rather immoral and will not give good morals to our children. So Tertullian, for example, a great early scholar of the church, said that Jerusalem has no need of Athens. In other words, let's stay away from that. But why is there voices prevailed? Clement of Alexandria, for example, said to give an education, not just a religious education, but to give a general education to a child is a work of salvation. And it's so obvious now, it's almost like the nose on our face, why is the Catholic Church so involved in education throughout the world and has been for the past 2,000 years? And not to make odious comparisons, but most of our brothers and brothers and sisters and their traditions don't put that kind of emphasis on building schools and opening schools and running schools and all this kind of stuff. But from the very beginning or very early in the history of the church, the Catholic tradition saw, and in a sense, it was the partnership. They saw the partnership of faith and reason as being necessary for making life human. That faith needs reason because without it, it can be crazy. But reason needs faith because without it, it can be crazy. There's no values, and what have you. So the Catholic tradition saw the possibility of these great partnerships of reason and faith, of science and revelation, the partnership that could be there. So can you go in your Catholic school, can you go into your science classroom and teach them the story of cosmogenesis that the world was made, whatever, 14 million years ago from a bang? And can you then go into theology and teach them the Genesis chapter one, that God made the world in six days or the seventh day God rested? The answer is yes, of course you can. One is a metaphorical, allegorical way of knowing, the other is a more scientific way of knowing, and they enrich each other because that scientific way of knowing, you'd never figure out from that that we are made of the image and likeness of God. Male and female God made us, and they were responsible for the quality of the environment that we are in charge of this world and are good to be good stewards of it. I mean, in other words, the theological and the scientific enrich each other. And this is the pattern of Catholic education over the past 2000 years as a tremendously rich paradigm. In many ways our public education is limited to reason and to reason alone. There's no drawing upon faith. It's forbidden. But reason alone is a very arid way of promoting an educational system. It's when you have faith and reason working together that it can enhance the whole person and give us a sense of a transcendent horizon into which to live our lives. So yeah, I think Catholic education still has tremendous potential, especially if we say faithful to those rich traditions that we have in the Catholic intellectual tradition and to the Gospel of Jesus as well, as I said earlier. Thank you for your time here today. It was really interesting to learn more about your book.