Catholic Enlightenment

Throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Catholic Church began to emphasise the importance of a more practical faith. As acts of charity became a more important part of church teaching, philosophical discussions surrounding rationalism began to take place. This was happening all over Europe and even in the colonies. Much of the Catholic Enlightenment was very much a counter-enlightenment. The Oratorians and the Benedictines were at the forefront of trying to encourage this form of enlightened thinking. Gradually they began to teach the students in their schools on the writings of Locke and even Kant. Looking specifically at some personalities and cases will help the historian to better understand how this was done.

Several forms of education were suggested during The Enlightenment. Importantly, all of them came down to reason. It was through reason that true informative education came. Like in other debates during the enlightenment what reason meant was highly contested. Rousseau for example believed that, when educating a boy that he should be allowed to learn through discovery and reason and not be formally educated until a certain level of maturity was reached. The Catholic form of education was of course very different to Rousseau’s suggestions; however, it played an important role in ensuring that reason would become a part of the Catholic faith. Catholic education in the eighteenth century was about bringing some form of education to the masses while ensuring that Catholic dogma and importantly reason would form an essential part of the faith. The Benedictine influence on education in Germany is a prime example of how the Enlightenment brought about a complete change in educational attitudes within the Catholic Church. It was at this time that the ideas of philosophers such as Kant began to be taught in German universities. Kantian ideology even found strong support in