Lessons from the Church’s Past Should Inform Higher Education Today

April 6, 2015

Catholic, Jesuit Higher Education and the Future of Global Development

Ever since early Christianity was legalized in Rome by Constantine the Great, Christianity spread throughout the West. Overcoming many difficulties, for example the Church’s overall power decline in the thirteenth century and theocratic disputes amongst its own members, the Catholic Church established a firm position in Western society as its peoples’ religious and pedagogical authority. Most Europeans relied on churches’ clergies to save their souls, and many were educated to become scholars and theologians.

The Church’s function in society did not change dramatically even when introduced to the “New World.” For example, the elite children of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica were educated to become cabildo, or the town council’s official multilingual scribe, whose job was to translate the indigenous texts and indigenous land titles into Spanish and sometimes into Latin. This education not only created stable jobs for the oppressed, but also enabled them to successfully express their own opinions to the Spaniards.

By examining these opinion letters written by the multilingual indigenous elites, which often criticized the colonists’ brutal rule, clergy members such as Bartolomé de Las Casas and Alonso de Zorita were able to write papers urging the Castilian crown to improve the indigenous peoples’ working conditions. Las Casas and de Zorita were also elected as members of Protector de los Indios, or Indians’ Protectorate, the entity that inspected and judged the colonists’ actions in the seventeenth century Americas.

It was during this period, when Christianity was used as an excuse to destroy indigenous cultures, that the creation of a rich mestizo, mixed, culture also took place. For example old churches in Mexico City are built on top of destroyed indigenous temples, with geometrical designs in murals indicative of traditional Aztec style.

Therefore, historically, the Catholic Church not only served as the house of supreme education (with both positive and negative influence) and protection, but also as the cradle of a rich and evolving culture.

In an era in which the importance of cultural diversity is widely accepted, Catholic universities therefore can, and must, re-examine their own dualistic actions. By doing so, I believe Catholic higher education institutions can provide knowledge that is deep and wide-ranging about how humanity can coexist with one another.

About the Author

Soichiro Yamashita

Soichiro Yamashita is a second year student in the Department of Hispanic Studies at Sophia University of Tokyo majoring in Spanish and History. He is especially interested in the myth-history of the Mayan peoples during Spanish colonization. Yamashita was born in Japan but lived in the United States for 15 years before moving back to Japan in 2009. His experiences in the United States and Japan have prompted him to examine the interesting relationship between cultural understanding from the perspective of human history and what it means to have multiple identities. Yamashita is also a part of the Berkley Center's Catholic Social Teaching and the Global Future of Development project.