CatholicVote president calls for ‘Catholic moment’ in American education at Cardinal Newman conference
CatholicVote President and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt encouraged Catholic higher educators to reclaim the true purpose of education by forming the next generation as stewards of truth and virtue, saying the nation’s future depends on the moral and religious character of its people.
CatholicVote President and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt encouraged Catholic higher educators to reclaim the true purpose of education by forming the next generation as stewards of truth and virtue, saying the nation’s future depends on the moral and religious character of its people.
Reinhardt delivered a keynote address June 17 at the Cardinal Newman Society's annual Newman Guide Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. The event brought together Catholic education leaders to discuss the renewal of faithful Catholic education ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary.
Pointing to the nation's earliest Christian colleges, Reinhardt said education was once viewed as inseparable from religious formation because education was "incomplete — and ultimately incoherent — without it."
Reinhardt added that many colleges and universities have since lost sight of that mission, saying many early Christian institutions were founded on "the conviction that forming the whole human person toward truth and virtue [was] among the most important things a civilization could undertake."
The central question facing Catholic higher education, she said, is not simply how to respond to cultural change, but what purpose education is ultimately meant to serve.
AI, she said, has renewed the question of what education is ultimately for, requiring colleges and universities to consider not only what students need to know but what kind of people they are called to form.
"[Faithful Catholic Institutions,] she said, “are positioned to flourish in the era of artificial intelligence precisely because they are offering what no machine can replicate: the formation of human beings who know who they are and why they are here."
Reinhardt also said the formation of the human person is essential not only to education but also to the nation's civic life.
"The American experiment,” she said, “is unique in the history of nations because it depends not merely on wise words inscribed in founding documents, but on the moral and religious character of the citizens entrusted with reading, interpreting, and applying them."
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Reinhardt said the task before Catholic educators is not merely to preserve Catholic schools and colleges as "safe enclaves" in a hostile culture, but to form graduates capable of serving in leadership across society. She urged education leaders to prepare students to be "bearers of Truth" who understand "what a human being is, what education is for, and what a civilization worth inhabiting actually looks like."
Reinhardt described that mission as a “Catholic moment” for the nation.
“The Catholic moment for America,” she said, “is the offering of this vision: the human person created by God, wounded by sin, redeemed by Christ, called to virtue, ordered toward communion, and destined for eternal life."
