The metaphor of “yeast” can serve as a model for Catholic education. Yeast is an agent of infusion, integration and penetration that transforms the flour into which it is introduced. Frosting, on the other hand, does not penetrate the cake, but only layers itself on top.
These two metaphors capture in a simple – but I believe accurate – way two competing visions of how Catholic education is currently conceived, from preschool to university.
The function of yeast is similar to the etymology of the word catholic. It comes from the Greek katholikos, from kath or kata (throughout) and holos (whole), “throughout-the-whole.” Like yeast in a loaf, faith, in a genuinely Catholic education, interacts with all disciplines, such as the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and the professions.
Faith does not replace disciplines or transform them into itself; rather, when faith encounters reason, it reveals and orders reason’s deeper realities of truth and goodness. Like yeast, faith expands throughout the whole educational enterprise because there are no limits to its borders. Faith sees the invisible in the visible, the spirit in matter, the immeasurable in the measurable.
Tension will arise in the interaction of faith and reason, but this is nothing new in Catholic education. The medieval university’s pedagogical approach was structured on debate. Its pedagogy was dialectical, including both the lecture and disputation. The lecture was not given to provide mere assent, but as a prologue to disputation.
If Catholic schools cease engaging faith in relation to their disciplines, they instead spread “Catholic frosting on a secular cake.” This is an all-too-common situation in many Catholic schools and universities. The ingredients of the frosting are such things as a religion requirement, liturgies, the presence of religious symbols, service programs, perhaps an occasional visit from a bishop, and a generic – if sometimes dubious – claim that people are nicer to each other than they are in secular schools. When faith and reason are not integrated, students eventually lose the love of learning and slide into studying for instrumental reasons only: grades, career and prestige.
Admittedly, to be educational yeast is a lot harder than to be frosting. It requires serious energy, clarity of vision, and courage among our educational leaders. The Catholic Church has been at the work of education for 2,000 years. The renewal of her schools must be premised on a deep form of integration – across the school and in every subject – which will result in a more excellent education in our time.
This story is featured in the winter 2025 issue of Lumen.
