Catholic humanism should awaken a sense of wonder in students who will go out into a world obsessed by competition and plagued by unemployment, according to an American prelate.

The idea of Catholic humanism, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma said, is “rooted in the conviction that every human person is created in the image and likeness of God and, therefore, has been endowed by God with an inalienable dignity and transcendent value.”

He was speaking at a forum on humanism in education at the Catholic University of Korea’s Bucheon campus today.

In a keynote speech Archbishop Coakley said that in the 1970s, when he studied at the University of Kansas, he took a course called “the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program,” whose motto was “Let them be born in wonder.”

The goal of the program, he continued, was to awaken a sense of wonder in students “by teaching them to read a book or recite a poem, to observe the natural world, and to contemplate the movement of the stars.”

This method of teaching instilled in many of them “a love for learning and quest for truth, beauty and goodness,” which resulted in many conversions to the Catholic faith, he said.

It is important therefore that young people, who will be faced with many difficulties in the modern world, should receive an education where they recognize human dignity and realize their own transcendent value, he added.

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