Forging Moral Clarity: The Role of Catholic Classical Education in Shaping Future American Political and Military Leaders

At the St. John Henry Newman Institute, we revitalize K-12 Catholic education by embedding a classical Catholic heritage into school cultures. We aim to form students who are not only intellectually proficient but also deeply rooted in moral clarity and spiritual depth. Focusing on integrating rigorous academic and ethical training is crucial, as demonstrated by my experiences teaching at the United States Naval Academy. There, I encountered a troubling trend among future military leaders: a pervasive moral relativism that undermines their ability to make sound ethical decisions. This essay explores the implications of such relativism and highlights the urgent need for the kind of holistic education we advocate.Several years ago, I had the great privilege of teaching Leadership and Ethics to our nation’s future Navy and Marine Corps leaders at the United States Naval Academy. An instructor could not ask for better students - they were bright, well engaged, and had a future that was directly related to the topic at hand. Over the course of the semester, military instructors, paired with professors of philosophy, introduced them to a brief survey of Western moral philosophers which included Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Bentham, and Aquinas. We would then pair these moral philosophies with combat scenarios for the students to reason through using a buffet of different philosophies and ways of thinking about moral topics that applied to military leadership. This sounds great in theory, but very soon after beginning my first course, it became obvious that while our future military leaders would benefit from this (all too brief) exploration of moral theories, the one thing that dogged our classes and thwarted much of our progress was a moral relativism possessed by the majority of our Midshipmen.  I was shocked at the time to find our nation’s best imbued with this poisonous philosophy, but upon ongoing reflection, it made sense to me. Our Midshipmen come directly from our society, which is awash in superficial relativistic thinking. Lack of any formation in critical thinking is an ever-present fruit of modern educational philosophy and this was my own personal experience dating back to my high school days in the 1990s. At that time, it was a given that “everything is relative.” Two of my peers in the department helped clarify this relativism by explaining that  the Midshipmen were not full-blown moral relativists. Rather, many of them possessed a sense of the right thing to do, they just were hesitant to confront others by passing moral judgment on their actions. This was because they had no idea how to justify their own moral convictions, leaving them uncertain about those convictions, absent any confidence on how to express those convictions to others. So instead, they adopted an easy, superficial, targeted, and incoherent relativism, which manifests as a form of “tolerance” for the unjust actions of others. This targeted relativism was particularly abhorrent in the area of sexual ethics, where no one wanted to cast a moral judgment on anything short of rape.  This practical relativism in the name of “tolerance” was so ingrained in them that even when asked whether or not it was morally praiseworthy to sprinkle sand in a helpless baby’s eyes, they resisted casting a moral judgment against it.  Even in this extreme example, some held that if it were part of a culture’s heritage to do even objectively evil acts like this, then it could be morally praiseworthy. (To be clear, usually only 5-10% members of the class would be this committed!)  When I pressed them if they would approve of kidnapping young sons of rival tribes and forcing them to be sex slaves (see Chai boys in Afghanistan), only here at kidnapping combined with child rape would they reluctantly release their commitment to tolerance and admit the act was evil. Tolerance, the (nearly) absolute virtue of relativists, holds a very strong sway among our future leaders. Tolerance for others actions without judgment of the rightness or wrongness of them. And why not? - every message in society screams, “there are no objectively wrong behaviors, just ones we might not do ourselves and that we ought to keep our opinions to ourselves and tolerate and even support the choices of others.” One major problem with this practical relativism and emphasis on tolerance is that it undercuts the idea that there is indeed a right way to act and a wrong way to act. That truth and sin exist. And by undermining this foundation, we actually undermine the rightness of our national cause and military action. If we ought to tolerate others' behavior and not judge the behaviors of others as right or wrong but rather simply an expression of themselves, then how can we assert that killing innocent people is wrong? How can we condemn Hitler’s actions? Perhaps serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was simply expressing himself? How could we condemn the terrorists of 9/11 and their actions as evil if evil actions do not exist? How do we condemn the indiscriminate murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis by Palestinians or the killing of innocents by Israelis? If there is no right or wrong, any military or national action we take is no better or worse than any other action taken by any organization or nation. It undercuts justification for military action and then removes guardrails for behavior in war - everything is acceptable. When the differences between good and evil actions dissolve in an acid of “tolerance”, we descend into our basest nature and become animals.  One of the questions we wrestled with in class was - what makes us different from terrorists? Take the saying - “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.” Should we take this statement at face value? If we do, we have failed to go deep enough. It is not the flag we fight under or the number of people who think we are heroes that makes our actions good or evil. Rather, it is the morality of our decisions - more specifically, the degree to which we operate in accordance with Natural Law that informs the rightness of our actions. Just War doctrine derives from the teachings on Natural Law by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. It essentially states that even though the Ten Commandments (Natural Law) state, “Thou shall not kill”, that there are times when killing is permissible, specifically in cases of individual or collective self-defense. Just War doctrine doesn’t just extend to whether or not we can fight, but also how we fight. For instance, direct targeting of innocent life is evil according to Just War doctrine. This is important because how we conduct ourselves in warfare dictates how the enemy sees us and fights us and how the ensuing peace will go. War that does not respect the enemy as human is savage and oftentimes creates animus for a very long time. The Japanese, Chinese and Koreans have this problem from the way the Japanese treated the others during their invasion and occupation of these nations in the lead up to World War II.  Rape and cannibalism were common and as a result, nearly 100 years later, there is still a deep-seated hatred between them.   The moral problem I faced in teaching these Midshipmen, was exacerbated by the fact that the vast majority of students at the Naval Academy were formed in high school and at the Academy by focusing on STEM-based practical problem-solving skills at the expense of a well-rounded education focused on critical thinking. The result was that most students could perform very complex engineering problems (if they were shown how and given the formulas), but could not think through a moral dilemma with any degree of confidence. Moreover, they could not write well and thus could not communicate their thoughts effectively, even if they had good thoughts to convey. It was a real problem and one that we had no hope of solving in a semester-long course.  There was, however, one group of students in my classes that were not hamstrung by these weaknesses.  These students were formed with exposure to the best that has been thought and said in our Western intellectual heritage. Usually Catholics and committed Christians possessed the clarity of thought to see through the haze of relativism and skill to craft and communicate a moral argument that far surpassed their fellow students. They had learned from the Western Canon including texts such as the Iliad, Cicero’s speeches, and the Bible. They were anchored in faith and lived and breathed morality. They understood and appreciated Natural Law. These students were generally outspoken in class and frequently had their hand raised first while their peers stared blankly - grasping for answers that were not coming. Not only did these happy few students shine in their classes, but the force of their arguments and their ability to argue persuasively successfully captured the support of their peers. They surpassed their peers not only with their oratorical skills, but also their ability to write persuasively. These future leaders of our Marines and Sailors are our hope for the future.  We do not need any more tolerance-obsessed moral cowards in our military and political leadership. Rather, we need prudent decision-makers who have the confidence to make difficult but correct moral decisions. To get more of these, we need more students formed in this same manner, preferably in the fullest form of that formation in a Catholic liberal education as conceived by Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman or through the growing number of schools that hold the timeless truths of this intellectual tradition as central to their guiding educational philosophy. The next few decades will be difficult, but there is hope on the horizon - schools like I describe here are growing as a percentage of schools and an increasing number of students are receiving this formation.  As we continue to face major challenges to our nation and military, will the few we have now be enough to see us through?At the St. John Henry Newman Institute, we see the pressing need for a renaissance in education that transcends mere academic achievement. We aim to foster a generation of leaders who, like those exceptional students, are not only well-versed in intellectual tradition but are also equipped with the moral clarity and confidence to navigate complex ethical dilemmas. Today, our mission to integrate classical Catholic education with a vibrant spiritual life is more relevant than ever, as we seek to form students who are grounded in timeless truths and capable of making principled decisions to meet the challenges of tomorrow.