Are We Forming Pious Nestorians? Christology and the Catholic Curriculum

Drawing an analogy to the 5th century heresy of Nestorianism, this paper argues that the separation of life from faith in the modern era constitutes a kind of functional Nestorianism, that negates the universality of the Christian claim and renders such a claim. The paper argues that, in their form and function, many Catholic educational institutions unwittingly adopt this functional Nestorianism by means of a structural compartmentalisation of the faith into confined spaces within the curriculum and within the institutional imagination and that in doing so, such institutions risk mirroring—at the level of educational practice—and thus perpetuating, what Pope Paul VI referred to as ‘the drama of our time’, that being, ‘the split between the Gospel and culture’. The paper concludes by offering six Christocentric principles to guide curriculum development and implementation in Catholic educational institutions.