It follows that a school which defines itself by ignoring such distinctions will be at best a number of professors pursuing disparate or contrary purposes in the context of uneasy co-existence. Individual teachers may accomplish something with their students, and administrators of good character may supply their personal principles for the lack of institutional order, but they will do so in spite of the rationale of their school, 哪一种倾向于虚无主义和暴政. 另一方面, it does not follow that a school which does define itself in the context of those distinctions will be successful in realizing its true purposes. 这个条件是必要的，但不是充分的. For even given that the importance of distinguishing the primary from the secondary — in all the ways mentioned above — is a matter of conviction, and given that the distinctions are actually seen in many cases, there still remain many ambiguities whose attempted resolution may ultimately defeat the intended purpose of the school. The cause of these ambiguities is that the principles which guide thought and action, whether they are received from experience or by faith, 一开始理解得有些模糊吗, 即使他们的真理是确定的. Hence it remains a primary necessity throughout the intellectual life to clarify the principles. But here arises the possibility of serious mistake, for an attempted clarification may depart from the original principle; thus, 虽然是次要的，甚至是错误的, the seeming re-statement will take on the authority of the original, 最具破坏性的结果. And if such failures arise concerning the principles, how much more must they arise concerning what is demonstrable or probable, 教与学的恰当对象?
So it is that from the beginning men have sought teachers — other men who share the same principles but see them more clearly as well as seeing the order which results from them. 因此, 男性, the relation of teacher and learner presupposes shared principles and yet an inequality in the understanding of those principles. But the need for a teacher at the same time poses a problem: how is the inferior to recognize the superior, since his inferiority consists precisely in the lack of that which would enable him to judge? Because this problem is unavoidable as well as difficult, 诡辩家总是大量涌现.
The only secure resolution of this problem is that the shared principles themselves should unmistakably indicate the teacher. 现在自然, 因为它塑造了我们的经验, is the guiding principle of the life of reason, but it fails to distinguish reliably between the teacher and the sophist. For nature instructs us through the external features of things, which often fail to correspond to what is internal. 神的启示, 另一方面, not only communicates the truth but also designates teachers to clarify, 定义并解释它. 因此, 我们的主告诉他的使徒, “Anyone who listens to you listens to me” (Luke 10:16) and commissioned them to teach, 承诺永远和他们在一起. 基于这个理由, the believer embraces at once Christ as the supreme teacher and the successors of St. Peter and the Apostles as altogether truthful and divinely appointed interpreters of His teachings. 并进一步, insofar as many doctrines which pertain to human wisdom are of crucial importance for the Christian life, the teaching authority of the Apostles extends to them also; indeed, nearly every central philosophical issue is relevant in some way to divinely revealed truth. 由此可见，天主教徒, 在他信仰的行动中, has also found the teachers who will define and explain what he believes, 告诉他后果, and rectify his whole intellectual life as well. Here then grace perfects nature even with respect to what is strictly natural.
天主教学校, 因此, if it is to be faithful to the teaching of Christ, will differ from its secular counterpart in two essential respects. 第一个, 它不会用学术自由来定义自己, 而是神所启示的真理, 和第二, that truth will be the chief object of study as well as the governing principle of the whole institution, giving order and purpose even to the teaching and learning of the secular disciplines.