“Reading nourishes the mind.”
Pope Leo XIV recently shared these words in a meeting with the Vatican Publishing House, celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary. The pope’s words remind us that the skill of reading books should be cultivated in students—especially in theology students—where the primary subject of their reading are the true, beautiful, and good topics of our Catholic faith. “In the school of Mary and the saints,” Pope Leo said, “let us nourish ourselves with the Word of God, so that it may shape our way of thinking.” As a tool of instruction for reading, theology students benefit from reading from a textbook as a core source and guide to further reading of the saints, literature, and primary source documents. By navigating structured chapters, full paragraphs, and academic vocabulary, students train their brains to focus. They learn to follow a logical argument from introduction to conclusion. These are basic reading skills that will prepare them for both further academic reading but also the pleasurable and often lost experience of sitting in a chair under a reading lamp in a quiet room and reading an elevating book. Pope Leo, in his meeting with the Vatican publishers, outlined three important reflections of books and reading: 1. Books remind us of the role of thought. “Reading nourishes the mind and helps cultivate a conscious and well-formed critical sense, guarding against fundamentalism and ideological shortcuts.” 2. Reading connects us with others. “When we hold a book in our hands, we ideally encounter its author. At the same time, we also encounter those who have read it before us, those reading it now, and those who will read it in the future.” 3. Reading is an opportunity to share the Gospel. “For us Christians, the book is an opportunity to proclaim Christ. We know well how reading the biography of a saint of a well-presented spiritual reflection can touch the heart.” Reading from a designed textbook is a primer and reinforcement for good reading skills. A textbook enhances student learning by creating strong “mental maps” through strategic layout placement, and through reducing cognitive overload with intentionally structured text blocks, and boosting memory retention via high-quality visual aids. Textbooks use both words and images to activate different parts of the brain at once. Because a textbook looks and feels important, students naturally read it more closely and experience less eye strain than they do with course packets or short articles on a screen. “In the digital age,” Pope Leo said, “the physicality of the book reminds us of the role of thought, reflection, and study.”
