In a commentary published by The Chronicle of Higher Education, David House looks back and assesses the influence of Pope John Paul II’s apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
House takes an optimistic view, reading the last couple of decades as a muted, but nonetheless sustained, turn toward a more faithful approach to Catholic education. Well, maybe.
It is true that most Catholic colleges and universities have come to realize that they cannot take their Catholic identity for granted. These days there are endless “mission and identity” committees trying to figure out a way to buttress the specifically Catholic dimension of higher education.
Yet, it is also true that the once coherent and expansive reality of Catholic culture in America is much diminished. One reason the post-Vatican II generation so thoroughly embraced experimentation and critique was the fact that they felt themselves marinated in a Catholic world. Not so today, which explains why men and women who probably have largely the same outlook now feel the need to retrench rather than experiment.
At an even more fundamental level, Catholic colleges and universities, most run by religious orders, are reckoning with the fact that there are hardly any nuns or priest to run them. Thirty or more years ago, the faculty began to become laicized. Religious orders concentrated on influencing schools by putting their people in key administrative posts. Now that’s become harder and harder to do.
I can report that nobody really knows how to put the Catholic into Catholic higher education. Yes, some small colleges have done an excellent job. House points to Thomas Aquinas College and others. But the big, multi-faceted postmodern university? Notre Dame is trying, but House himself holds them up for criticism rather than praise.
House is right to champion the intentions that motivated John Paul II to write Ex Corde, as well as its contents. And he’s right to point out that the rising generation of academic leaders in the Catholic system see that doing nothing is unacceptable. The secular temptation in Catholic higher education is very strong, mostly because it happens by default.
But we’re only at the beginning, and it ain’t gonna be easy. Too often, Catholic academic leaders take the easy way out, translating “Catholic” into “social justice.” But for those of us who see the inadequacy of this approach, what’s the alternative? What’s a Catholic English department supposed to be like? Or Classics? Or Economics? Hard questions these.
September 17th, 2010 | 5:15 pm
It’s way too late in the game to “save” the big universities for the Church, even though lots of good things can still happen in them. I believe that bishops and others need to start thinking “outside the box,” as it were, when it comes to producing intellectually mature Catholics from among the vast present-day population of Catholic undergraduates.
For anyone who’s interested, I’ve recently written a couple of pieces on this. They can be found at http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/houston-nd-talk.pdf and http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/Sycamorebreakfast.pdf
The first one starts with Notre Dame, but ends with some general suggestions.
September 17th, 2010 | 5:31 pm
Keeping schools faithful to the Church is always a problem. Part of it is the leftward slant of academe, where faculty will tend to be further to the secular side of things than the church is. Since there are few theologically conservative schools offering doctoral programs, you have a left-listing faculty, especially in the non-theology classes.
I taught at a nominally evangelical college, and the faculty there was to the left of the denomination; the school tried to hire Christian faculty, but a lot of faculty left a lot to be desired on that front. The same is even more true at most Catholic schools, where the school is more concerned with academic credentials than the faith of the teachers.
September 18th, 2010 | 7:54 am
Nice topic for me.I read this article and agree with this article.
Nox Edge
September 18th, 2010 | 2:00 pm
As a once-evangelical Reform protestant, I recall that European Calvinists sought to “reform” education, with Abraham Kuyper as one of the leaders in this movement.
I’m not a student of any of this, but what I recall is that Kuyper’s “idea of the university” involved having a chair of philosophy as the “center” of each academic department. Obviously, it was a “Christian philosophy” if I can phrase it that way. My impression is that the philosophic center would anchor, guide, and inform exactly those questions — what is a Christian, or Catholic, English, economics, etc department.
I wonder if something like this approach might be relevant here?
September 18th, 2010 | 2:36 pm
I once talked to the dean of an evangelical college who bemoaned the fact that the school had for some time been hiring too many faculty members that had never attended a Christian college or university as students. They were well intentioned Christians, he thought, but because all of their scholarly training had been from a secular perspective, they had no real expertise in how to approach their disciplines from a Christian perspective. Instead, they had inadvertently become experts in how to approach their disciplines from a purely secular perspective (without realizing it, of course). And that, he believed, was causing the school to drift increasingly from its Christian mission.
September 18th, 2010 | 10:19 pm
I’ve been impressed with Thomas Aquinas college, in California. The students are required to read the Great Books of western civilization. They don’t have “textbooks”, or even professors. They have tutors, who guide them.
Can one imagine how wonderful it would be, to simply read, the works of Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, etc., and not have to listen to the latest postmodernist nonsense interpretation, from some “tenured radical” (to borrow David Horowitz’s apt phrase). The students actually, get a real education, imagine that?
September 18th, 2010 | 10:22 pm
I would add, that one can purchase the entire Summa Theologiae, of Thomas Aquinas, from Ignatius Press. I cannot say enough good things about this wonderful, essential bookseller! So, if one cannot go to Thomas Aquinas college, at least read his greatest work!
September 19th, 2010 | 10:08 am
One thing to think about that has been left entirely unaddressed: if, “thirty or more years ago, the faculty began to become laicized,” you need also to understand that at that same time, Catholic colleges, as well as other private, and public colleges, began to rely on ever greater numbers of (lay, certainly) very low paid and benefited adjunct and contingent faculty. The tone of the phrase “social justice” may be dismissive on the part of some, but do remember that, at least in regard to part-time faculty, most Catholic colleges and universities are not living up to minimum standards of such a measure-most adjuncts must work at several or three jobs in order to make even a meager living. Cheers, Dr. Alan Trevithick, adjunct, Fordham University—and elsewhere, of course. More info! See newfacultymajority.info.
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