Identity and the Catholic University: Culture or Epistemology? (original) (raw)
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St. Thomas University (STU) is a very successful liberal arts school. What is not clear and yet remains a somewhat muted controversy is whether STU continues to be a successful Catholic-Christian university. The recent Commission on Post-Secondary Education in New Brunswick articulated the challenge: “St. Thomas needs to decide whether it is a public institution with a proud Catholic heritage or whether it is a Catholic institution open to the public.” This paper examines this issue from both a philosophical and theological perspective arguing that it’s resolution has important social and cultural implications for both Catholics and non-Catholics. We will draw upon the arguments of two prominent contemporary Catholic philosophers, Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre, in suggesting that STU should not only remain a Catholic university but its Catholic character should be enhanced for three fundamental reasons: the weight and lessons of history, the creative ferment and challenges in contemporary events, and our hope for a humane future. This paper further argues that Catholic-Christian philosophy and theology should play a central role because of the need to resist the fragmentation arising in higher education because of the economic pressures for increasing professionalization and specialization of disciplines, and because of the need for both teachers and students to have some sense that through their mutual education and research they are participating in a shared understanding of the world and of what it means to be human.
Jesuit Universities: Tradition, Renewal and New Goals
Lumen. A Journal of Catholic Studies, 2018
This paper builds on a study of Western education by John O'Malley, which identifies two rival yet complementary traditions: the Aristotelian tradition of a pure search for knowledge, exemplified by the university, and the Isocratic tradition of forming persons with the rhetorical skills required to change society. The paper shows how these two traditions were combined in educational goals propagated by the Society of Jesus and how they continue to influence education today. In particular the Isocratic tradition is a challenge to the dominant model of the university today.
The Catholic Intellectual Tradition and Sacred Heart University
Sacred Heart University Review, 1998
Neither an individual nor an institution is well served by neglecting a continuing reflection on its nature and identity. This is true of all times but especially in a period like our own which is marked by profound cultural transition. Our continuing growth and development as a university depends, in part, on our ability and willingness to continue to reflect on what we are and what our purpose is.
Christian Higher Education, 2012
By the mid-19th century, liberal protestant universities had allowed their religious identity to slip away. During the same period, Catholic institutions had maintained their religious identity. Catholicism's stance against modernist thought had held the day. In the 1960s, the Aristotelian-Thomistic hegemony was broken, allowing for a pluralistic approach. Today, many Catholic institutions continue to struggle with their ecclesial and university identities. Evangelical Protestant universities, represented in part by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), have maintained a solid religious identity. They suffer from similar tensions as their Catholic counterparts. The influence of secularized society, finding competent and faith-filled faculty, and the difficulties in maintaining funding impact their religious mission. This essay examines ways in which Catholic and Evangelical Protestants might learn from one another how to enhance religious identity, honor ecclesial tradition, and maintain integrity as both a religious and a higher education institution. Catholic higher education at the beginning of the 21st century continues to struggle with its Catholic identity. On August 15, 1990, Pope John Paul II issued an Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities, named Ex Corde Ecclesiae, translated as From the Heart of the Church. In this document, he called the Catholic universities of the world, a large number of which are located within the United States, to examine their Catholic moorings. In order to understand the nature of Ex Corde Ecclesiae one needs to read both the pastoral section of the document and the General Norms that follow it. In the pastoral section, the underlying theme is that of "witness." This witness is manifest in a number of ways. On a basic level, professors and administrators act as witnesses of the Christian message by their own living out of the academic vocation. Pastoral ministry in the university provides an opportunity for students, staff, faculty and administration to "integrate religious and moral principles with their academic study and nonacademic activities, thus integrating faith with life." (Dosen, 2000, p. 175) Manifested in the opportunities that are afforded to students, faculty, and staff to develop their own lives of faith, the outreach that is provided by the university community to both church and society in light of both research and service, and finally the unique service that the Catholic university-and every Christian university-provides in critiquing the contemporary scene from the lens of faith and revelation. Catholic identity, from this perspective, provides opportunities for
Editorial Introduction to Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal
Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal, 2012
Jesuit higher education in championing, advancing and/or critiquing the great Jesuit tradition in teaching and learning. The journal aims also to expand and deepen conversation concerning Jesuit higher education by engaging important thinkers in educational theory and practice and other leading intellectuals who raise-big questions‖ in the world today. As an interdisciplinary journal, its scholarship has a broad reach but it shares core values and aspirations widely represented in Jesuit academies of higher learning. These common distinctives include intellectual rigor, development of the whole person, ethical inquiry and reflections, spiritual development, concern for social justice, global awareness and integration. 1
The Catholic University as Promise and Project: Reflections in a Jesuit Idiom
Journal of Law and Religion, 2001
Preface xv volume in the subsequent year. 9 If Adams' great work was to display and weigh one form of higher education as it actually existed and had been experienced, Newman's was to argue the university as it was defined in theory and desired in intention. However attenuated Christian commitments might be found at Harvard, they were the source of the integrity of the university for Newman. 10 He could speak of the university as the product of the Church and of this in its turn as the issue of faith, but for Adams that could not be. "If he were obliged to insist on a Universe, he seemed driven to the Church," wrote Adams about himself, for "the Church alone had asserted unity with any conviction. .. but the only honest alternative to affirming unity was to deny it; and the denial would require a new education." 11 For Newman that sense of unity found its embodiment in the university, in its circulus artium, and was realized in the product of university education, the philosophic habit of mind. Newman held as axiomatic that the Catholic university, like any university, bore as its determining goal this "cultivation of the intellect." It was a cultivation that made "discriminating convictions" possible. Students graduating from universities without this liberal education and the unity of mind it imparted were forever impoverished: they possess "no principles laid down within them as a foundation for the intellect to build upon; they have no discriminating convictions and no grasp of consequence." This was to be another great divide between description and desire. Both Adams and Newman raised the question about the purpose and character of a university education. If Adams reluctantly found that the social de facto predominated over the mental development of the student, Newman framed the purpose of the university emphatically in terms of the latter: Our desideratum is, not the manners and habits of gentlemen;-these can be, and are, acquired in various other ways, by good society, by foreign travel, by the innate grace and dignity of the Catholic mind;-but the force, the steadiness, the comprehensiveness and the versatility of intellect, the command over our own powers, the instinctive just estimate of things as they pass before us, which sometimes indeed is a natural gift, but commonly is not gained without much effort and the exercise of years. This is real cultivation of mind. 12 Affixed to the Georgian mansion opening onto St. Stephen's Green that once served as the new university's first home, a modest plaque still recalls Newman's government as rector-as well as the later presence of Gerard Manley Hopkins as professor of Greek and of James Joyce as
Rethinking Catholic Education: Experiences of Teachers of a Catholic University
Catholic education is closely linked to the evangelical mission of the Church. As such, the primary intent of Catholic education is to proclaim the message of salvation to all people. Accordingly, Catholic education aims to provide an integral formation with a religious dimension that will equip the human person to become life, work, and mission ready and attain salvation. But given the contemporary socioeconomic , cultural, political, and technological milieus characterized by a secular and consumerist view and praxis, the value of Catholic education may have been obscured or affected. Thus, this paper aims to investigate and analyze the views and practices of the faculty of a Catholic University about Catholic education. The purposive sampling method was used to determine the participants in the study. Using a qualitative research design, the data were gathered from the participants using the face-to-face interview method. Aided by the phenomenological method, the findings discovered semblance in the participants' views and practices of Catholic education with that of Catholic Church. Despite the observed undesirable elements that obscure and marginalize it, Catholic education faithfully remains a Catholic. But making religion as the core of the curriculum of Catholic education is still a great challenge for Catholic schools to realize. Thus, the collaboration of all stakeholders is vital to address this perennial challenge in Catholic education.