Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

I cannot let the patronal feast day for universities, especially Catholic universities, as well as theologians and philosophers pass by without some mention. St. Thomas Aquinas was the epitome of what it means to be a Christian with a vocation in higher education. He had a tremendous intellect that was made even more unique, and effective, by his heroic humility. His adoption of Aristotelian philosophy shows that he believed in an authentic academic freedom.  But for sure, it was not the tiresome demands for liberty without responsibility which is too often trotted out today by faculty at Catholic universities.  They demand their private “rights” to error over against the rights of the schools, students, and benefactors who pay their salaries.

Authentic academic freedom is freedom to pursue the truth in the manner appropriate to the discipline. In research and in teaching, this means submission to the authority established by the discipline. For example, one cannot unilaterally demand that one’s own contradictory views on say, Newton’s laws of motion, be substituted for what Newton actually said under the guise of academic freedom. One cannot say that one’s own formulation that contradict’s Kirchoff’s is really Kirchoff’s Law. In every discipline one experiences constraints.  It is in fact, those constraints which themselves define the discipline.

This is very apparent in almost every field except for some reason, when it comes to what it means to be a Catholic university and the teaching of Catholic theology. These two items coalesce, in a way, in an article from the American Spectator commenting on the recent flap about Rick Majerus and his position at St. Louis University. The author of the article, George Neumayr, discusses this controversy in the context of a lawsuit that was filed against SLU, ironically, in the building of the basketball arena. It seems that SLU was given an $8M tax abatement to begin building the sports arena and the local Masons didn’t take kindly to the abatement (or perhaps the building) for many reasons. As is fitting with their history, the Masons brought suit in federal court arguing that government money should not be given to religious schools.

Neumayr wryly observes that the Masons tried to prove that SLU was a Catholic university while the Jesuits “provided evidence that the school hasn’t taken Catholicism seriously for years.” He goes on to illustrate how faithfully Majerus manifests his Jesuit formed intellect:

The Jesuits at SLU haven’t said much so far, but Majerus isn’t apologetic, wheeling out the familiar cart of feeble bromides. “I think religion should be inclusive. I would hope that all people would feel welcome inside a church, and that the church would serve to bring people together, even if they happen to disagree on certain things,” he said.

Where did Majerus pick up his progressive patter? At another Jesuit university, Marquette. Finding himself in a pickle, he is invoking this fine educational pedigree: “I’m very respectful to the archbishop, but I rely on my value judgments, thanks to my education at Marquette, which is a Jesuit institution, just like St. Louis. That Jesuit education led me to believe that I can make a value judgment. And my value judgment happens to differ from the archbishop’s. I do not speak for the university or the Catholic Church. These are my personal views. And I’m not letting him change my mind.”

Personal values have replaced the concept of truth for so many in Catholic education of all levels today, not just the Jesuit. Almost all of these dissenting “Catholic” universities still want, for some strange reason (could it be economic??), an affiliation with their Catholic roots but only on their own terms.

Not to pick on the Jesuits, but representative of this thinking is an article in the Seattle Times by the president of another Jesuit university, Fr. Stephen Sundborg, president of Seattle University. His op-ed piece looks back on his first ten years as the president of the school with 10 of his greatest lessons learned. At number four he lists the importance of academic freedom and at number nine he lists the importance of being a university and Catholic.  Once gets the sense that the order reflects the importance but of the Catholic identity with respect to academic freedom and being a university vs. its Catholic identity. His description of the importance of the school’s Catholic identity is not particularly enlightening and though it does seem a bit at odds with SLU’s position, in trying to intuit what he means one needs to look at it in the overall context of his article…and apparently the importance of the school’s Catholic identity would extend to the now common redefinition of the faith as just another articulation of social concerns.

On this feast of Thomas Aquinas it is a good time to pray for Catholic education and Catholic educators, especially in higher education. We must pray that we once again recover our intellectual birthright that was traded away for secular porridge at the 1967 Land O Lakes conference. We should pray that Catholics who send their children to Catholic schools and universities once again be given the breadth and depth of the Catholic intellectual tradition and the thinking skills which will allow them to see how intellectually vacuous most dissent actually has become. This is the only antidote to the trend towards intellectual suicide that has been exhibited in western higher education in general, and in most “Catholic” education in particular, in the last half century or more.

St. Thomas, pray for us!