Catholic Education and the "Mind of Christ"
In the summer of 1967, the "Land O'Lakes" era in Catholic higher education began. In its essence, the Land O'Lakes Statement about Catholic higher education was a declaration of independence from Church authority, insisting that "institutional autonomy and academic freedom" were essential to the "survival" of Catholic institutions. In more than 30 years of teaching both undergraduate and graduate students at non-Catholic private, state, and federal colleges, I have encountered, only rarely, Catholic students whose catechesis might be considered even marginally satisfactory in moral theology, Church history, biblical knowledge, apologetics, and liturgy.
Many of these students emerged from their "Catholic education" not only largely ignorant of Church teaching but, in fact, antagonistic toward it. Instead of moving toward the ability to evangelize "in season and out of season" and to "convince, rebuke, and exhort" (2 Tim. 4:2) for the faith, as we hope our educated Catholic laity will do, these young men and women often have a deficient or defective knowledge of the faith. Not only do they not know; they do not know that they do not know.
Test this: Ask graduates of Catholic colleges about, say, Baring, Belloc, Bernanos, Brownson, Chesterton, Dawson, Day, Lewis, the Maritains, Newman, Percy, Pieper, Sayers, Waugh. Ask them about their favorite encyclical. Ask them about Scripture and Tradition. Ask them about the Mass. Ask them about Church teaching, especially in the realm of personal morality and formation of conscience. Ask them about relativism, religious indifferentism, subjectivism, and the natural law. You will most likely be having a conversation as if with deer caught in the headlight. They will not know of Pope St. Pius X, of course, but what he wrote in 1905 is terribly true today, despite — or is it because of? — progressive (which is to say autonomous and free of Church "interference") education:
"It is hard to find words to describe how profound is the darkness in which they are engulfed and, what is most deplorable of all, how tranquilly they repose there. They rarely give thought to God, the Supreme Author and Ruler of all things, or to the teachings of the faith of Christ" (Acerbo Nimis, n. 2).
Invited to speak recently at one west coast Catholic college, I was rather rudely ignored after I completed the lecture. I asked one fairly friendly professor where my chief mistake had lain. "You mentioned John Paul," he said. He recognized that I had not understood his point. "He's a man," he said. I had committed the sexist error of referring . . . to the Pope. At a lunch preceding the lecture, I had greeted one nun with a convivial, "Good afternoon, Sister." I was icily admonished: "I am Doctor 'Smith'!" With all the aplomb that makes me glad that I never became a diplomat, I reflexively responded: "I'm sorry, Sister." That was a pretty good rejoinder. I only wish I had been genuinely quick enough to think of it: l'esprit de l'escalier!
At another Catholic college where I was invited to speak, the head of the "religious studies department" (not "theology," of course) is a practical pantheist, noted for once telling the diocesan bishop, who had asked him where he was during the college's opening Mass, that he (the professor) was with God in the great outdoors rather than inside (a church) with a wafer. One might thus be reminded of Malachi: "You have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction" (2:8).
From the Midwest comes the story of another head of the religious studies department — a nun — who insists that the Blessed Virgin Mary was raped by a Roman soldier, resulting in the birth of Jesus. Meanwhile a woman Episcopalian priest insists that she is also Muslim — interesting Christology! She is now teaching New Testament at . . . a Catholic college. And one repairs to canon 803, §2: "The instruction and education in a Catholic school must be grounded in the principles of Catholic doctrine; teachers are to be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life."
The web site of one eastern Jesuit college recently featured the photo of one of its undergraduates with the happy news that he is growing in his Muslim faith there. Although it's fine that he is learning more about his own faith on that campus, one dares to hope that he is also appreciating more about the Catholic faith. Despite the teaching of Dominus Iesus (which was itself nothing new), the idea that a Catholic college ought to be renewing and restoring the faith of its Catholic students and arousing non-Catholic students' interest in Catholicism (DI [n. 22] points to other religions' "gravely deficient situation") seems to have been forgotten. "Conversion" is thought to be "triumphalist." One does not see much about truth on the web sites of our "Catholic" colleges, despite the adjuration to be found in Ex Corde Ecclesiae: "It is the honor and responsibility of a Catholic university to consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth" (n. 4).
In this Pope John Paul the Great was echoing the much earlier adjuration of Pope Leo XIII: "The more the enemies of religion exert themselves to offer the uninformed, especially the young, such instruction as darkens the mind and corrupts morals, the more actively should we endeavor that not only a suitable and solid method of education may flourish but above all that this education be wholly in harmony with the Catholic faith" (Inscrutabili Dei Consilio [1878], n. 13).
Canon 810 insists that "teachers . . . appointed in Catholic universities . . . besides their scientific and pedagogical qualifications [must be] outstanding in integrity of doctrine and probity of life [or] . . . they [will be] removed from their function when they lack these requirements." In faculty contracts, there at one time was common reference to "moral turpitude," evidence of which would lead to the summary dismissal of a teacher. In a society in which the president of the United States struggles to define is, we can hardly expect, after all, to be able to define moral turpitude.
A Plain, Simple Man
The president of one Catholic institution took a national stand against the Vagina Monologues on his campus. As an alumnus of that institution, I was surprised — and delighted — by his show of courage and conviction. Shortly thereafter, however, he abjectly retreated, changed his mind, and surrendered.
A few hardy faculty members on the campus protested the volte-face, including one priest-historian who challenged the president's surrender by writing: "By your decision you move us further along the dangerous path where we ape our secular peers and take all our signals from them . . . You were called to be courageous and you have settled for being popular. This is not your best self. This is not genuine leadership." But such examples of presidential moral cowardice, tragically, can be multiplied endlessly.
Another Catholic college frequently hosts presidential contenders at debates. When I wrote to the president of the college — a Catholic priest — to suggest that the college had no business offering platforms to pro-abortion candidates, he seemed thunderstruck at the very idea that the college might publicly stand for Church teaching about the sanctity of life amid the carnage of abortion. He thanked me for my "interest in the college," and asked me, in my future writing, neither to identify the college or him. He was, after all, just a simple man, trying to do his best as a college president.
I wanted to remind him of the words Robert Bolt puts into the mouth of St. Thomas More as his jailer goes about his peremptory tasks, ignorant of a higher duty and demanding pity because he is a "plain, simple man": "Oh, Sweet Jesus! These plain, simple men!" One understands, more and more, the meaning of James that "not many of you should become teachers [or presidents of Catholic colleges]," for you . . . shall be judged with greater strictness" (3:1).
True Education
The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College: What to Look for and Where to Find It identifies 20 American and one Canadian college as those which "most faithfully live their Catholic identity." One non-Catholic professor and colleague of mine promptly sniffed that these 21 colleges, together, do not academically equal one Georgetown. He just as quickly dismissed my rejoinder that, although academic excellence is the goal of any serious educational institution, the premier purpose of a Catholic college is to "preach Christ crucified" (1 Cor. 1:23). He involuntarily (I think) laughed at that. I did not expect him to understand. I did and do expect Catholic college administrators to understand.
Is canon 795, moreover, now irrelevant to contemporary Catholic education? "Since true education must strive for complete formation of the human person that looks to his or her final end as well as to the common good of societies, children and youth are to be nurtured in such a way that they are able to develop their physical, moral, and intellectual talents harmoniously, acquire a more perfect sense of responsibility and right use of freedom, and are formed to participate actively in social life."
What is the Aristotelian final end or cause which Catholic students discern when their Catholic campus tolerates, or even encourages, practices which the Church teaches are sinful? One notable Catholic college has begun an academic program in LGBTQ Studies (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer). One web site maintains that this college "has a large lesbian / gay faculty and staff caucus." On various other Catholic campuses, there are activities such as lectures by dissident theologians and pro-abortion leaders, faculty members who promote pro-abortion or euthanasia policies, pro-abortion and homosexual student clubs, queer film festivals and drag shows, condom distribution, rampant sexual activity in campus residence halls, and "sex columns" in campus newspapers.
Called to the beauty of a campus consecrated to the cause of Christian truth in order that he or she may contemplate what is true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and gracious (Phil. 4:8), today's Catholic student too often is immured in a whited sepulcher, outwardly appearing beautiful, but inside filled with "all uncleanness." Perhaps of the administration of those colleges, one might say that they appear righteous, but are within "full of hypocrisy and iniquity" (Matt. 23:27-28).
All of this is supplemented by honorary degrees given by some Catholic colleges to national figures who are strongly opposed to the moral teaching of the very Church in whose service the college awarding the degree supposedly exists.
Soul Sickness
In a book little known and rarely used on today's campuses (The Intellectual Life), Fr. A.G. Sertillanges, OP, asks: "How will you manage to think rightly with a sick soul, a heart ravaged by vice, pulled this way and that by passion, dragged astray by violent or guilty love?" That souls can be, and very often are, "sick" seems a basic truth of the faith often ignored, neglected, or even lampooned on many Catholic campuses. But if Fr. Sertillanges had it right, we cannot think well when we are soul-sick. Pascal taught as much in saying that "man is obviously made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now, the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its Author and its end" (Pensées, n. 146).
In too many supposedly sacred spaces and places, the "Author" and the final end or cause have been driven out by the profane and the sacrilegious. Our campuses, instead of helping to sanctify the world, are desecrated by it, and, instead of being the light, are disseminating the darkness.
The heart of Catholic education lies in understanding that "for freedom Christ has set us free" (Gal. 5:1), and the concept of freedom for excellence has been well explained by Fr. Servais Pinckaers, OP (see The Sources of Christian Ethics, chapter 15). Whereas the secular world whispers that we are free to do as we choose, the Church, following its Lord, tells us that we are free to do as we ought, requiring, of course, proper education in virtue to know, love, and serve as we are rightly destined and divinely commanded to do. But "ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 407). That the Church and its colleges are our teachers (see CCC nn. 890, 892, 1269, 2032, 2039) is not in keeping with the spirit of Land O'Lakes or with the currents of the day.
We live at a time of the Magisterium of the Mirror — at a time when, too often, we discover right from wrong, honor from shame, and vice from virtue by consulting the face in the mirror. Ayn Rand, it seems, is not dead. And President Dorian Gray of "St. Autonomy College" smiles approvingly.
At a time when society needs the witness and wisdom of Catholic learning, too many of those commissioned to teach as Christ taught instead accept the sophistry of the times, the relativism of the day (much as Cardinal Ratzinger told us as he entered the conclave), and the "deceitful wiles" (as Eph. 4:14 has it) of some leaders whose consciences are formed, not by the Magisterium of the Church, but by the aforesaid narcissistic Magisterium of the Mirror. Some of those "leaders" are, of course, in politics; some are in education. And one is reminded, in great sadness, of this distressing line from Matthew: that our foes "will be those of [our] own household" (10:36).
And some of them — perhaps many of them — hold degrees from Catholic institutions, originally founded to inspire students to follow and serve Him who is the way, the truth, and the life, but who learn, instead, to follow the way of the world, knowing and loving "the praise of men more than the praise of God" (John 12:43; cf. Gal. 1:10).
A number of Catholic theologians teaching at Catholic institutions have adamantly (I prefer the adverb arrogantly) refused to sign the mandatum (which is an acknowledgment by Church authority that a Catholic professor of a theological discipline is teaching within the full communion of the Catholic Church), protesting that such was an invasion of their "academic freedom."
The problem with this, of course, is that certain "Catholic professor[s] of a theological discipline" — and here one thinks of Fr. Charles Curran (officially a non-Catholic theologian since 1986) — may offer the wolf of their personal agenda in the sheep's clothing of authentic Catholic teaching. Fr. Curran was just recently asked to speak in Texas at, naturally, a Catholic university. (To his credit, Bishop Gregory Aymond of Austin, Texas, formally objected to Curran's talk because of Curran's opposition to Church teaching on birth control and homosexuality.)
We must understand that Catholic parents who knowingly send their sons or daughters to corrupted Catholic colleges are materially, and perhaps even formally, cooperating with evil. Those parents are entrusting the Christian education, the religious formation, and the moral development of their children to institutions which mock the very faith which inspired their founding and which denigrate, disparage, or deny the tenets of the faith "which comes to us from the apostles."
It is a conviction and it is language that one, regrettably I think, hears only very rarely today, but let it plainly be said: Parents who knowingly enroll their children in corrupted Catholic secondary schools or colleges are deliberately jeopardizing the souls of their children. Parents, to be sure, "should teach children to avoid the compromising and degrading influences which threaten human societies" (CCC, n. 2224; see also n. 1783).
Bearing Witness To The Light
Where do we look for redress? The example and teaching of the Lord is the "Mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:16), which Catholics believe we know through His one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church (CCC, n. 752). We look to our bishops to hand on the faith — and to insist, to demand, to ensure that others who teach the faith and who instruct the faithful do so with fidelity. The Code of Canon Law is quite clear about this: "The conferences of bishops and diocesan bishops concerned have the duty and right of being watchful so that the principles of Catholic doctrine are observed faithfully in . . . [Catholic] universities" (canon 810:2).
"Even if it is in fact Catholic, no university is to bear the title or name of Catholic university without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority" (canon 808). And John Paul the Great: "[A Catholic university possesses] that institutional autonomy necessary to perform its functions effectively and guarantees its members academic freedom, so long as the rights of the individual person and of the community are preserved within the confines of the truth and the common good" (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, n. 12; my emphasis). This statement, increasingly taken seriously and increasingly applied seriously, ends the deleterious effects of the Land O'Lakes debacle, for it asserts that the Catholic institution is of and about and for Christ and His Church.
Can we imagine the outcry when a brave bishop rightly denies the title Catholic to a high school or college in his diocese? But where is it, exactly, that bishops (and the rest of us Christians) are promised accolades from secular society when we follow Christ? It was Pope Pius XI who wrote in late December 1929 in Divini Illius Magistri that "the true Christian, [the] product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges, and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ" (n. 96). We are called — certainly our bishops are consecrated — to bear witness to the Light. So are the presidents and Catholic professors at the colleges preparing our lay Catholic leaders for the 21st century.
We will have the leadership we deserve. God help us.
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(James H. Toner is a deacon of the Diocese of Colorado Springs, Colo. His newest book, Worthy of the Promises: Building Catholic Character, is forthcoming from Borromeo Books. He recently served as "Distinguished Visiting Chair of Character Development" at the U.S. Air Force Academy. In July, he will join the faculty of Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Conn.
(For those interested in Deacon Toner's book, you may write him care of The Wanderer. If you already have decided to order the book and wish to expedite delivery you may order it for the price of $15.95 from Borromeo Books, P.O. Box 7273, St. Paul, MN, 55107.)
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