A Full Commitment of the Catholic University to the Church's Evangelization

by Fr. Edward J. Berbusse, S.J.

"It is only in the Christian message that modern man can find the answer to his questions and the energy for his commitment of human solidarity." With these words Pope Paul VI spoke to the College of Cardinals in 1973, and in 1975 exhorted the Episcopate, clergy and faithful of the whole world. He insisted that it is our heritage of faith that must be preserved in its untouchable purity and presented to the people of our time. These words repeat for us our constant belief that we must hold fast to Divine Revelation, received from Christ and preserved by the Church that is enlightened by the Holy Spirit. It is in this union of faith and in this communion of those who are loyal to Peter's See that we grow strong. We love Truth, preach it fearlessly, and believe that it must influence every aspect of our private and public life. In this conviction we face the question: What is the role of the Catholic university, in its commitment to Truth? What must be its self-discipline when Catholic faith is violated within its walls? Is the Catholic university primarily a bulwark of freedom, or of Truth? What commitment must it make to the Truth that is the very life of the Church? How can it witness to the integral Christian message that modern man seeks? Will the Catholic university, as the Church, be a pillar of Truth for all men, a challenge in their search for Truth?

The Fatal Dilemma of Catholic Teaching Today:

Today, Catholic educational institutions — on all levels, from the university to the grammar school — are faced with a fatal dilemma. They are pressured to adapt themselves to modern thinking, to an educational philosophy that is a secular humanism, that is atheistic, obsessed with technological values, and limited to the cosmos. They weakly protest their loyalty to Christ and the Church, while involving themselves in innumerable compromises with secular values. Many Catholic institutions, on the grammar and high school levels, are testing the philosophy and techniques of "Values Clarification". These atheistic attempts to desensitize youth from the values of the home and religion are effectively indoctrinating our youth with their only absolute, the self, under the guidance of the "new humanists". In the so-called "morals education" of Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg, youth is to be freed of the limitations of Law & Order (in Stage 4 of his Scale in Maturity) and raised to the Stage 6 of autonomous conscience, formed on the basis of "self-chosen principles". By the time that the student has reached the university, he is already indoctrinated with a set of "values" that deny God, Divine Revelation, Sacramental Life, and an infallible Church. Such a formation is a challenge to the Catholic college that admits these students of the "new Humanism". If it is truly Catholic, its acceptance of the battle becomes both fearful and merry: fearful because, in every aspect of human knowledge, its commitment is to lead youth to Christ and into conflict with the false spirit of the world; merry because the Catholic teacher knows that God's grace can surmount all obstacles, and that he must preserve the humor and humility of the Christian soul.

The challenge is serious. However reluctantly, we must admit that most of our Catholic colleges and universities in the United States have either completely secularized, or have so compromised Catholic teaching that recognition of Catholic identity is difficult. Instead of maintaining an identity with the Church, the university has adopted Freedom as its ultimate value. Truth has become a pawn, easily moveable in the game of relativity to the times. In 1967, at the Congress of the Catholic Universities of the world — held in Land O' Lakes, Wisconsin — the principle was clearly stated:

the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.

From this statement it is apparent that the larger percentage of the Catholic institutions represented were not willing to submit themselves, as institutions, to the teaching Church in matters of faith and morals; nor about to enforce Christian morality as a condition for living on the Catholic campus, nor censure the heresy and obscenity in campus journals. Such universities had swung from a one-time commitment to the Faith, to a broad license in speech, activity and teaching. Soon thereafter both parents and pastors saw radical changes in the belief and Catholic practice of their children. The Catholic institution had become an obstacle to Catholic education; it had taken on the mantle of "secularism", only to become a teacher of the new humanism. Its commitment to Catholicism was only an historical relic, if there was any at all. No longer did university "directives" give a Catholic character to the institution. In fact, the radical elements in faculty and student body vehemently demanded anti-Catholic lectures, to test the absolutism of their academic freedom; and the campus periodicals ventured into an adolescent expression of blasphemy and obscenity. The Administration, meantime, looked on with fear and simulated unawareness. They had to avoid violence, they said; or were in danger of losing aid from the State; or had even become victims of the New Left whose slogans they tirelessly expressed.

The Subtle Undermining of Catholic Integrity:

With much greater subtlety and with careful rationalization certain Catholic educators have attempted to convince the bishops of a new university style. It is labelled Catholic, but in reality gives evidence of mere remnants of Catholicism. Ten years ago, these architects of the "secularization" of the Catholic university spoke of a change from the old style of a university committed to Catholicism to a new posture, called "Catholic presence" This attempt to make individual witness to the Faith a substitute for institutional witness has unfortunately succeeded. It has converted the former Catholic university into a completely autonomous body. It has denied to the Church's magisterium an integral role in the university. These architects of destruction now speak in vague terms of "the interplay between the university and the Christian community," or of "building up an overall Christian orientation;" other institutions are to be limited to "a restricted presence of Christianity." Lastly, some institutions are said to be without the "capacity to accept a Christian dimension"; and will have to move "in the direction of a fully secular university that by the signs of the times it should become." Such a process, they tell us, is not to be labelled a defection, but, rather, an "embracing of human values that the Church ought to respect." The journey of this confused reasoning on the Catholic university ends in their assertion that the main question is not whether it is in essence a Catholic university, but what it is "doing to be truly Catholic." Such architects maintain that the university has a free choice to bring the transcendental into its life; that it will determine "the form of Christianity in the life of the institution"; and that a "spirit of creativity" will expand the institution's commitment to the Church.

This confused theorizing on the Catholic university's relation to the Church is characteristic of the New Liberalism. It is a liberalism of contradictions, since on the one hand it insists on an absolute academic freedom for the university, while on the other it gives a lip service to the institution's commitment to the Church. The result is that the Catholic institution commits itself to the Church only when there is no conflict with its secular purposes. This explains why most Catholic institutions of higher learning in the United States have provided a platform for bitter attacks on the substance of Catholic faith and have tolerated immorality on their campuses. In a word, the commitment to academic freedom has been integral to its university life, while any loyalty to the Church and its teaching has been either a pale velleity or a mere matter of words.

In asking why the modernist Catholic university has bothered to express this vague commitment to the Church, we are reminded that it is not expedient to break openly with the magisterium of the Church. In 1972 when the FIUC (Federation of Catholic Universities) met in Rome, a select group of Catholic educators repeated their "right" to be a separate and autonomous academic community whose primary purpose was "to search for truth." Their platform was the Land 0' Lakes statement of 1967. But, to their chagrin, their philosophy of Catholic education was subjected to review by the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Institutions. In April, 1973, the Sacred Congregation — with Papal approval — noted the serious lacunae of the FlUC's document; and demanded that emendations be added to the document. These expressed:

1) the need for each Catholic university to set out formally and without equivocation, either in its statutes or in some other internal document, its character and commitment as 'Catholic'; and

2) the necessity for every Catholic university to create within itself appropriate and efficacious instruments so as to be able to put into effect proper self-regulation in the sectors of faith, morality and discipline.

The Sacred Congregation further noted that no Catholic universities are to be "removed from those relationships with the ecclesiastical hierarchy which must characterize all Catholic institutions." And, finally, the Congregation insisted that "the consciences of all who work in these universities" are committed to "sec to it that the conditions it sets out arc satisfied in every university which calls itself or would be "Catholic'." Obviously this is a disciplinary teaching of the Church in its ordinary magisterium; and we can presume that there is a wealth of philosophical and theological reasoning behind it. Let us review these fundamental principles.

Fundamental Principles of Christian Education:

By the Incarnation, God has transformed all nature. Christ has become not only the spiritual but also the temporal sovereign of the world; and only through Christ is it possible to fully understand man. And so our intelligence — created to turn fully to God — must accept grace in Christ as its full enlightenment. The task of the Church, says Etienne Gilson, is to "recall to men the corruption of nature by sin, the weakness of reason without Revelation, the impotence of the will to do good when it is not aided by grace." This fact is ever threatened by a naturalism that invades the Church, with the hope of returning it to paganism, today to the heresy of "secular humanism". We know that Christ did not come to save men by science or philosophy, though these will be helpful instruments in serving Eternal Truth. While preserving an autonomy within their proper disciplines, they will humbly minister to theology which is a study of the word of God. Theologians, in turn, must be humble before the Word of God that has been entrusted to the Church which ever is protected by the Holy Spirit. And the Church is not amorphous in its composition, but is guided in its visible structure by a magisterium that draws the successors of the apostles into union with Peter. The true Christian disposition of mind is to listen to His word, express it as does the Church, and discipline our costly and sterile excursions into areas of research where the truth has already been defined.

In Pius XI's Encyclical on the "Christian Education of Youth", we are taught that 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." In the Declaration on Christian Education of Vatican II, we are told that "many children... are deprived of a suitable education — one inculcating simultaneously truth and charity." A true education is defined as one "directed towards the formation of the human person in view of his final end." Moreover, the Fathers of the Council insist that "young people have the right to be stimulated to make sound moral judgments based on a well-formed conscience and to put them into practice with a sense of personal commitment, and to know and love God more perfectly." They are to be trained to live in the "new life" of grace, to give witness and contribute to the growth of the Mystical Body. These rights are to be first recognized and inculcated by the parents who have authority in the home, the "domestic Church". The Church with its prime duty of teaching Christ and the means of salvation will augment the teaching in the family. Civil society must recognize the duties and rights of the parents; and, in its providing for the common good in temporal matters, must never frustrate the spiritual formation of youth.

Since it is true that family, Church and civil society must, in different ways, contribute to the spiritual formation of the child, it is obvious that the university — most especially the Catholic university — must never be a moral or physical cooperator in the deforming education of youth. Prescinding from the question of the non-Catholic university's role in the education of Christian youth, we need to recognize the fundamental commitment that the Catholic university must make to the teaching of the Church. In Gravissimum Educationis, the Fathers say:

In the institutions under its control the Church endeavors systematically to ensure that the treatment of the individual disciplines is consonant with their own principles, their own methods, and with a true liberty of scientific enquiry. Its object is that... the convergence of faith and reason in the one truth may be seen more clearly.

Herein, the Fathers of the Council respect the particular disciplines of the university and a "true liberty of scientific enquiry," while noting that the truths of the Faith will never conflict with the true use of reason, since there is one truth. They remark that this has ever been the method used by the "doctors of the Church and especially St. Thomas Aquinas." Finally, the graduates of such Catholic universities are prepared "to be witnesses in the world to the true faith."

The seriousness of this question is reflected in a recent report on the "tentative findings" of a mixed commission, set up by the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education. In reflecting on pastoral action in the university, it stated that:

Catholic universities should be considered not only as milieux to be evangelized, but also and essentially, as pastoral instruments of the Church ('pastoral' not only as indicating a specialized activity within the institution, but as qualifying its whole way of being and acting); whereas non-Catholic universities are a milieu in which Christians, as members of the Church, undertake pastoral activity.

Accordingly, a Catholic university "must have substantive value as the basis for the university's identity and inspiration of its activities." It "may not maintain dualism between faith and culture by a mere juxtaposition of professional courses or scientific research on the one hand, and on the other, courses of 'Catholic culture' or 'religion'." The teaching and research personnel must have the "twofold qualification of Catholic faith and academic excellence." To this end it is advised that there be norms for judgment and directives for action "in communion with the bishops who hold responsibility." From this we can see that Truth, not Freedom, is the great purpose in the efforts of the university. And from Cardinal Newman we can draw rich insights into the. commitment that is special to the Catholic university.

Newman: Church is Necessary for University's Integrity:

In discussing the role of the Church in the life of a Catholic university, Newman says:

"Ecclesiastical authority, not argument, is the supreme rule and the appropriate guide for Catholics in matters of religion"; and "it always has the right to interpose." He accepts as a principle that the Catholic university is committed to Catholic Truth; that Freedom is abused, when it serves arbitrary impulse rather than objective truth. In the bishops, most especially in the Chair of Peter, he sees the infallible authority that gives guidance to Catholics. Students should not be deprived of that guidance when they enter into a Catholic university. Rather, more serious should be the commitment of the universities, since they have the intellectual formation of others in their care. In such a sacred labor they need the Church's aid.

The student in a Catholic university has the right to expect that his gift of faith will be nourished; and, since faith is in part an intellectual act with truth as its object, he trusts that knowledge of his faith will be increased.

Theology is an integral part of university education; it guides all other sciences and arts in the center of learning, when they touch upon the ultimate meaning of man's life. It, as a science, is in turn guided by the teaching Church that has authority and inerrancy in interpreting truly the deposit of faith left by Christ. As Newman says, "religious truth is not only a portion, but a condition of general knowledge." The objectivity of its truth cannot be left to the speculations of theologians, for they too must be corrected by the Church which alone is infallible. There can exist no false pluralism, that is, contradictory teachings admitted as equally authentic within the Church. "Catholicism is one whole, and admits of no compromise or modification." So real is this to Newman that he insists that "reason, rightly exercised, leads the mind to the Catholic faith, and plants it there, and teaches it in all its religious speculations to act under its guidance." How different from the mind of the Modernist! How sharp the contrast with Liberalism which Newman described as the "antidogmatic principle". Liberalism, he says, is:

the mistake of subjecting to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of it, and of claiming to determine on intrinsic grounds the truth and value of propositions which rest for their reception simply on the external authority of the Divine Word.

This same Liberalism is rampant in the Church today. It sets up a "magisterium of theologians" in opposition to the Divinely established magisterium of the bishops in union with the Pontiff. It would force the Church to engage in an Hegelian dialectic with the world and its sciences. It would subject the Church's teaching to man's reason, make all its doctrine a product of induction, and demythologize its Scripture according to Bultmann. This is the "religion of the world" against which Newman contends:

Philosophies and religions of the world have each its day, and are parts of a succession. They supplant and are in turn supplanted. But the Catholic religion alone has had no limits; it alone has ever been greater than the emergence, and can do what others cannot do... Her wonderful revivals, while the world was triumphing over her, is a further evidence of the absence of corruption in the system of doctrine and worship into which she has developed.

Pausing in our reflections on the profound insights of Newman on the super-human nature of the Church, we ask how any Catholic university can place itself outside the protective teaching of the Mystical Body of Christ. How can it erroneously adopt a secularist prerogative of academic freedom as superior to the Truth that is Catholic? How can the university place itself outside the Catholic pale and survive as Catholic? It cannot. As Newman says:

A direct and active jurisdiction of the Church over it and in it is necessary lest it should become the rival of the Church with the community at large in those theological matters which to the Church are exclusively committed — acting as the representative of the intellect, as the Church is the representative of the religious principle.

The modern Catholic university has made utility and naturalistic values the practical test of its truth — while weakly protesting its catholicity; and so has come to "measure and proportion Catholicism by an earthly standard." The Church's teaching is clear, defined in language that is understood, if one may judge from the opposition that its doctrines arouse. Its dogmas, principles and writings are often a sign of contradiction to worldly principles. Its role is to sanctify what God has made good, and to restore to its right place what man has spoilt.

Newman's Full Commitment of University to the Church:

Newman would have no citadel of secular knowledge in the 'Catholic university; but, rather, a full commitment to Christ, the Eternal Word of God, the Source of all truth in science and Revelation. He stated succinctly the purpose of the Catholic university:

When the Church founds a university, she is not cherishing talent, genius, or knowledge, for their own sake, but for the sake of her children, with a view to their spiritual welfare and their religious influence and usefulness, with the object of training them to fill their respective posts in life better.

In this purpose, there is no room for secularization, for equal rights of heterodoxy. When error and truth are considered equally expressive of the university's philosophy, a corrosive relativism in doctrine and morality has set in. Such a university can no longer be called Catholic. The true Catholic university can never be satisfied with the merely visible or intelligible; it must reach out in all its studies to the Eternal and Infinite. It must give a preferred place to Divine Truth, and see all things in the light of the Eternal Word. It needs the Church to relate authentically reason and Revelation.

As an Anglican, Newman saw the ravages of the principle of Liberalism (the anti-dogmatic principle) within that church. He feared a Protestantism that opened the door to reason's taking over the work of the Church in interpreting Revelation by the inductive method. In particular, he saw its effect on Scripture:

Protestantism treats Scripture just as they deal with nature; it takes the sacred text as a large collection of phenomena, from which by an inductive process, each individual Christian may arrive at just those religious conclusions which approve themselves to his own judgment. It considers faith a mere modification of reason, as being an acquiescence in certain probable conclusions till better are found.

As a Catholic, Newman loved the Church, respected its authority, and submitted to its teaching with the humility of a child. The lesson for us is patent. The Catholic university must listen to the bishop on matters so sacred as the interpretation of Scripture, most especially when the Pontiff has confirmed his teaching. As Newman says:

Where theology is, there she (the Church) must be; and if a university cannot fulfill its name and office without the recognition of revealed truth, she (the Church) must be there to see that it is a bona fide recognition, sincerely made and consistently acted on.

"He was wont to bow his head only to "legitimate authority." He was not impressed by the "ipse dixit of individual divines"; and was not moved by a false human respect. As he said, "I am too old to be frightened, and my past has set loose my future." All of us — bishops, priests, and laity — would do well not to be frightened by the novel doctrines of "individual divines". We will best be humble in faith, and so not be tempted by the lure that leads into the vortex of avant-garde postures.

Conclusion: Paul VI Speaks to the University:

The role of the Catholic university is clearly expressed in the words of Paul VI to the Gregorian University, when in 1972, he warned faculty and student body that:

The theological sphere of the university must be first and foremost in the service of faith. The university must ensure the orthodoxy of faith, which the Magisterium guarantees.

With even greater emphasis he said:

Do not be sowers of systematic doubt, nor corrosive critics of your heritage, nor rash experimenters of doubtful ways. Do not — God forbid — be destroyers of the faith in the minds of students and the faithful. But be educators, molders, models of this incorrupt faith, and of an untroubled intellectual liveliness; be pillars and supports of the faith of the People of God in the tasks entrusted to you.

In accord with the wish of the Vicar of Christ, we should labor that the Catholic university be fully committed to the Church in its teaching and apostolate. To place academic freedom above the Divine Truth is an irrational expression of pride and ignorance, especially in the attempt to bend Eternal Truth down to fit within its comprehension. As Maritain well says, "the Church is at one of those great moments of renewal. "The Catholic university must walk in step with the Church, or perish. It cannot too frequently reflect on the Divine words; "He who hears you, hears Me."

© Confraternity of Catholic Clergy

 

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