Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 4:33am

Some stirrings of discontent in U.S. Catholic higher education

 

It’s difficult to gauge precisely how many Catholics—in particular, those who are genuinely concerned about the Catholic identity of U.S. Catholic higher education—are feeling like Howard Beale, the fictional anchorman for the UBS Evening News in the film Network. Beale had a difficult time accepting the social ailments and depravity existing in the world he was reporting to his viewers. The image of Beale—his beige coat and wet, gray hair plastered to his head—standing up during the middle of his newscast and proclaiming, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” is arguably one of the most memorable scenes in cinematic history.

But, when it comes to U.S. Catholic higher education, the scene is memorable not because Beale had grown insane. No, it’s memorable because Beale was prophetic, correctly discerning the “signs of the times.”

Beale

Yet, although many of Beale’s viewers shared his outrage, they didn’t voice their frustrations. Why?

  • Perhaps some figured they would live their lives the way they saw fit and allow others to do the same. “Live and let live,” they thought. After all, who were they to judge?
  • Perhaps others figured those social ailments and depravity would eventually disappear, collapsing upon themselves of their own weight of the unhappiness they bring. Isn’t that what the natural law teaches?
  • Perhaps yet others lived in fear of those who were actively promoting those social ailments and depravity. They asked, as did Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”

For a very long time, some Catholics have been “mad as hell” about the direction U.S. Catholic higher education has taken. Yet, they have remained silent for whatever reason, just like many of Beale’s viewers. However, those Catholics may now be at the point they’re “not going to take this anymore.” Their decades-long, simmering discontent may be at the boiling point and close to boiling over. To wit:

  • A professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Randall Smith, recently argued in Aleteia that something must be done about those universities and colleges which self-identify as “Catholic,” yet are less-than-supportive of Catholic students, faculty, and Church teaching. Smith noted the hostility demonstrated at many nominally Catholic universities in recent decades that has rendered some of them what Smith called “hot-beds of anti-Catholicism.”
  • A Marquette University political science professor, John McAdams, recently posted an article at the Marquette Warrior in which he voiced his concern about the way the concept of social justice is communicated and typically understood at Marquette. McAdams noted how opposition to hot-button issues—like abortion and same-sex marriage—is not a part of the University’s version of social justice. “On the contrary, any opposition to gay marriage is called ‘homophobia,’” McAdams wrote.
  • James Schall, SJ, formerly a member of Georgetown University’s faculty, recently published “The Catholic Difference” at The Catholic World Report. In his post, Fr. Schall emphasized the importance of maintaining a Catholic distinction in this secular world. “Catholics see themselves being…separated out because of a radical cultural change that they did not always notice,” Schall wrote. However, this isolation “is not so much because of any specific doctrinal issue peculiar to Catholics but because of issues of reason and natural law concerning human life and family, the very pillars of civilization.” Losing sight of the search for truth through sober reasoning that’s rooted in natural law, Fr. Schall argued, those institutions are forsaking their Catholic identity at a time just when young people need to experience it most.
  • In Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching, a Providence College professor of English, Anthony Esolen, has argued that many of the nation’s Catholic universities and colleges have narrowed the rich tradition of Catholic social teaching. How so? By limiting it to papal writings of the last couple decades and, in particular, papal concerns about society in the post-industrial West. What this narrowing of the tradition has accomplished, Esolen believes, is to divide Church teaching into neat compartments—like sexual morality, marriage, family, and economics—rather than to present the integral whole that it is. In the end, “progress” has been made synonymous with “dispensing [with] the wisdom of the ages.”

The singular problem is the largely unchallenged motive that most academic administrators at those institutions have evidenced for nearly six decades. In short, they want their institutions to be exactly like their secular peers with a patina of Catholic—not too much, not too little, just enough to convince the folks that their institutions are genuinely Catholic. Moving those institutions in this direction is nothing new, tracing its history back to the Land O’ Lakes conference in the late 1960’s.

After nearly six decades, the outcome is a system of higher education that, in most of its policies, classrooms, and dormitories, consists of 240+ universities and colleges that are discernably similar to their secular counterparts.

For those Catholics who are frustrated with the current state of U.S. Catholic higher education, this history raises some fundamental questions:

  • If those institutions aren’t going to be distinctively Catholic and educate students in a decidedly Catholic body of tradition, for what purpose do they exist?
  • How would the virtue of justice adjure administrators who advertise and promote their institutions as “Catholic” when their fundamental motivation is to imitate their secular peers?
  • If a student is not going to receive a distinctive education in the Catholic tradition, is this not tantamount to “false advertising” or, worse yet, theft for charging tuition for something that’s knowingly not going to be provided whole and intact?

When conservatives raise questions like these, they are routinely accused of being interested only in “indoctrinating” students. However, it’s the conduct of those making this accusation that ought to be critically examined. Have they not been using “Catholic” social justice as their Trojan Horse to indoctrinate students into their ideology?

That long-term project and its success is what makes conservatives “mad as hell.” Evidently, some of them are “not going to take this anymore” and are beginning to speak out.

 

 

 

To read Randall Smith’s article, click on the following link:
http://www.aleteia.org/en/education/article/should-catholic-universities-be-subject-to-bishops-accreditation-5327231924568064?

To read John McAdams post, click on the following link:
http://mu-warrior.blogspot.com/2014/11/marquette-how-do-we-deal-with-students.html

To read Fr. Schall’s article, click on the following link:
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/3502/the_catholic_difference.aspx

To learn about/purchase Anthony Esolen’s book, click on the following link:
http://shop.sophiainstitute.com/Reclaiming-Catholic-Social-Teaching-P738.aspx

To read The Motley Monk’s daily blog, Omnibus, click on the following link:
http://richard-jacobs-blog.com/omnibus.html

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Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Sunday, November 23, AD 2014 2:35pm

Higher education for today’s Catholic. Liturgy for today’s Catholic.
“Music” for today’s Catholic.
Schedules for today’s Catholic.
Holy day Ascension moved to Sunday for today’s Catholic. Christmas Eve used to be meatless and the first Celebration took place at the first moment of Christmas Day – midnight. Now mass is celebrated about 4:30 and get that religious obligation out of the way and done with. For the children. The power and mystery of the Christmas proclamation is not heard.

Mary De Voe
Sunday, November 23, AD 2014 7:35pm

“What this narrowing of the tradition has accomplished, Esolen believes, is to divide Church teaching into neat compartments—like sexual morality, marriage, family, and economics—rather than to present the integral whole that it is. In the end, “progress” has been made synonymous with “dispensing [with] the wisdom of the ages.” ”
.
“Progress” in a circle, as the world is a globe, always arrives at the beginning. Our culture has stagnated and become a stinking cesspool. The going in a circle is the flushing of a toilet. What the “progressives” have lost is their concept of and their acceptance of creativity, imagination and abstract thought, contemplation, meditation and prayer to enlighten the mind and inspire the human soul. The “progressives” are jealous, so jealous, they could kill. And they do kill the younger, stronger, more intelligent and creative newer generation. The “progressives” do this by enforcing their mindless compliance with its stagnated ideology upon the youth of our nation. My way or the highway, because I am the One.. The One WHO?…is cowardly afraid to admit his mortality…to small-minded to engage a greater mind…to evil to encourage academic excellence…legion.

“What’s in a name? A rose is a rose is a rose by any other name?”

trackback
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 12:01am

[…] – Dr. Ed Peters When Gov’t & Values Conflict – Strahlen Smith, Catholic Stand Failure of Catholic Higher Education – The Motley Monk, TACthlc Crd. O’Malley Expands on Provocative 60 Minutes Interview […]

Rick
Rick
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 6:12am

There is a program in place to subvert authentic Catholicism at the college level. It started at ND in the 1960’s with Fr. Hessburg, John D. Rockefeller and government money. The tentacles are spreading wider and into willing institutions. The way to stop it, is to reveal the connections and ask for staff, both teaching and administrative, to be removed. The other method involves empowering parents and students with substantive information that allows them to choose an authentic catholic college to attend. The Newman Guide is a nice resource in this regard.

missy
missy
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 6:48am

I hope that the parents who truly care and are paying attention will make a quiet change. We took our 9th grade son to an open house at Christendom College on Saturday. It was a gigantic breath of fresh air. The director of admissions said that statistics show that 80% of Catholic children lose their faith when they go to college. For at least 4 years, I’ve been saying that I won’t be paying someone $30,000 a year to steal my child’s soul. I hope that my “loud voice” influences other people.

Kevin
Kevin
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 9:45am

The same thing has happened in our grammar and high schools.

c matt
c matt
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 8:40am

Only way to change it – stop HIRING their graduates. Problem is, the more secular catholic colleges have stronger secular reputations, and that translates into the job market, which translates into desirability by students. Bishop after Bishop could revoke the identity of every CINO university, and it would hardly make a dent in enrollment – they probably fear it would increase it. Fact is, 99.99% of people go to college to get a job, not an education.

cermak_rd
cermak_rd
Friday, November 28, AD 2014 11:21am

c matt is absolutely right. I went to college to get the training to have a career. In my case, I went to Loyola University of Chicago and graduated with a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science. It has served me well. It being a Jesuit institution, also did get some education, I took course work in Literature (Russian, English and Poetry); Philosophy (medical ethics, Des Cartes, Freud, Marx, Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas); theology (I took a minor in this with coursework in Hebrew, Greek, Scripture, Judaism and Catholic theology); and others. Even these courses, though, I worked in and learned with the purpose of making myself a more rounded person that would be more likely to be employable, not for its own sake, though some of the content was interesting.

I see no reason for a young person to go into debt learning “Great Books” if it does not make them more employable than they were before taking the coursework.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, November 28, AD 2014 3:58pm

Quoted from the 1944 proclamation: “. . . eternal truths and magnificent principles . . . ” These are found in the great works from ancient to contemporary from Christian and pagan art, literature, history, philosophy, etc. They are vital to every man and woman in her/his work and in his/her life.
.

Sadly, today colleges/universities not only peddle contemporary, puerile paganism they project onto the classics the muck and mire. This is deleterious to man and woman.

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