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Christopher Wolfe

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May 15, 2009 4:00 A.M.

After Obama

On the direction of Catholic higher education.

 

It was not particularly surprising that Notre Dame invited Pres. Barack Obama to give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree. What was surprising was the firestorm of outrage his decision provoked.

The reaction has included not only websites dedicated to the controversy — NotreDameScandal.com and NDResponse.com — but also one specifically aimed at recruiting donors to withhold money from Notre Dame — www.replacejenkins.com. Even more important, at least 68 American bishops — including luminaries such as Francis Cardinal George of Chicago and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York — have publicly taken Notre Dame to task for honoring the most dogmatically pro-abortion-rights president in U.S. history. Some have asserted that Notre Dame’s action directly contravenes the U.S. Bishops’ 2004 statement asking all Catholic institutions to avoid giving platforms or awards to politicians or public figures who deny the basic human rights of children in the womb.

Notre Dame’s ambivalence about its Catholic identity has been noted frequently, but never by this many people, and never by so many leading members of the Catholic hierarchy. And those who follow these issues know that Notre Dame is in no way unusual in this regard — it is representative of most mainstream American Catholic universities.

But will the outcry simply die down, leaving the status quo in place? Will this occasion stimulate any serious thinking about the direction of Catholic higher education? This should be a matter of interest to non-Catholics as well as Catholics, because Catholic universities educate three-quarters of a million students annually, and because concern about the secular liberalism dominant in academia today cuts across denominational lines.

If serious Catholics and their sympathizers want to consider new strategies for reinvigorating Catholic higher education, they might consider the following four options.

1) Support current American Catholic universities only by carefully targeting programs and individuals within them. Some mainstream Catholic universities have programs that are well-known for their commitment to classical understandings of Catholic education, in which principles of faith are brought to bear throughout academic and student life. These are similar to programs at secular universities that resist the dogmas of contemporary secular liberalism and make serious offerings available to students (the best known of which is the James Madison Program at Princeton University). At Notre Dame itself, for example, the Center for Ethics and Culture (under the directorship of a non-Catholic) has championed John Paul II’s vision.

As knowledgeable philanthropists increasingly understand, donations need to come with clear and enforceable strings attached. University administrators and development officers work for large gifts that can be used at the unfettered discretion of the school and its faculty. How many donations have been given by alumni and other donors with the intention of supporting authentic Catholic education, and have then been applied to programs and scholars that simply follow the lead of elite secular institutions? (One thinks of the Stillman Chair at Harvard Divinity School, donated by the great Catholic benefactor Chauncey Stillman, first held by Christopher Dawson but subsequently filled with a string of disaffected Catholics.)

2) Abandon today’s mainstream Catholic universities, and focus on providing Catholic education at prestigious secular schools. What is the largest Catholic college in the state of Illinois? Well, practically speaking, you could say that it’s the University of Illinois, which has more Catholic undergraduates than any of the formally Catholic universities in the state. Why not establish a first-class Catholic formation program — or, in the case of Illinois, support an already existing one? The Newman Center in Champaign (unlike many other university Newman Centers) has for years provided an excellent broad-based program of Catholic piety and teaching. Likewise, the Lumen Christi Institute offers superb intellectual opportunities for students at the University of Chicago, bringing in outstanding national and international speakers.

Another variation of this strategy — suggested to me by a thoughtful Catholic businessman — would be to build Catholic student residences at major universities. To build a great Catholic university, he argued, would take one of two things: a billion dollars, or at least 40 years. Why not (now) go to the best universities in the nation and establish Catholic residences there — conceding the weekly 15 or 18 hours of class time to the university, but then providing a strong program of Catholic intellectual resources and spiritual formation during the many other hours of the week?


3) Support the small flock of current Catholic universities strongly committed to Catholic education, traditionally conceived. There are a number of different lists of such schools (e.g., ISI's Choosing the Right College or the Cardinal Newman Society’s guide), and an increasing number of Catholic parents are using them as resources when they choose colleges for their children. Many of these schools have very public commitments to be loyal to Catholic teaching.

These colleges are usually small teaching colleges, with a primary focus on undergraduate education. Among the better-known institutions are Thomas Aquinas College, with its excellent Catholic Great Books seminar program, and the University of Dallas, which has an especially strong classical Christian curriculum. Southern Catholic College, Wyoming Catholic College, and Ave Maria University are some of the latest undertakings of this sort.

4) Support the establishment of a university that aspires to compete with major secular universities. This would be a form of the “40-year” plan referred to above. Besides strong undergraduate teaching in the Catholic intellectual tradition, Catholics need to think about a long-term effort to create a university that not only aspires to provide a good undergraduate education, but also aims to engage the best of secular universities and intellectuals, and to provide graduate education. (Both the Federalist Society and the James Madison Program provide examples of effective efforts to sponsor serious discussion among representatives of diverse views.)

It is tempting to think that, given the resources required for such a task, a better plan would be to “re-take” one or more of the larger mainstream Catholic universities. Perhaps this could work, but it seems unlikely. There was some such hope when Father Jenkins (a solid Thomas Aquinas scholar) was appointed president at Notre Dame, and especially after he thoughtfully raised the issue of the Catholic character of the university in a speech about The Vagina Monologues on ND’s campus. His subsequent collapse in the face of overwhelming faculty pressure on that issue, and then his invitation of Obama, are indicative of the likely futility of such hopes. Given tenure, the number of non-Catholics and disaffected Catholics on faculties, and the jealous hold of academic departments on most hiring, transforming major Catholic universities is highly unlikely, and, if it did occur, would probably also fall in the 40-year-project category.

Despite the difficulties of starting a new university, we can hope that, as the legacy of John Paul II and Benedict XVI works its way through the Church, many of the resources now being committed to universities ambivalent about their Catholic identity may be re-directed more fruitfully. If it is a 40-year plan, though, perhaps it would be best to get going on it soon.

Which of these strategies should be adopted? Well, we all have our favorites, but I think it would be a mistake for serious Catholics and their allies to confine themselves to one strategy. True, having different people pursue different strategies will disperse limited financial resources, and make any one of them somewhat harder to accomplish. But by pursuing various strategies they will reach a wider range of people, and the various strategies can move at somewhat different paces over time. What is important now is to take advantage of the moment to foster a serious conversation on these questions, and to advance the overall project of reinvigorating Catholic higher education.

— Christopher Wolfe is emeritus professor of political science at Marquette University and co-director of the Ralph McInerny Center for Thomistic Studies.