THE CONCENTRATION IN CATHOLIC
SOCIAL TRADITION
1. Mission
Statement/Rationale
"The Catholic character at Notre
Dame as an academic community depends upon the seriousness with which the religious
dimensions of all human learning are recognized, given priority, and explored
throughout the University.
The University embodies its deep
concern for the religious and moral education of the students not only in the
academic reflection brought to bear upon ethical and social issues but also in
its encouragement of a manner of life consonant with a Christian community."
-- The Mission Statement of the University
of Notre Dame
"It must be asked how many Christians
really know and put into practice the principles of the church's social doctrine."
-- John Paul II, Tertio mellennio
adveniente ("As the Third Millennium Draws Near")
In 1998, 803 students graduated from
the College of Arts and Letters. 539 students received undergraduate degrees from
the College of Business Administration. The Colleges of Science and Engineering
and the School of Architecture graduated 335, 252, and 44 students, respectively.
152 students completed their ROTC training and are now officers in the military.
102 undergraduates went to law school. 146 proceeded to study medicine.
These students are following the
pattern of previous graduates of Notre Dame, who have moved to advanced leadership
positions in a broad spectrum of social spheres, including in politics, law, business,
education, the media, and the military. In the political sphere, these positions
include or have included the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of the Interior,
congressional leaders from Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, and Kentucky, the
Governor of Puerto Rico, and the President of Panama. In the legal sphere, graduates
have become, for instance, Judge of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, New Mexico,
Attorney General of California, and judge on the Minnesota Supreme Court. Notre
Dame graduates in the business world have become Chairs, Presidents and/or CEOs
of numerous companies, including Texaco, Motorola, Bank of America Illinois, Haggar
Company, Leo Burnette Advertising Agency, Mobil Corporation, Dean Witter, and
the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The impact of the University's graduates on higher
education in the United States is evident in the fact that they serve or have
served as the presidents of nine universities other than Notre Dame. Graduates
have also taken positions of leadership in the media, including executive producer
of "Nightline," writer for The Tonight Show, Jim Lehrer Newshour political analyst,
senior writer at Newsweek magazine, and nationally syndicated talkshow host. Finally,
graduates in the military have risen as high as the rank of general in the Army
and Secretary of the Air Force.
The questions which the University's
Mission Statement brings to these graduates and to the University itself are these:
For those graduates who are Catholic, are they entering into their professional
lives as Catholics? And for those graduates who are not Catholic, are they
entering into their professional lives influenced by a set of values consonant
with those put forth by the University in which they spent their formative years?
To put the matter in terms appropriate to a Catholic university, do our graduates
understand and practice their professional and public life as a vocation?
Ignorance of and relative silence
on the Catholic social tradition is common among American Catholics. The American
Catholic bishops echo the Popes concern, quoted above, that Catholics do not know
the church's social doctrine. In their document, "Sharing Catholic Social Teaching:
Challenges and Directions," they point out that, "Catholic social teaching is
a central and essential element of our faith." They go on to observe that, despite
that central place, "our social heritage is unknown by many Catholics. Sadly,
our social doctrine is not shared or taught in a consistent and comprehensive
way in too many of our schools." This lack is critical precisely because the "sharing
of our social tradition is a defining measure of Catholic education and formation."
A study conducted by David O'Brien, the Loyola Professor of Catholic Studies at
the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts confirms the insights
of John Paul and the bishops. It found that even though "almost but not all schools
reporting offer courses which deal with Catholic social teaching," Catholic social
teaching, "most likely remains a well kept secret even on these campuses...There
are few programs which offer students the chance to pursue questions of social
justice in a systematic way."
In light of the fact that graduates
of Notre Dame assume positions in society of great power and authority and that
the University itself aims to offer a setting that shapes its students in ways
consonant with the Mission Statement, a proposal for the Concentration in Catholic
Social Tradition was put before the College Council and passed in December 1998.
The program formally begins autumn 1999. The aim of the Concentration is to provide
a specific programmatic instance of the University's commitment to Catholic identity.
Catholicism offers a long-standing
and profound tradition of thought and teaching that addresses, from a normative
standpoint, the full range of social spheres. It does so through a constellation
of concepts that, taken as a whole, give articulation to a coherent yet variegated
vision of the good society. Such concepts include those of solidarity, the common
good, the just wage, human rights, the free economy, subsidiarity, and the option
for the poor. Sources for the tradition go back as far as the Bible and develop
even in the early church fathers. Medieval writings on topics such as usury and
the origins and proper exercise of kingship bring an unprecedented level of detail
to Christian analysis of the just society. Pope Leo XIII inaugurates Catholicism's
effort to bring its social tradition to bear on industrial society in his 1891
encyclical, Rerum Novarum (The Condition of Labor). Since then, popes have
drawn upon Rerum Novarum and the social tradition to broaden and develop
Leo's set of concerns in encyclicals often titled -- as with Pius XII's Quadragesimo
Anno, Paul VI's Octogesima Adveniens, and John Paul II's 1991 Centesimus
Annus -- in accordance with their relationship to the earlier document. In
doing so, the popes and the Second Vatican Council have addressed issues ranging
across all spheres of social life from the family to the state to the church.
The U.S. bishops have made sophisticated application of these teachings to the
specific circumstances of the United States.
The University's Mission Statement
itself draws from core concepts of the Catholic social tradition when it says,
"Together with these liberal capacities of mind, the University cultivates in
all its students a humane sensitivity both to human accomplishment and to human
misery....Such a sense of human solidarity and a developed concern for the common
good reaches its fulfillment as learning becomes service to justice."
In offering a concentration in Catholic
Social Tradition, Notre Dame poses its questions to its current undergraduates:
For those of you who are Catholic, will you enter your professional lives as
Catholics? And for those of you who are not Catholic, will you enter your professional
lives influenced by a set of values consonant with those put forth by the University
in which you have spent such formative years? Will you understand and practice
your professional as well as personal life as a vocation?
2. Marks
of the Concentration
Four characteristics will mark the
Concentration in Catholic Social Tradition and give further specification to its
content:
1. The University's mission statement
holds that Notre Dame "seeks to cultivate in its students not only an appreciation
for the great achievements of human beings but also a disciplined sensibility
to the poverty, injustice, and oppression that burden the lives of so many. The
aim is to create a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that
will bear fruit as learning becomes service to justice." In keeping with the Catholic
social tradition itself and the University's Mission Statement, we will emphasize
both the "disciplined habits of mind" and the "disciplined sensibility" in service
to justice. We will accent the first through an offering of coursework and course
requirements that is every bit as intellectually rigorous as the best programs
at Notre Dame. We will address the latter by offering the opportunity for and
in some cases requiring service learning and internships where the students are
called upon to bring the Catholic social tradition and their service/internship
observations into critical conversation.
2. With regard to the disciplined
mind dimension of the Concentration, we will foster a spirit of interchange reflective
of the Catholic ideal of civil society. In doing so, we will present the Catholic
social tradition in a way that cuts across the divide between "conservatives"
and "liberals" both as these options are defined in intra-ecclesial disputes and
as they are presented in American public discourse. The Catholic social tradition's
contribution to contemporary debates is reflected in the fact that it is not reducible
to any of these polar options. We believe that making this contribution depends
in large part on staying in conversation with all parties. Here we follow John
Courtney Murray, who defines a civil society as that place where persons are "locked
together in argument."
3. With regard to the disciplined
sensibility in service to justice dimension of the Concentration, the primary
emphasis will be on service through professional vocation, with secondary, though
significant, emphasis on voluntary avocation. This is the case for two reasons.
First, there are already resources for undergraduates at Notre Dame to participate
in voluntary service. Second, avocational voluntary service, while laudatory,
by itself constitutes an insufficient response to the Catholic social tradition.
This is all the more the case if avocational voluntary service is allowed to stand
side by side with a professional practice that knows little or nothing of the
norms of the Catholic social tradition. Allowing such a bifurcation would constitute
a failure in the mission of the University. A concentration in Catholic Social
Tradition will provide one means of fostering a life among Notre Dame's students
that integrates the personal and the professional. As indicated above, the emphasis
on service through professional life is particularly important at Notre Dame because
its graduates often move on to take positions of high-ranking leadership and considerable
power that impact the lives of many persons in a broad spectrum of social spheres.
4. In keeping with the Catholic social
tradition's attention to the full range of social spheres -- science and technology
as well as business, politics, and culture -- the concentration will seek to involve
all of the colleges of the University. The charter "Report of the College of Arts
and Letters Committee on Concentrations" (June 24, 1982), writes of a "longstanding
recognition that the world is not neatly divided into disciplines...In fact, the
disciplinary boundaries may lead to a kind of intellectual parochialism among
our students." The concentration in Catholic Social Tradition seeks to take these
insights a step further by involving the whole university. While the administration
of the Concentration will be centered in the College of Arts and Letters, we will
seek to have representation of all of the colleges/schools in three ways. First,
we will seek to have liaisons to the committee in every college/school in the
University. Second, we aim to have courses cross-listed from as many colleges
as possible. Third, as stated above, the Concentration and the courses it offers
will be open to students from all of the colleges to the degree that their majors
permit the curricular time to pursue it.
3.
Curricular Structure of the Concentration (Total: 15 Credits)
Core Seminar: Understanding and
Living the Catholic Social Tradition (3 credits)
This course will have three components:
1) The close reading of classic texts of the Catholic Social Tradition, particularly
but not exclusively the papal and conciliar documents from Pope Leo XIII's Rerum
Novarum to John Paul II's Centesimus Annus. Other texts will include
source documents (e.g. writings by Thomas Aquinas and Augustine) and contemporary
appropriations (e.g. writings by liberation theologians and neo-conservatives).
Requirement: Short papers of critical analysis and responses, intensive class
participation; 2) Immersion in professional context. Each student will find a
placement in a location similar to that student's anticipated profession. The
student is to observe, interview, and to the extent possible participate in the
life of the setting. For instance, the students can observe a law or architectural
firm or a medical practice. The director and the executive committee will develop
a list of placements or the student can seek one out on her own, which must then
be approved by the director. Requirement: keep an ongoing journal as a "pastoral
ethnography" of the setting (an interpretation of the practice in the setting
in light of the Catholic Social Tradition); 3) Final project: each student is
to articulate or construct a setting in his or her anticipated profession in light
of the Catholic Social Tradition (e.g. imagine and construct what a law firm/health
clinic/ad agency would look like if it practiced in light of the Catholic social
tradition.). The pedagogical goals and means of this course requires that it be
a seminar (no more than 15 students).
Colloquia and Social Concerns
Seminars (total: 3 credits)
Three 1-credit colloquia/social concerns
seminars with at least one colloquium and one social concerns seminar. In keeping
with the goal set out by Dean Roche in his 1997 Christmas Address, four one-credit
colloquia will be held in the dorms each year.
Social concerns seminars are one-credit
courses lodged first within the Department of Theology and often cross-listed
with other Departments.
Electives (total: 9 credits)
Three three-credit electives from
a list of approved courses prepared each semester by the Catholic Social Tradition
Committee, the last of which will serve as an "exit level" course and be so designated
by the Concentration Committee.
For one of the electives, we encourage,
but do not require, students to do an independent research project (e.g. write
a major paper) in conjunction with an internship that relates to their professional
plans (e.g. broadcast, publishing, news, or community service internship). The
project would involve reflection on that internship in light of the Catholic social
tradition. Members of the Concentration Executive and Advisory Committee will
serve as directors of the research. The Committee includes R. Scott Appleby (History),
Jay Dolan (History), Patrick Gaffney, CSC (Anthropology), Joseph Incandela (St.
Mary's Theology), Maura Ryan (Theology), Kathleen Maas Weigert (American Studies/
Center for Social Concern), Paul Weithman (Philosophy), and Charles Wilbur (Economics).
Other
Students will be encouraged, though
not required, to write a senior essay, in the department in which they are majoring,
that in some way reflects the interdisciplinary concerns developed in the Catholic
Social Tradition. Such an essay will not be counted as a course in the Concentration,
but rather will be viewed as the result of carrying the concern of the
Concentration into the heart of the student's discipline.
Students may approach members of
the Concentration's Executive and Advisory Committee for advice on any and all
matters.
4.
How to Become a CST Student
1. Any student of any major throughout
the university who is interested in the themes of the Catholic social tradition
may elect the Concentration.
2. Make an appointment with Professor
Todd David Whitmore, Director of the Concentration, to begin work on a schedule
of courses. Professor Whitmore can be reached at Whitmore.1@nd.edu (e-mail) and
631-6407 (phone).
3. Complete the application form
that appears at the end of this guide and turn it in to Professor Whitmore. Professor
Whitmore's campus mailing address is Department of Theology, 130 Malloy.
4. Pick up the form for "STUDENT
ACADEMIC PROGRAM SELECTION" in the Arts and Letters office, 101 O'Shaughnessy.
After securing the required signatures from the offices of the Dean of your college,
the department of your major, and Professor Whitmore for the Concentration, bring
the form to the Registrar's Office. You will then be officially listed as a Concentrator
for purposes of enrollment in CST courses. [Note: the Concentration will not be
listed on your transcript until it is completed. However, your current class schedules
and unofficial transcripts will be sent to the CST office.
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