A. Purpose of
Project The primary purpose of the project is to address and help overcome the lack of knowledge and practice of Catholic social teaching on the part of American Catholics. We seek to fulfill this purpose through education at the college and university level when persons are still in their formative years. The Catholic identity of the University of Notre Dame, the high caliber of the institution, and its experience in establishing a program in Catholic social teaching makes it particularly well placed to carry out the project. It is an unfortunate fact that not many Catholics are aware of -- and far fewer practice -- their faith's social teachings. John Paul II writes in Tertio mellennio adveniente ("As the Third Millennium Draws Near"), "It must be asked how many Catholics really know and put into practice the principles of the church's social doctrine." The American Catholic bishops state in their document, "Sharing Catholic Social Teaching," that although "Catholic social teaching is a central and essential element of our faith," the fact is that "our social heritage is unknown by many Catholics." Catholicism's social tradition is a rich resource that, taken as a whole, is at once, a) a constellation of concepts and distinctions that gives articulation to a coherent yet variegated social theory -- one that is as fully developed as any counterpart, secular or religious -- and, b) the concrete social activities, both formally organized and informally inspired, of a community of people that seeks to practice what it believes. The constellation includes such concepts as solidarity, social justice, 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 1931 Quadragesimo Anno, Paul VI's 1971 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 economy to the church. The U.S. bishops have made sophisticated application of these teachings to the specific circumstances of the United States. Thus, the purpose of the project
is to contribute to the Catholic community's efforts to overcome this lack of
knowledge and practice of the social teaching on the part of Catholics by addressing
the problem at the college and university level.
The primary goal of the present project is to initiate the institution of programs in Catholic social teaching at twelve Catholic colleges and universities in the United States. One of the key reasons why Catholics do not know the social teaching is that the latter is not taught in a programmatic way in Catholic educational institutions. The American bishops comment, "Sadly, our social doctrine is not shared or taught in a consistent and comprehensive way in too many of our schools." The bishops' observation is confirmed by a recent study conducted by David O'Brien, the Loyola Professor of Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. The study found that Catholic social teaching "remains a well kept secret even on these campuses" because "there are few programs which offer the students the chance to pursue questions of social justice in a systematic way." Over the past five years a core group
of faculty at the University of Notre Dame have worked together with administrators
and students to establish the Program in the Catholic Social Tradition at the
university. Now, the Director of that program, Todd Whitmore, and the University
of Notre Dame seek to facilitate the establishment of like programs at other Catholic
colleges and universities. Here, we seek to serve less as a template than as a
catalyst. This is because the needs and resources of each college or university
will be different. Indeed, because of the variety of Catholic colleges and universities,
we will invite representatives from the full range of sizes and affiliations.
C. Outline of Design of Project The project will run from Fall 1999 through Summer 2002. 1. The core of the project is the facilitated activity of the participants in establishing programs in Catholic social teaching at their home institutions. This will take place over the 2000-2001 academic year. Because the core of the project is the actual establishment of programs of a particular sort, the first part of the design consists of five components that the project will require of each participant's new home program. We offer below what Notre Dame has done merely as illustrative of one way each requirement can be fulfilled. First, participants' efforts at their home institutions must indeed be programmatic. By this we mean that what is instituted must be comprehensive and systematic with regard to the social teaching and have an administrative center in the school. Many Catholic colleges and universities already offer occasional and scattered courses and events on select aspects of the social tradition, but this sort of an approach is inadequate as a response to the general ignorance of even educated Catholics with regard to the social teaching. Whether a program in Catholic social teaching is built within an already existing program (some Catholic colleges and universities have programs in "Catholic Studies") depends upon the circumstances of the school in question. Notre Dame has instituted an undergraduate "concentration" (an interdisciplinary minor) in the Catholic social tradition consisting of fifteen credit-hours of coursework. Second, the programs must be interdisciplinary. This is in keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of the social teaching itself, which draws on economics, political theory, sociology, and history as well as theology and philosophy. For instance, at Notre Dame the decision was made to make the undergraduate concentration part of a free-standing program rather than to subsume it under a single department. The executive committee of Notre Dame's undergraduate concentration consists of faculty from anthropology, history, sociology, theology, and philosophy. The program has a liaison from the Business School and courses are offered out of the Business School as well as the College of Arts and Letters. Discussions are underway with the College of Science. Third, the programs must provide both curricular and extra-curricular opportunities. This, too, is in accord with the nature of the social teaching as both an intellectual and lived tradition. In Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI denounces those who consider the social tradition "as a utopian ideal, desirable rather than attainable in practice." He adds, "Leo's encyclical" Rerum Novarum, written forty years earlier, "portrays more than an idealistic, though beautiful, picture of human society." He cites, for instance, the formation of worker unions and farmer associations as instantiations of the social tradition, arguing that the tradition is "both feasible and imperative." More recently, John Paul II, in writing Centesimus Annus in celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, firmly states, "Today more than ever, the church is aware that her social message will gain credibility more immediately from the witness of actions than as a result of its internal logic and consistency." In Notre Dame's case, the university seeks to place both the intellectual and the practical aspects at the core of its identity. It's mission statement calls for both "disciplined habits of mind," and "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." The university here is viewed as a place of high-caliber intellectual exchange of a sort where religiously articulated arguments receive neither automatic censure nor automatic privilege, but, like arguments of other kinds, engage their interlocutors through cogency and rigor. It also seeks to be a place where the results of that exchange manifest themselves in the life of the community. The Concentration in Catholic Social Tradition is every bit as intellectually rigorous as the best programs at Notre Dame. Extra-curricular offerings include forums (Michael Novak will be coming this Fall to debate Professor Whitmore on the merits of neo-conservative interpretations of the social teaching), semester-long symposia (this Fall will feature a discussion of "Catholic Social Teaching, Notre Dame, and Sweatshops"), service-learning (week-long projects in impoverished areas from Washington, DC, to Appalachia), and semester-long professionally oriented internships. Students are called upon to bring the Catholic social tradition and their service/internship observations into critical conversation. The emphasis on service through professional life is particularly important because graduates of Catholic colleges and universities 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, including in politics, law, business, education, the media, and the military. It is crucial to engage such persons and others well before they reach such positions. The formative years during college are an especially good time because the students are both gaining intellectual acuity and developing career plans. Fourth, because the emphasis is on teaching Catholic social teaching, participants are to utilize the resources of their home institutions to reflect particularly on the pedagogical dimension of the project: what are the obstacles to and possibilities for teaching, learning and living the substance of this specific literature? For instance, the University of Notre Dame has the John A. Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning to aid professors and students in this process. Fifth and finally, the efforts of the participants must be to establish programs with some permanency. It would be inadequate to the purposes of this project to establish terminal programs. While the "Teaching Catholic Social Teaching" project itself has an ending date, the intent is to provide the initial resources for longstanding programs. For instance, at Notre Dame the program
has negotiated a modest budget with the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters
while the University's development office is working towards raising a permanent
source of funding. 2. To aid the participant institutions in meeting these requirements, Professor Whitmore and the University of Notre Dame will provide a number of services and resources. a. Notre Dame will host two three-day working conferences, one in July 2000, the beginning of the academic year in which the participants will seek to establish programs at their home institutions, and the other in July 2001, which will serve to assess the year's progress. For the first conference, participants are expected to arrive with a draft of their plans. These drafts will serve as the basis of discussion. The aim here is for the participants to have proposals ready to take back to their college or university administrators. For the second conference, participants will present and discuss the results of their efforts and reflections on the problems and possibilities of their programs in the future. With both working conferences, Notre Dame will distribute the written materials a month in advance so that the Director and the conference participants can best make considered comments and efficient use of the three days. b. During the 2000-2001 academic year, the Director will make monthly telephone calls to each participant to discuss progress and provide advice. c. Also during the 2000-2001 academic year, Notre Dame will make available to the participants the resources of its John A. Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning, particularly to those participants who do not have similar resources at their home institutions. d. Also during the 2000-2001 academic year, the Director and Notre Dame will provide the electronic means for the project participants to stay in communication with each other. The primary mechanisms for this will be a web page and an electronic "chat room." The Director will provide monthly summaries of these discussions for the participants. e. In early
spring 2001, the Director will gather information from the monthly conversations
and the electronic exchanges to issue a mid-term report that he will make available
to the participants so that they have a ready overview of what has and has not
been successful across the colleges and universities. D. Plans for Disseminating Results There will be four main dissemination results: 1. The first result will be the very development of the programs at the colleges and universities. Here, the project itself is the dissemination. 2. After the second working conference, the Director will draft a summary report and prospectus that he will first distribute to the project participants for comment. After revising in light of their comments, he will distribute the report/prospectus to college and university teachers and administrators, and church officials at both the national and diocesan levels. The aim is to have the project serve both the academy and the church well into the future. 3. The participants will be required to expand and make more thematic their reflections on their experiences in establishing programs in Catholic social teaching. These expanded reflections will take the form of article-length essays. The Director will edit these manuscripts and bring them together into a coherent volume to be published by a press that has a reputation for reaching both academic and educated lay audiences. The Director will invite an editor from the press to the working conferences. 4. The Director
will also solicit and edit articles from select participants to appear in journals.
Journals under consideration are Teaching Theology and Religion, Commonweal,
America, The Christian Century, and U.S. Catholic. E. Statement of Plan to Evaluate Results: The summary report/prospectus mentioned above, which the Director will distribute in its final form at the end of summer 2002, will assess both programmatic and written outcomes. With regard to the programmatic outcomes, the report/prospectus will address these questions: Case by case, what has been instituted since the start of the project at the college or university of each of the participants? Are there patterns or trends in either the opportunities for or obstacles to programs in Catholic social teaching? What are the future prospects in each case? What are the future prospects nationwide? With regard to the written outcomes, the report/prospectus will ask the following: Have the book and articles been published or accepted for publication? Where? To the extent discernable at this point, how have the book and articles been received? |
