On the failure of American Catholicism

Can Catholic higher education renew?

     I have been a Catholic all my life, although in the last thirty years primarily as identity rather than actual practice; and as a young man, I spent eleven years as a student and teacher in Catholic higher education.  Reflecting my Catholic identity and in accordance with my desire to observe what is going on in all areas of society, I subscribe to The Catholic World.  There I came across an article by Conor B. Dugan reviewing a biography of Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, the well-known president of the University of Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987.  The biography, entitled American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh, was written by Wilson D. Miscamble, a member of the Holy Cross Order and a history professor at Notre Dame. 

Fr. Theodore Hesburgh and Notre Dame

The secularization of the Catholic university

     Dugan reports that Miscamble delved into the subject of Hesburgh’s life in order to understand more deeply the ambiguous legacy of Notre Dame as a Catholic university, where on the one hand, the theology department, the law school, the McGrath Institute for Church Life, and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture fulfill Hesburgh’s mission of establishing Notre Dame as a great Catholic university; and where on the other hand, “large swaths of the University . . . have all but forgotten their Marian Patroness and the Church from which the entire Notre Dame project springs.”  The latter tendency has caused many conservative and traditional Catholics to conclude that “Notre Dame is merely a secular school with a Marian name.”

     For Miscamble, the root of the problem was that Hesburgh did not give sufficient attention to the practical steps necessary for developing a university of excellent quality that is also committed to the Catholic faith and the teachings of the Church.  And this defect may have been a consequence of Hesburgh’s greater confidence in the standards of academic excellence as defined by the secular world, as against the standards of the ecclesiastical authorities.  This orientation was reflected in Hesburgh’s work in transferring the governing authority of the University of Notre Dame from the Holy Cross order to a joint lay-religious board.  In addition, Hesburgh convened in 1967 the Land O’Lakes Conference, which emitted a statement by presidents of major American Catholic universities declaring that Catholic universities ought to have institutional autonomy from Church authorities.  In this way, the major research universities of secular society became the model for excellence.  And Notre Dame became committed to becoming accepted in academia on the basis of the standards formulated by the secular academic world.

     I would submit that in hindsight it has become increasingly clear that the standards of the secular academic world are not worthy of embracement by Catholic higher education in its difficult journey of seeking acceptability among American institutions and yet preserving fidelity to its religious tradition.  Why?  Because the secular academic world since the 1980s has been incapable of critiquing and discrediting the neoliberal project, which is an economic war against the poor.  And in a similar way, the secular academic world has been an accomplice to the current unconstrained military, commercial, financial, and ideological aggression of decadent imperialism against the peoples and nations of the earth.  Moreover, in our days, the secular academic world is falling prey to post-modern subjectivism, which renders irrelevant moral judgements formed from the vantage point of religious and philosophical traditions.  The suffering peoples of the earth today increasingly cry out for moral constraints, but academic institutions rooted in religious and philosophical traditions are not prepared to articulate them.

     In concluding the article, Dugan maintains that visions for the future of Catholic higher education require the taking of concrete steps, and that these steps sometimes will involve following the teachings of the Church as against the standards of the world.  Indeed so.  But in light of the “errors of judgment” and “practical missteps” of Catholic higher education, what concrete steps should it now take to find the correct road?  This is a question that Dugan’s article does not address.

What makes a university authentically Catholic?

     In the reply section of Dugan’s article, a reader recommends the Website of Sycamore Trust, which is dedicated to the principle that the Catholic university ought to conduct its research and teaching in accordance with Catholic ideals and principles.  Sycamore Trust consists of Notre Dame graduates who are concerned that the school’s Catholic identity has been impaired.  They are concerned about the decline in the percentage of Catholics on the faculty in recent decades and the limited amount of theology and philosophy courses required of students.  And they are concerned with the activities and decisions taken by the university with respect to the issues of abortion, sexuality, homosexuality, and gay marriage, which are at variance with Catholic doctrine and tradition.    

     The members of the Board of Directors of Sycamore Trust are Notre Dame graduates who have done very well in the fields of law, journalism, education, medicine, and organizations of civil society.  As I reviewed their impressive achievements, I could not resist the thought that they have made their peace with imperialism and live comfortably within it.  Their critique of American society and the adaptation to it by Catholic higher education is not based on questions of social justice for the poor, but on sexual issues.  One could say that their calls for personal responsibility and Christian authenticity with respect to family and sexuality ring hollow, even if they adhere to them personally, because they have in their lifestyle choices not truly heard the voices of the poor and the oppressed, so central to the Christian spirit.

     My alienation from the Church is rooted in her systemic inattention to questions of social justice, in spite of a number of excellent theological analyses of social justice questions from a Catholic perspective.  To be clear, I refer here not to what social justice has become under the noxious post-modern Radical Left, but to social justice as it was understood in the United States in the 1960s through the 1980s, in which Catholic social thought was central.  The Website of Sycamore Trust illustrates this inattention in practice to the teachings of the Church on social justice.  The goal of the sincere men and women of Sycamore Trust is to return Notre Dame and by implication Catholic higher education to authentic Catholicism, a notion with which I have sympathy.  But to them, authentic Catholicism has to do with sexual issues like marriage, sexuality, gay rights, and abortion.  I support their positions on these issues, although a degree of compromise seeking consensus is necessary in a nation with diversity in religiosity and with a prevailing secular point of view.  But for me, the essence of Catholicism has to do with social justice and defense of the poor. 

     My personal journey of focusing on questions of social justice has brought me during the last thirty years to a deepening appreciation of socialism, for real socialist governments in the Third World plus China have been the true defenders in practice of the needs and rights of the poor, including above all the right of the poor to political empowerment and to create sovereign nations, so that governments of and for the people can provide for the social and economic needs of the people, with special attention to the poor and the vulnerable.  Moreover, I have arrived to see a worldwide consensus on social justice questions between real socialism and religion—particularly Catholic social thought and Shiite Islam—which is reflected in the deepening relations among Cuba, the Holy See, and Iran. (See “Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi in Latin America:  Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba forge a counterhegemonic alliance,” June 16, 2023; and “Cuba and the Holy See: A deepening relation of mutual respect and alliance,” June 23, 2023).

     Sycamore Trust is right.  Catholic higher education has succumbed to the temptation to please and to be accepted, and accordingly, it has embraced the standards of secular higher education in the United States.  But it is not just that these standards are inconsistent with Catholic teachings; what is worse is that these standards, presented in defense of academic excellence, themselves violate the essential mission of higher education, which is the pursuit of truth.  The standards of secular higher education, for example, have imposed a naïve version of objectivity as value freedom, making higher education vulnerable in recent years to the post-modernism of the Radical Left.  These standards have suppressed the development of a more profound approach to the quest for knowledge of society, based on such concepts as the dialectical relation between theory and practice, cross-cultural encounter, and dialogue among civilizations.  This epistemological shortcoming has been reinforced by the fragmentation of the quest for knowledge into the different disciplines of philosophy, history, economics, political science, and sociology, each with their own literature and terrains.  The standards of higher education have undermined higher education itself, and Catholic higher education ought to have developed a philosophical, scientific, and moral alternative.

     Can Catholic higher education renew?  To do so, it must engage the world.  It must develop consciousness of the construction today of an alternative world order, led by socialist nations, a phenomenon that calls forth a revitalization of traditional social justice issues in the American Catholic Church.  It must develop the capacity to discern the emergence of a desperate and violent U.S. imperialism, which reinforces its decadence through synthesis with post-modernism.  It must see the need for a definitive break with the secular trends of American society and for a turn to the Catholic tradition, including attention to the papal encyclicals and the statements of bishops, to forge a multilevel quest for truth, social justice, and personal and sexual responsibility.

     The renewal of Catholic higher education would require waging a respectful and civil battle with, first, the secularist accommodationists; secondly, the traditionalists who see only the sexual issues; and thirdly, the confused post-modernists.  It would require a judgmental engagement, from the vantage point of Catholic teachings, standing clearly and firmly against the worldwide reality of an economic, military, and ideological war waged against the peoples of the earth by a decadent, desperate, and aggressive imperialism.  It should stand with the anti-imperialist states and social movements of the world, which are seeking to preserve hope for a civilized future for humanity.  To accomplish this task, we need to be more engaged with the anti-imperialist movements of the world, and we need to engage the teachings of the popes and bishops, so that we can restore our relationship with Tradition as we engage the world.

The Catholic university is born from the heart of the Church

      Taking a perspective different from the Land O’Lakes statement, the 1990 Apostolic Constitution of Pope John Paul II on Catholic Universities (known as Ex corde Ecclesiae or From the heart of the Church) maintains that a Catholic university must reflect on accumulating human knowledge from a vantage point based in Catholic ideals and principles.  It calls for an “integration of knowledge” against “the rigid compartmentalization of knowledge within individual academic disciplines.”  It maintains that a Catholic university must include “a study of serious contemporary problems in areas such as the dignity of human life, the promotion of justice for all, the quality of personal and family life, the protection of nature, the search for peace and political stability, a more just sharing in the world's resources, and a new economic and political order that will better serve the human community at a national and international level.”  In this vein, the Pope writes:

“The Christian spirit of service to others for the promotion of social justice is of particular importance for each Catholic University. . . . The Gospel, interpreted in the social teachings of the Church, is an urgent call to promote ‘the development of those peoples who are striving to escape from hunger, misery, endemic diseases and ignorance; of those who are looking for a wider share in the benefits of civilization and a more active improvement of their human qualities; of those who are aiming purposefully at their complete fulfilment’ (citing the Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio of Paul VI).  Every Catholic University feels responsible to contribute concretely to the progress of the society within which it works. . . .  A Catholic University also has the responsibility, to the degree that it is able, to help to promote the development of the emerging nations.” (Italics in original).

In contrast to the standards of the secular academic world, Pope John Paul II called academics to integral and critical analysis of issues of development and poverty in the world, interpreted from the vantage point of the teachings of the Church.  And in contrast to the limited scope of the Website of Sycamore Trust, the teachings of the popes pertain not only to personal morals, but also to social justice in the world and to critical analyses seeking social transformation.

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