Mission

Originally published 19 November 2006

This week’s Mus­ing is not addressed to the usu­al vis­i­tors to this site, but to friends and col­leagues who are con­cerned about the mis­sion and iden­ti­ty of Catholic insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion. Much of what I say will be famil­iar to reg­u­lar read­ers of Sci­ence Musings.

These thoughts are inspired by an arti­cle in last Sun­day’s Boston Globe about the search for iden­ti­ty by Roman Catholic col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. On the one hand, these insti­tu­tions aspire to the aca­d­e­m­ic excel­lence and free inquiry that char­ac­ter­ize the great sec­u­lar insti­tu­tions — Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and Wheaton Col­lege (Mass­a­chu­setts), for exam­ple — many of which start­ed out as church-relat­ed schools. On the oth­er hand, they are reluc­tant to go the way of faith-based schools that have no hes­i­ta­tions about their reli­gious iden­ti­ties — Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty and Wheaton Col­lege (Illi­nois), for example.

Mean­while, the pres­sure from Rome is clear: retrench, shore up, hire more Catholic profs, teach more ortho­dox the­ol­o­gy, wear your Catholi­cism on your sleeve.

I have spent most of my adult life asso­ci­at­ed with Catholic high­er edu­ca­tion, main­ly with two won­der­ful insti­tu­tions — the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame and Stone­hill Col­lege — found­ed and main­tained by the Con­gre­ga­tion of Holy Cross, a com­mu­ni­ty of bril­liant and com­pas­sion­ate men and women ded­i­cat­ed to edu­ca­tion. Many of these men were my teach­ers and friends, and nev­er in 40 years in their com­pa­ny did I expe­ri­ence any­thing but sup­port for my teach­ing and writ­ing, even as I lapsed from for­mal com­mu­nion. The atmos­phere in which I worked was lib­er­al, tol­er­ant, and sup­port­ive of diversity.

Yet Stone­hill, like the oth­er insti­tu­tions pro­filed by the Globe, is con­cerned about its iden­ti­ty. Yes, it calls itself a Catholic col­lege, as it must if it is to main­tain its appli­cant pool — main­ly the chil­dren of devout or nom­i­nal Catholic fam­i­lies. But the fac­ul­ty is increas­ing­ly non-Catholic, and the for­mal trap­pings of Catholi­cism that I expe­ri­enced at Notre Dame in the 1950s — prayers before class­es, cours­es in apolo­get­ics, teach­ers with Roman col­lars, etc. — are most­ly nonex­is­tent. A casu­al vis­i­tor to the cam­pus would be hard pressed to rec­og­nize the place as Church-related.

Mean­while, the col­lege is about to invest in a splen­did new sci­ence build­ing, the most ambi­tious project in the school’s history.

And there’s the rub.

Sci­ence and reli­gious faith are the two great­est forces in the world today, and the ten­sion between them is pal­pa­ble and real. In Catholic high­er edu­ca­tion, the bat­tle with the con­tent of sci­ence has been most­ly won; the sci­ence taught in the best Catholic col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties is iden­ti­cal to that of any of our great sec­u­lar insti­tu­tions. But the clash of ortho­dox the­ol­o­gy with the spir­it of the empir­i­cal way of know­ing is gen­er­al­ly swept under the rug or ratio­nal­ized with wish­ful think­ing. The ten­sion will become more acute as we learn more about the genet­ic, chem­i­cal, and anthro­po­log­i­cal ori­gins of religion.

The­o­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing, it’s as if the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion nev­er happened.

While we teach 21st-cen­tu­ry sci­ence in the class­room, in the chapel we recite a Creed based on neolith­ic cos­molo­gies, and tell our­selves that there is no con­tra­dic­tion because sci­ence and faith belong to sep­a­rate domains. But knowl­edge is a sin­gle domain, and it was the sin­gu­lar tri­umph of Chris­t­ian Europe (with sig­nif­i­cant assists from else­where) to devise a way of know­ing that is more reli­able than tra­di­tion or “rev­e­la­tion.” No won­der it is so dif­fi­cult to find and hire top-notch Catholic schol­ars. We are ask­ing them to live in two con­tra­dic­to­ry con­cep­tu­al worlds at once — the 21st-cen­tu­ry uni­verse of the galax­ies and the DNA, and the medieval uni­verse of the Great Chain of Being.

Towards the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, for­ward-look­ing Catholic the­olo­gians and philoso­phers sought to refor­mu­late doc­trine in ways that were con­sis­tent with empir­i­cal learn­ing, undo­ing a long ten­sion between sci­ence and faith that stretched back to Galileo and — more recent­ly — to Dar­win. The move­ment was con­demned as the Mod­ernist heresy, and for­mal­ly crushed with the 1907 encycli­cal Pas­cen­di Domini­ci Greg­is and Syl­labus Con­demn­ing the Errors of the Mod­ernists. The oppres­sive influ­ence of these doc­u­ments, togeth­er with the stul­ti­fy­ing doc­trine of papal infal­li­bil­i­ty pro­mul­gat­ed in 1870, ren­dered seri­ous dis­cus­sion of the intrin­sic con­flict of sci­ence and faith mute through­out the 20th century.

I sub­mit that Catholic edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions will not achieve their poten­tial until the Mod­ernist con­dem­na­tion is con­signed to the trash heap of his­to­ry. This means that Catholic the­olo­gians would again open­ly exam­ine the rel­e­vance of archa­ic doc­trines to the mod­ern world. Body-soul dual­ism, per­son­al immor­tal­i­ty, heav­en and hell, the Res­ur­rec­tion, the divin­i­ty of the his­tor­i­cal Jesus, mir­a­cles, Catholic tri­umphal­ism: all are in thrall to an under­stand­ing of the world that has been sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly obso­lete since the 17th cen­tu­ry. Also up for exam­i­na­tion are the Church’s his­toric pater­nal­ism, jansenism, misog­y­ny, anti-Semi­tism, and homophobia.

But did­n’t Paul say, “If Christ did not rise from the dead, then your faith is in vain.”

Well, yes, and if Jesus did not rise from the dead then faith that he was con­sub­stan­tial with the cre­ator of the uni­verse and lit­er­al­ly tri­umphed over death is indeed in vain.

But iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Jesus of the Ser­mon on the Mount is not in vain. Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Jesus who died for what he thought was the good of humankind is not in vain. Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Jesus who embraced sin­ners, lep­ers and the poor is not in vain. Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Jesus who suf­fered very human doubt on the cross is not in vain. Nor does it mat­ter if these events hap­pened as record­ed by the evan­ge­lists. That is to say, every­thing that is good and trans­form­ing about the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion depends not a whit upon the two-thou­sand-year-old super­nat­u­ral­ist myths that were con­trived, per­haps sin­cere­ly, by Jesus’ admir­ers and imme­di­ate suc­ces­sors and cod­i­fied at Nicea.

In place of the spir­it-haunt­ed world of our pre­sci­en­tif­ic ances­tors, a renewed Church would embrace the evolv­ing empir­i­cal cos­mol­o­gy of the 21st cen­tu­ry — what the cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an and Redemp­torist priest Thomas Berry calls “the New Sto­ry.” The antag­o­nisms between sci­ence and faith are deep­er than they might appear to be, writes Berry. The old­er redemp­tive sto­ries of the Judeo-Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion sim­ply do not meet the most basic tests of ratio­nal know­ing, he says. But the new­er, sci­en­tif­ic sto­ry of cre­ation has not yet acquired a spir­i­tu­al aspect: “An inte­gral sto­ry has not emerged.”

It should be part of the mis­sion of Catholic col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties to help forge the inte­gral sto­ry — to make sacred and holy the world described by sci­ence. No mis­sion can be more impor­tant to our future.

But if we jet­ti­son what most Catholics con­sid­er to be the dog­mat­ic core of their faith — Nicean dog­ma — what remains to iden­ti­fy our col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties as unique­ly Catholic?

Plen­ty.

The sacra­men­tal and litur­gi­cal life of the Church will sur­vive, gra­cious and trans­form­ing. Human nature has­n’t sub­stan­tial­ly changed in 10,000 years. We still sense the world as sacred. We still long for com­mu­ni­ties of shared cel­e­bra­tion and praise. We still want rites of pas­sage. We still need the expe­ri­ence of con­tem­pla­tive prayer. We still must attend again and again to the lessons of the Ser­mon on the Mount. Sanc­ti­ty does not require a super­nat­ur­al ref­er­ent for its def­i­n­i­tion. Nor does grace.

There is a vast tra­di­tion of unique­ly Catholic lit­er­a­ture, art, and music that takes us to the heart of the human search for mean­ing. Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins, Mary Gor­don, Walk­er Per­cy, Sigrid Und­set, Georges Bernanos, Eve­lyn Waugh, Flan­nery O’Con­nor, Andre Dubus, Gra­ham Greene, Shusaku Endo, and count­less oth­er Catholic writ­ers rank with the best the mod­ern age has to offer.

There is a tra­di­tion of Catholic social jus­tice that needs to be brought to the fore. Catholic reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties and lay peo­ple have made mon­u­men­tal con­tri­bu­tions to med­i­cine, edu­ca­tion and ser­vice to the poor that can inspire our stu­dents to sim­i­lar self­less­ness. The mod­ern mys­ti­cal tra­di­tion, exem­pli­fied by Thomas Mer­ton, Teil­hard de Chardin, and many oth­ers, sharp­ens our per­cep­tions of an intu­it­ed qual­i­ty of the world that resists empir­i­cal analy­sis. The monas­tic tra­di­tion has much to teach us about bal­anc­ing reflec­tion, work and learn­ing in our indi­vid­ual lives.

And — most impor­tant­ly — who bet­ter to infuse the sci­en­tif­ic way of know­ing with a nec­es­sary sense of the sacred and respect for human dig­ni­ty than the Church that stum­bled with Galileo? Who bet­ter to lead the way into an eco­log­i­cal­ly healthy future for the plan­et than the Church that has mis­di­rect­ed so much of its influ­ence and ener­gy in den­i­grat­ing the mate­r­i­al world?

Yes, there can be a glo­ri­ous mis­sion for Church-relat­ed high­er edu­ca­tion once we under­stand that we are not pris­on­ers of archa­ic dog­ma and neolith­ic ways of know­ing, once we under­stand that we are in pos­ses­sion of a tra­di­tion that is as rich in sacred virtue as it is shame­ful in human fail­ure. The Mod­ernists tried to lead us out of the wilder­ness. So did John XXIII. In both instances the Church showed a fail­ure of the will — an unwill­ing­ness to define itself in terms of the future rather than the past.

Will this change any­time soon? Not like­ly. Entrenched author­i­tar­i­an bureau­cra­cies resist trans­for­ma­tion, and peo­ple of all faiths are reluc­tant to give up tra­di­tion­al beliefs, even as it becomes clear that our faith com­mit­ments are over­whelm­ing­ly deter­mined by acci­dents of birth. Nev­er­the­less, de fac­to ref­or­ma­tion is inevitable. Catholic lay peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties of pro­fessed women and men — espe­cial­ly women, in my expe­ri­ence — are lead­ing the way towards an iden­ti­ty that is defined less by medieval dog­ma and more by 21st-cen­tu­ry practice.

As one long asso­ci­at­ed with Catholic high­er edu­ca­tion and deeply respect­ful of the best of that tra­di­tion, I con­tin­ue to hope that Catholic edu­ca­tors will resist a relapse into Bob Jones fun­da­men­tal­ism (even in its so-called “main­stream” guise) and become instead a shin­ing exam­ple of the virtues so nec­es­sary for our com­mon glob­al future — a love for the world as we empir­i­cal­ly find it, and a sense that every­thing in it is holy.