Common Ground, Holy Ground
As a campus minister called to work in an academic environment, I find great solace in the fact that I can make reference to the great thinkers of the Catholic tradition and beyond, as a way to help students be challenged to understand deep and important realities of Church teaching and doctrine that impact their life and their participation in the life of the Church. I rely on the reality that many of the students who come through my door have at least somewhat of a base knowledge of not only the great theologians that our tradition has produced, but the philosophers who help shape the conversation around important issues of meaning. (I must admit that this is not an assumption that is always helpful to have, because sometimes I start to make references and receive a blank stare.)
Taking as an exemplar and patron the model of St. Thomas Aquinas who was deeply spiritual as well as deeply intellectual, it is absolutely essential within the Catholic Intellectual Tradition to participate in meaningful and deep exploration of ideas - those we may agree with and those we do not - to more fully understand and grasp elements of Truth. The model then is “faith seeking understanding.” Unfortunately this is not always the modus operandi for the modern academy as Christian Smith points out in his text Young Catholic America. Echoing much of what has been stated by the last three papacies, Smith warns that there is a persistent climate of relativism present both within the academy and society as a whole. This culture of relativism, according to Smith, is perpetuated by what he calls a “vulgar version of postmodernism.” Smith states the following about this “vulgar version of postmodernism:”
Previous generations of Americans would likely have believed in reason, progress, science, universal rationality, the nation, and truth. Popular postmodernism debunks those beliefs, however, teaching instead that “absolute truth” does not exist, that reason is only one parochial form of knowledge, that truth claims are typically masked assertions of power, that morality is relative, that nothing is universal, and that nobody can really know anything for certain. (6)
To paint all of academia and society in such a light is perhaps a bit harsh, surely there are many members of academia and general society who are strong in their convictions and who espouse the dictum of “faith seeking understanding,” but it is hard to deny the dominance of this form of postmodernism within the academy. There exists within some institutions of higher learning, the perspective that the Catholic Intellectual Tradition is one of constant questioning. The starting point then is to begin with questioning a teaching, examination of how one feels about the particular issue, and then a solidification of a personal opinion on the particular issue. This is drastically different from what I understand the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and further the ideal of the formation of conscience to be. It seems that sometimes the understanding prevalent in modern academia of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition is to break down or deconstruct institutional understandings so that the individual can make up his/her own mind about a particular issue after they have been presented with differing positions. Though this method is flawed, it may still work if all sides of an issue are presented faithfully and respectfully, but they sometimes are not.
The problem with the above mentioned model of discourse and dialogue is that it can, and often does, put the individual ideal of “the good” above the common good. It calls one to participate in a form of emotivism versus a call to reason. When the objective is laying a buffet of options at the feet of the consumer - and I am using the term “consumer” intentionally here - and encouraging him/her choose which option seems most attractive, one is not being invited into the process of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition or of forming conscience; rather, one is being given an invitation to individualism, where the perceived good of the individual is place above right relationship with God, self, and others.
In the wake of such an indictment, some will respond that this is a conclusion of a traditionalist or a conservative who is trying to keep the reins in hand, and though I am not entirely comfortable with these types of labels because they typically do not prove to be productive, I would gladly respond, yes. Yes, the Church and the academy are called to fulfill their responsibility to the faithful of not only teaching and preaching the Goodnews of Christ, but to the responsibility of helping to inform the conscience of the faithful. The Church and the University have the the responsibility to work hand-in-hand, not antithetically, in transforming one’s life so that one acts with justice toward God, self, and other. The Church and the Catholic University have the duty to not only present ideas and let their constituents “make up their own minds,” but to help form them into active and faithful members of the Kingdom of God. Often times an objection to this last responsibility is that the University is not a place of catechesis, it is a place of higher learning where the individual must learn to think for themselves rather than spout off doctrine and dogma like parrots. I would quite frankly agree in part. The duty of the University is not to indoctrinate, but to help individuals be transformed by and to pursue Truth. As we know within the interplay of science and theology, Truth cannot contradict Truth. And so taking seriously this responsibility which we find in Matthew 28:19, we in the Church and the University must move forward in performing our responsibilities as disciples of Christ to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit [...]”