Theology of Catholic University Mission

By Dr. Timothy P. Muldoon

In Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Saint John Paul II called for integration of knowledge in Catholic universities:

a University, and especially a Catholic University, "has to be a 'living union' of individual organisms dedicated to the search for truth ... It is necessary to work towards a higher synthesis of knowledge, in which alone lies the possibility of satisfying that thirst for truth which is profoundly inscribed on the heart of the human person." (16)

As editor of Integritas: Advancing the Mission of Catholic Higher Education, I seek to reflect on the question of what that higher synthesis looks like both in method and in content. I am working on a book, arising from several peer-reviewed articles, that considers the theological anthropology of Bernard Lonergan as a resource for considering the relationship between teaching, learning, and research.

I am further interested in considering the ecclesiology of the Catholic university, rooted in both an epistemic framework and a Christology. Fundamentally, I am interested in how Lonergan's notion of cosmopolis--of cultural growth and reversing cultural decline--can point toward a unified mission of a university even amidst the methodological and substantial distinctions among the disciplines. Briefly stated, my interest is in the ways that the Catholic university calls forth transcendent questions among faculty, such that their disicplinary interests may move toward a vision of cultural growth. Such a vision is consistent with what we find in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, such as Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes. This vision, properly understood, is also consistent with calls for the new evangelization, understood as a renewal of the sources of cultural growth.

The university itself is the locus of cultural growth inasmuch as it is a place of intellectual, moral, spiritual, and religious conversion. It will seek to iterate the markers of cultural growth: service to the poor; practices of justice and mercy; deepened understanding of what causes marginalization. Far from being a kind of utopia, it is a place that is willing to name sin and call upon God for mercy. In the contemporary world, the university--drawing from the expertise of so many who labor under its auspices--will seek fair labor practices; it will contribute to building a culture of life; it will seek solutions to poverty and environmental destruction; it will enhance opportunities for women; it will be an engine for economic growth. Rooted in Catholic social teaching, it will challenge expressions of individual, dramatic, and group bias, but it will go on to raise transcendent questions that open members to the workings of divine grace.

 

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