Page 4 • CROSSROADS - March 1973
What Is It That Makes A College Christian?
The Identity Of A Church Related College
by DR. ROBERT A. PRESTON
There has never been any shortage of words directed to the
problems concerning the nature, identity, purpose, role, goal or
mission of the church-related college. The great temptation is to
weary of all the talk and to abandon such discussions on the
grounds that rio final solutions will ever be forthcoming. But to
ignore the problems does not eliminate them. The questions
remain, and they remain important ones, not only for those of us
who are personally involved with such institutions, but also for
those who see some value in the churches to which the colleges are
related. I would venture to say that the single most effective way
of passing on the values of a religious tradition is through formal
education. There is an integral connection between the vitality of
any religious tradition and the effectiveness by which it is tran
smitted to each succeeding generation.
We might begin our discussion with a clear delineation of the
question at issue, if that were possible. I was at first tempted to
say that the question at issue could be precisely stated as follows:
What is it that makes a college Christian?
An objection might immediately be raised as to the implication
of calling a college Christian as opposed to Catholic. I have in my
desk, copies of an interchange of memoranda between my
predecessor in the Deanship of Beliarmine College, the late Fr.
John Loftus, and myself on this very point.
In one memorandum, dated exactly one week before his death,
Fr. John was commenting on a change in wording in the
Catalogue recommended by me whereby the word “Christian”
would be substituted for the word “Catholic.” We might do well to
listen to Fr. John’s words from out of the past, which I must
confess haunt me no little bit: He wrote on January 3, 1969, as
follows:
I like the blunt and honest statement that we are a Catholic college. I
would have no hesitancy in adding reference to Rome. Perhaps I seem to
place too much insistence on this point. But in my observation of the
problems of our young people, in following discussions in theology, in
working in some ecumenical enterprises, I find it logical, consistent,
imperative that my relation to Christianity is in the Roman tradition. Far
from apologizing for that view, I insist upon it as a matter of honesty.
Neither as a person nor as a member of our academic community do I
want this fact underplayed. The Roman Catholic Church has many
problems which need attention; it does not, however, require disguise or
dissimulation.
Thus even in the statement of the question there is a prior issue
that must be met. Fr. John recommends in quite strong language
that Beliarmine proudly proclaim its Catholic identity. He argues
that the reason for substituting “Christian” for “Catholic” is
basically one of disguise or even dissimulation, indicating that we
might be ashamed of our Catholicity. Although one could
recommend the use of the term “Christian” instead of “Catholic”
on other grounds than the ones suggested by Fr. John, the fact
remains that there might be a basis for his charge.
I would like to begin the discussion, therefore, with this thorny
issue of “Catholic” vs. “Christian.” This entire matter is com
plicated by an emotional reaction of nearly everyone who enters
the discussion. Many of the Catholic “new breed” wish to
downplay any sectarian differences and concentrate exclusively
on the common characteristics shared by all Christians. Thus
they react negatively to any use of the term Catholic because they
find in it overtones of divisiveness and exclusivity. This group also
bristles at the mention of religious orthodoxy, moral absolutes,
and the preservation of tradition.
In the opposite camp are those who consider Vatican II a
mistake and who look upon any changes as a further departure
from “true Catholicism.” This group identifies orthodoxy with the
de facto historical tradition and often makes no distinction bet
ween the fundamental tenets of the Church and the cultural ac
cretions that have accumulated through the centuries.
Both positions contain truths that are worth defending. Cer
tainly for far too long it was the tendency in Catholic circles to
emphasize the differences, and Catholic apolgetics was often done
in such fashion that the truth of the Catholic position necessarily
entailed the falsity of all other positions. We need to remember
that an analogous subject matter transcends an univocal logic.
But the remedy to this is not to deny any differences at all. It is to
put the similarities and differences clearly in perspective and to
remember always that the subject matter of doctrine partakes of
the analogical character of reality itself.
I am of the opinion that a college which is Catholic has a mission
which in many respects it shares with one that is Baptist, or
Methodist or Lutheran. But its mission also has aspects which
differentiate it from other church-related colleges. I would like to
begin with the common characteristics.
The fact that most church-related colleges are liberal arts in
stitutions is not just happenstance. There is a close relationship
between the philosophy of liberal arts and the purposes of church-
related institutions. No one has yet surpassed John Henry
Newman’s analysis of this relationship in The Idea of a
University. In Discourse VIII Newman writes:
Now on opening the subject, we see at once a momentous benefit which
the philosopher is likely to confer on the pastors of the Church.
Newman is using the term philosopher in its broad meaning of
educator. What is this “momentous benefit” to which Newman
refers? The Cardinal argues that the first step in bringing a
person to God is “his rescue from that fearful subjection to sense
which is his ordinary state.” It is through the cultivation of the
mind that this is accomplished. Newman continues:
Here then I think is the important aid which intellectual cultivation
furnishes to us in rescuing the victims of passion and self-will. It does not
supply religious motives; it is not the cause or proper antecedent of
anything supernatural; it is not meritorius of heavenly aid or reward; but
it does a work, at least materially good (as theologians speak), whatever
be its real and formal character. It expels the excitements of sense by the
introduction of those of the intellect.
This then is the prima-facie advantage of the pursuit of knowledge; it is
the drawing the mind off from things which will harm it to subjects which
are worthy of a rational being;...
Nor is this all: knowledge, the discipline by which it is gained, and the
tastes which it forms, have a natural tendency to refine the mind, and to
give it an indisposition simply natural, yet real, nay, more than this, a
disgust and abhorrence, towards excesses and enormities of evil....
The first, and to Newman’s mind, the indispensable service that
higher education offers to religion is the establishment of a
predisposition to religious faith by developing in the student a
concern for questions of principles and value.
But Newman realized that the very process of developing and
refining the intellect carried with it its own attendant dangers. In
one of the most astute and still timely analyses of the end result of
education without a religious dimension, Newman traces the
growth of that intellectual pride that goes before the fall. I am
going to quote at length from Newman because I think what he has
to say is much to the point of our discussion and extremely
relevant today:
You will bear in mind then, Gentlemen, that I spoke just now of the scorn
and hatred which a cultivated mind feels for some kinds of vice, and the
utter disgust and profound humiliation which may come over it if it
should happen in any degree to be betrayed into them. Now this feeling
may have its root in faith and love, but it may not ; there is nothing reaUy
religious in it, considered by itself. Conscience indeed is implanted in the
breast by nature, but it inflicts upon us fear as well as shame; when the
mind is simply angry with itself and nothing more, surely, the true import
of the voice of nature and the depth of its intimation have been forgotten,
and a false philosophy has misinterpreted enfiotions which ought to lead to
God. Fear implies the transgression of a law, and law implies a lawgiver
and judge; but the tendency of intellectual culture is to swallow up the
fear in the self-reproach, and self-reproach is directed and limited to our
mere sense of what is fitting and becoming. Fear carries us out of our
selves, whereas shame may act upon us only within the round of our own
thoughts. Such, I say, is the danger which awaits a civilized age; such as
its besetting sin (not inevitable,God forbid or we must abandon the use of
God’s own gifts), but still the ordinary sin of the intellect; conscience
tends to become what is called a moral sense; the command of duty is a
sort of taste; sin is not an offence against God, but against human nature.
The less amiable specimens of this spurious religion are those which we
meet not unfrequently in my own country...We find there men possessed
of many virtues, but proud, bashful, fastidious, and reserved. Why is
this? It is because they think and act as if there were really nothing ob
jective in their religion; it is because conscience to them is not the word of
a lawgiver, as it ought to be, but the dictate of their own minds and
nothing more; it is because they do not look out of themselves, because
they do not look through and beyond their own minds to their Maker, but
are engrossed in notions of what is due to themselves, to their own
dignity and their own consistency. Their conscience has become a mere
self-respect.
Newman was clearly aware, then, of the normal tendency of
that intellectual education which is cut off from religious faith to
develop into what he calls “a philosopher’s, a gentlemen’s
religion.” But even in the face of this danger, Newman thought the
risk worth the attempt.
The first purpose, then, of the Christian college, that which all
church-related colleges share, is the realization of Newman’s
“momentous benefit,” that intellectual cultivation that frees the
mind from the tyranny of sense and opens it to theological and