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Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto
addresses alumni of St Michael's College
Published below are excerpts of the talk given by
Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto, on Saturday, 30 May [2009], during
a colloquium for alumni at the University of St Michael's College in
Toronto.
The Foundation and the
Goal
Ever since 1852, when
Bishop Charbonnel invited the Basilians, his childhood teachers in
France, to found a Catholic College in his Canadian diocese, St
Michael's College has played a central role in 'the life of our Catholic
community. Over the years the College has grown, and has become a
University, and has developed ever closer ties to the University of
Toronto. For many years, in the context of the wider university, it has
worked closely with other religious colleges in the Toronto School of
Theology. Beyond the confines of the Archdiocese which is its home, St
Michael's is a leading force in Catholic higher education in our whole
country. I acknowledge with gratitude the devoted service of the
Basilians, and of the other religious communities, and laypeople, who
have engaged in the mission of Catholic University education at St
Michael's, and at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
As the successor of Bishop
Charbonnel as bishop of this diocese, I am deeply interested in Catholic
education, and particularly in the University of St Michael's College.
As Pope John Paul observed in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, his
letter on Catholic Universities, "Bishops have, a particular,
responsibility to promote Catholic Universities, and especially to
promote and assist in the preservation and strengthening of their
Catholic identity, including the protection of their Catholic identity
in relation to civil authorities. This will be achieved more effectively
if closer personal and pastoral relationships exist between University
and Church authorities, characterized by mutual trust, close and
consistent cooperation and continuing dialogue. Even when they do not
enter directly into the internal governance of the University, Bishops
"should be seen not as external agents but as participants in the life
of the Catholic University" (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, 28). Because of
my apostolic office, and also because of my own personal background, I
am committed to be fully engaged in the life of St Michael's, and to
support in every way its development as a Catholic University.
As Ex Corde Ecclesiae
notes, all Catholic Universities have a relationship to the
universal Church, for each is a partner in the international mission of
Catholic scholarship. But a Catholic University always is at home in the
local Church where it exists physically, and from which in so many ways
it derives sustenance. Its presence and its activities have an enormous
effect upon the local Catholic community. So many people throughout that
community, and beyond, are shaped by the education that they receive at
the local Catholic University. The programs of the university enrich the
whole community, and allow the university to play a central role in the
local Church's mission of evangelization. As all of the members of the
university exercise their responsibilities as disciples, for that is
what they are first of all, their witness is a blessing for the whole
Church. Universities arose out of the heart of the Church many years
ago; a Catholic University remains at the heart of the local Church....
A good starting point may
be found in the mottos of the two most famous universities in the
English speaking world, Oxford and Harvard. I do not say that their
mottos accurately express the nature of the present institutions, but
they do give us insight into the nature of a university, and especially
of a Catholic University.
Oxford, of course, began as
a Catholic University, in the middle ages when universities across
Europe arose out of the heart of the Church. With Paris, Cambridge, and
Bologna, Oxford set the standard for university education. It was
assumed in those days that faith and reason were not in conflict, and so
it is appropriate for a university founded at that time and dedicated to
the exercise of reason to affirm: The Lord is my light.
An authentic Catholic
University needs to affirm confidently what those great medieval
universities assumed: faith and reason are the foundation for a
university education. The mission of a university is to use the gift of
reason to examine the natural world around us, and the world within the
human person. Grace builds on nature, but does not overwhelm it.
Creation itself is good. Much of what occurs at a university will not
relate directly to matters of faith, but rather to the study of nature.
In the middle ages, St Albert the Great led the way in attentiveness to
that....
A Catholic University must
hold to the highest and most rigorous standards of scholarship, partly
because what we do we must do well, for we do it for the glory of God,
and partly because, as Newman insisted, Catholic Christianity is
intellectual. Faith and religion are not just subjective emotional
experiences. Perhaps in some religious traditions they are, and
certainly a flippantly secular mindset dismisses religion as an
emotional security blanket needed by some to cope with a threatening
world. What is gratuitously asserted may simply be denied: that is not
what the Catholic faith is. Secularists have no monopoly on reason.
In any case, there is no
such thing as a clinically pure academic institution, devoid of
foundational premises. The question is simply whether an institution's
intellectual foundations are solid or sandy. Here are some sandy
foundations which will not impress or intimidate those whose academic
enterprise is based on the fruitful harmony of faith and reason:
A) Agnosticism
—
the idea that we cannot know anything for sure, and that the ultimate
point is to have many questions but never an answer
—
sort of like a game in which the players
are always shooting but never scoring
—
this may seem superficially attractive, but a fruitful intellectual life
cannot be based on that.
B) Utilitarianism
—
the idea that education is simply or mainly a matter of preparing people
to do useful things, rather than forming people to be free
—
this will draw plenty of funding, but there is no future in that.
C) Relativism
—
the idea that education is not a search for truth but rather the random
collection of ideas of many flavours and many colours, but of no
meaning. This is chaos, and is no sure foundation for anything
worthwhile.
We need to reflect
carefully upon the foundation of our Catholic University, and be sure
that our intellectual enterprise is built not on sand but upon the
bedrock of faith and reason. From that comes the serene confidence that
will allow a Catholic University to flourish.
As the full vision of
reality revealed by both faith and reason forms the foundation for a
Catholic University, the goal of any university is the search for truth.
Pope John Paul in the opening paragraph of Ex Corde Ecclesiae
states that "with every other University [a Catholic University] shares
that gaudium de veritate,
so precious to St Augustine, which is
the joy of searching for, discovering, and communicating truth in every
field of knowledge. A Catholic University's privileged task is 'to unite
existentially by intellectual effort two orders of reality that too
frequently tend to be placed in opposition as though they were
antithetical: the search for truth, and the certainty of already knowing
the fount of truth'" (Ex Corde Ecclesiae,
1). We all seek to know, and from childhood it is a natural joy
to discover the truth about the world
around
us. The spirit of joyful wonder which is
enhanced in the excitement of discovery is the mark of any wholesome
intellectual institution. It is found in the solitary work of
scholarship, and in the communal experience of the classroom, as also in
the conversation of those who together seek the truth.
The whole life of a
Catholic University is oriented to the search for objective truth, and
in this endeavour it, like the Church itself, is counter-cultural. The
splendour of truth is not highly valued in a society which is mired in
the swamp of subjectivism. In such a toxic environment a healthy
Catholic University is all the more necessary.
A basic distortion in our
contemporary worldview, as pervasive and invisible as the air we
breathe, is the assumption that what really matters is how we personally
feel, and not what is objectively real whatever we feel. Truth in such a
view is whatever we feel it to be, whatever is pleasing to our taste.
This approach infiltrates religion as well, and Newman already was
dealing with that: religion becomes mere sentiment, the excitement of
religious emotion. That kind of religion will always be immensely and
immediately attractive, but it cannot address the deepest matters of the
human condition. In all things, feeling follows fact: there is an
objective reality to which the human subject relates; reality is not
something generated out of our subjectivity....
Truth is the goal of a
Catholic University. It can always be found, although with difficulty,
and often not completely. The search for objective truth brings joy to
life, even when the truth challenges, dispelling our illusions and
rebuking our false pleasures. The search for truth can be as
uncomfortable as it is exhilarating.
The Paradox of a Liberal Education
There is an essential
connection between Libertas and Veritas: between freedom and truth.
Whatever else it does, such as to give training in various useful
disciplines, a university must offer a liberal education, one which sets
us free to be fully human, and that freedom is rooted in truth. All who
are engaged in a Catholic University can attain the most profound
experience of a liberal education, for they are liberated not only
through the use of reason in the search for truth, but also by
encountering through faith the one who is "the way, the truth, and the
life" On 14:6). As Jesus says in the Gospel of John: "If you continue in
my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and
the truth will make you free" (Jn 8:31-32). In the worldview
uncritically accepted by our secular society, this is counter-intuitive.
How can the truth makes us free? The truth always limits us, and a
superficial definition of freedom is that it means to live without
limits, to be free to choose anything.
As we journey down the road
of, life, however, we are most free when we know where we are going, and
do not get bogged down in the mud on each side of the road. The great
obstacle in life is illusion, in which we deceive ourselves about what
is truly valuable and what is not. Pride is the surest pathway to
illusion, and intellectual pride is a particular danger in an academic
world which has lost its moorings. There is no sure protection against
that, but a Catholic University should be able to assist its members to
keep their lives rooted in reality.
Here we can look to the
example of saintly scholars like Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman.
Humility in the presence of God grounded them, and allowed their awesome
intellectual power to be fruitful and not destructive. The Prayer before
Study of St Thomas Aquinas reveals the wholesome effect of humble faith
that allows a scholar to be free:
"Ineffable Creator, who
from the treasures of your wisdom have established three hierarchies of
angels, have arrayed them in marvellous order above the fiery heavens,
and have marshalled the regions of the universe with such artful skill:
You are proclaimed the true font of light and wisdom, and the primal
origin raised high beyond all things. Pour forth a ray of Your
brightness into the darkened places of my mind; disperse from my soul
the twofold darkness of sin and ignorance into which I was born. You
make eloquent the tongues of infants. Refine my speech and pour forth
upon my lips the goodness of your blessing. Grant me keenness of mind,
capacity to remember, skill in learning, subtlety to interpret, and
eloquence in speech. May You guide the beginning of my work, direct its
progress, and bring it to completion. You who are true God and true man,
who live and reign, world without end. Amen"....
Freedom and joy are
described by Chesterton, who speaks of children who are free to dance at
the edge of a cliff, because a fence protects them from falling to their
death. Without the liberating limits they huddle in fear, and so do we
all in a world of intellectual and moral relativism, with no trusty
lines or fences.
There is neither freedom
nor joy in chaos and disorder. Order and harmony are the signs of joyful
freedom in music and in life; disorder and random choice, irrational
choice, are just noise. A university is the concert hall for the music
of reason. That is the point of a liberal education.
A reductionist view equates
freedom with chaos; but no human is free in chaos. A university which
really gives a liberal education, as all Catholic Universities must,
enriches society and provides a bulwark against injustice. In social
chaos, it is the most vulnerable who are most at risk. Then the tyrant
brings a perverse order based not on reason but on the will, and all
freedom ceases, and the music stops. A University that forms people to
be truly free, by introducing them to the order and harmony which reason
discovers in the search for objective truth, will as a side effect
produce good citizens for a democracy....
A false freedom based on
passion and the random urges that are disordered and in rebellion
against reason leads only to misery. ... Freedom requires a humble
awareness of human sin and frailty. The imperial ego is not free, and
enslaves both self and others. Because the freedom which is the
foundation of a liberal education is not mere random chaos, but arises
from the search for truth, in the ordered harmony of a reason that is in
touch with the objective world, it always draws the individual into
community. This means a real community, not a mob of egoists. True
freedom is to false freedom what a community is to a mob, for a
community is based on a principle of order while a mob is just a chaotic
assembly of individuals....
Veritas is the real source
of Libertas: a university forms its members and sets them truly free
from the forces of chaos within and without, those forces which seem to
embody freedom, but which ultimately bring nothing but the slavery of
illusion, and the loneliness of the ego lost in the confusion of the
world, or trapped in a world within the head, a subjective hell out of
touch with the sanity of objective reality and the wholesome community
of the children of God.
The Idea of a College
A priest is ordained to the
episcopate by a single bishop, but all the other bishops join in
ordaining him, for he is not just a bishop on his own, but through
ordination is entering into the college of bishops. Something analogous
happens when all the priests join in ordaining a deacon who is entering
the local college which is the presbyterate of the diocese. We tend to
think of a "College" as simply a smaller form of a university, and the
University of St Michael's College rejoices in being a University and
not simply a College, but the collegiate dimension is fundamental in the
life of a Catholic University, and indeed is valuable in any university.
In the Roman system of
higher education, students study at various universities, but they live,
and eat, converse, and pray together in their college. They are formed
by the community experience of the college. In the Oxford system, at
least in its traditional form, the examinations are taken at the
university, but each student is enrolled as a member of a particular
college. The University of Toronto has at least vestiges of that system
in its several colleges, of which St Michael's is one.
The point of being a member
of a College is not simply to enjoy a more homey and humane existence in
a smaller entity in the midst of a massive university, an escape from
anonymity in a welcoming place where, as in Cheers, everybody knows your
name. That is all to the good, but the community experience of a
Catholic College is much more than that: it is meant to shape the
student socially, morally, intellectually, and spiritually. It does this
through friendship, intellectual conversation, common acts of service,
meals together, the secular ceremony of communal life, and most
profoundly through the Eucharist in the Collegiate Church. Note that one
of the first things Newman did when he was setting up his university was
to build a Collegiate Church. A formative dimension is essential to a
liberal education, and the college is the prime forum for that. Newman
got fired as a young College tutor because he insisted on the formative
dimension of a college education. Education is not just from the neck
up, in the abstract world of the isolated intellect....
A Catholic College, of
course, is not meant to be the same kind of community as a monastery; it
is a community in which young men and women receive a liberal education
to prepare them for life in the secular world. It should be a lively
place of joy and laughter, as well as of serious study. Here are two
good Catholic mottos: "Wherever a Catholic sun does shine, you will find
music and laughter and good red wine". And: "The faith that is sad or
mad and not glad is bad". We should note that Jesus in the Gospel is
frequently found at parties, and that itself should put an end to a
puritanical disposition. In a Catholic College, this vibrant and at
times even uproarious communal experience should simply be wholesome,
reflecting a joy that is in harmony with the Gospel. The student
newspaper can sparkle with lively features and still be totally in
accord with the foundational values of a Catholic College. The student
clubs provide all kinds of opportunities for the members of the College
to be engaged in creative activities, while at the same time living with
absolute fidelity to the Gospel vision that is the bedrock of a Catholic
College. The student residences should be a real home in which the
residents can grow socially, intellectually, and spiritually in an
atmosphere of mutual respect based upon faith. In any effective
educational environment students learn from one another as well as from
their professors. In the physical setting of the college community, the
ubiquitous iconography of faith reminds everyone of what the Catholic
college is about. The chapel is at the center of the campus, and in
every way all members of the academic community live under the sign of
the cross of Christ.
We are blessed with a rich
tradition of reflection upon the identity of a Catholic University. John
Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University" is the classic articulation
.of the essence not only of a university education, but of a Catholic
University education. It is the primal text which must be addressed by
anyone who considers higher education, and in it are woven together the
experience of a scholar formed in the fabled University of Oxford, the
insight of a brilliant believer in whom faith and reason dwelt in
harmony, and the pastoral concern of a priest who sought to lead to
eternal salvation those entrusted to his care. In the Idea of a
University Newman famously expressed the classic definition of a
gentleman, but his aim was higher than the formation of gentlemen. So
too is that of a Catholic University....
We can look profitably as
well at the sad history of the many Catholic universities which have
slowly died, leaving behind nothing but a shell. They give us a warning
about what to avoid. In the last century there have been several
examples of formerly Catholic universities whose identity has evaporated
in the face of the toxic influences of a. secular world. Sometimes
Catholic universities, embarrassed at being counter cultural, and
seeking to facilitate the assimilation of their students into the
surrounding secular society, have dropped their Catholic identity bit by
bit. Sometimes a university decides to compromise its Catholic identity
in order to gain acceptance in the world of contemporary academia.
Sometimes financial pressures lead a university to give up its Catholic
identity. Sometimes a Catholic University is pressured by the forces of
political correctness to trade the clear vision of the Gospel for the
murky substitute of moral relativism. This is all so sad.
Faced with this phenomenon,
Pope John Paul, in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, outlined the key points
that define a Catholic University: "Born from the heart of the Church, a
Catholic University is located in that course of tradition which may be
traced back to the very origin of the University as an institution. It
has always been recognized as an incomparable centre of creativity and
dissemination of knowledge for the good of humanity. By vocation, the
Universitas magistrorum et scholarium is dedicated to research, to
teaching and to the education of students who freely associate with
their teachers in a common love of knowledge".
Pope Benedict obviously has
a profound awareness of the nature of a Catholic University, and in his
visit to the United States he addressed Catholic University educators
and said:
"A university or school's
Catholic identity is not simply a question of the number of Catholic
students. It is a question of conviction
—
do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh
does the mystery of man truly become clear (cf. Gaudium
et Spes,
22)? Are we ready to commit our entire self
—
intellect and will, mind and heart
—
to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals? Is the faith tangible in
our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression
liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern
for justice, and respect for God's creation? Only in this way do we
really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold".
We all need to have a clear
idea of the nature of a Catholic University, and we have plenty of help
in that. Without vision the people perish, and without a vision of a
Catholic University, and the will to be faithful to it, we will find
that the catholicity of a university can easily fade over time. If,
however, we see clearly what is needed and act with a joyful boldness
arising out of faith, then by God's grace we can participate in the
flourishing of a great Catholic University, second to none in its
creative academic achievements and utterly faithful to its evangelical
mission at the heart of the Church.
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