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Theology for Citizenship: How a Catholic College in the Augustinian Tradition Prepares Citizens to Transform Society Joseph T

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Theology for Citizenship: How a Catholic College in the Augustinian Tradition Prepares Citizens to Transform Society Joseph T Forum on Public Policy Theology for Citizenship: How a Catholic College in the Augustinian Tradition Prepares Citizens to Transform Society Joseph T. Kelley, Provost, Merrimack College Abstract: Uses Vatican and papal documents to reflect on the distinctive mission of Catholic colleges and universities in light of their responsibility to prepare students for virtuous citizenship in a religiously and ethnically pluralistic society. Shows how one Catholic college understands its academic community in light of such a mission. Introduction After vigorous debate the early Americans amended their four-year old Constitution by adding a list of citizen rights and protections, a “Bill of Rights”. The First Amendment in this Bill of Rights prohibits the establishment of a state religion. This explicit prohibition is followed immediately by an assertion of every citizen’s right to the free exercise of religion.1 In addition to shaping the religious history of the new United States, the First Amendment’s directives regarding religion also made American society fertile for and friendly to the growth of religiously affiliated colleges. The purpose of this article is twofold. It will explore the distinctive mission of one kind of religiously affiliated American college or university, namely Catholic institutions. It will demonstrate how American Catholic colleges and universities understand and elaborate their missions in light of Vatican documents that address higher education and the Church’s interaction with culture, and will show how the educational mission of these Catholic institutions contributes to the well-being of American democracy through the values inculcated in their students. Finally, it will illustrate how one American Catholic 1 “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, <http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/> (March 3, 2006). 1 Forum on Public Policy college has expressed its educational vision for the twenty-first century in light of the founding religious tradition of the Order of St. Augustine. Religiously Affiliated American Colleges and Universities There are about 3,200 colleges and universities in the United States that grant post-secondary degrees, from the associate to the doctorate.2 About half of these 3,200 are public or state institutions funded by taxpayer dollars. The rest are private, independent institutions. These private schools include liberal arts colleges, major research universities, comprehensive universities, historically black colleges and universities, single-sex institutions, as well as schools of law, engineering, art, business and other professions.3 About one thousand of these 1,600 private schools are faith-related, the vast majority being Christian.4 Each of these religiously affiliated schools by its founding and mission is an institutional expression of the free exercise of religion. Americans have wedded the second phrase in the First Amendment—the “free exercise of religion”—to their creative penchant to form private associations, a tendency noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 1800’s.5 The constitutional prohibition against a state sponsored 2 National Center for Education Statistics, Digest for Education Statistics, 2004, Chapter 3 Postsecondary Education, <http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest> (March 7, 2006). There are also another 800 or so postsecondary schools that offer specialized training in art, technology, engineering, design and health fields. 3 National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), <www.naicu.edu> (March 8, 2006). These 1600 private colleges and universities enroll about 3.1 million or 20% of America’s 16.5 million students, and grant 30% of all post-secondary degrees. 4 In the United States there are several accredited Jewish colleges and universities, and many Jewish theological schools or seminaries; three accredited Buddhist universities; and, no major accredited Islamic or Hindu universities or colleges. 5 “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they 2 Forum on Public Policy religion, the protected free exercise of religion, and American social initiative and ingenuity have all helped to produce this impressive collection of religiously affiliated colleges and universities unique in the world. There is great variety in the nature of the religious affiliation of these American colleges and universities. The affiliation of most Christian evangelical and fundamentalist colleges with their church or faith community is typically one of close cooperation and doctrinal congruity. In such cases the clear purpose of the college can be expressed in such phrases as “to advance the cause of Christ-centered higher education and… to transform lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth”.6 Typically in such schools students, faculty and staff are expected to pledge and often to sign statements of faith and morals. On the other hand many private colleges have only a nominal relationship with the original founding church. In such cases the contemporary religious affiliation is an historical footnote in the course catalog. Zealous founders stare down from their portraits on the walls of the administration building at the latest generation of students. However the fervent faith of these founding fathers or mothers has little or no real influence on the education of students today. Remnants of the institution’s original religious affiliation may be found in references to a place for ethics in the curriculum and character development in student life. Explicit faith commitment, however, is usually not form a society.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume II, Section II, Chapter V, <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/toc_indx.html> (March 15, 2006). 6 Council for Christian Colleges and Universities’ mission, <www.cccu.org> (March 17, 2006). 3 Forum on Public Policy mentioned, even though such schools owe their existence to a faith tradition that exercised its right under the Constitution to establish an educational institution.7 Catholic Colleges and Universities in the United States Catholic Colleges and Universities number just over two hundred and comprise the largest individual subset of religiously affiliated schools in the United States.8 Post- secondary Catholic institutions range from nationally and internationally recognized universities such as Georgetown, Notre Dame and Villanova, to small liberal arts colleges known only in their region. It is by far the largest informal “system” of Catholic colleges and universities in the world, an archipelago of schools that chart the westward movement of Catholic immigrants and their pastors and religious orders across the American continent.9 In August of 1990, with the publication of his important reflection on Catholic higher education, entitled Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), Pope John Paul II called Catholic colleges and universities around the world to assert their unique and distinctive educational missions. The Pope and many American bishops and leaders 7 One can still find keystones over arched entrances to Harvard Yard that proclaim “Pro Christo et Ecclesia”—for Christ and the Church: reminders of Harvard’s founding by early New England Pilgrims, but hardly part of the university’s current mission statement or consciousness. Growing secularism, the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and the reductionism of the scientific method engendered an anti- religious ethos in the academy that has, until recently, made religious or theological dialogue suspect in American higher education. See George M. Marsden and Bradley J. Longfield (eds.), The Secularization of the Academy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); James Samuel Preuss, Explaining Religion: Criticism and theory from Bodin to Freud (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); David Claerbaet, Faith and Learning: A Bold New Look at Religion in Higher Education (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 2004). I am grateful to the Rev. David Power, OMI, for bringing the last two works to my attention during the 2006 Oxford Round Table. 8 Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), <www.accunet.org> (March 19, 2006). ACCU has about 220 members, which includes all but a few of American Catholic colleges and universities. ACCU is affiliated with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. 9 Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Alice Gallen, OSU, Independence and New Partnership in Catholic Higher Education (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996); David R. Contosta, Villanova University 1842-1992:
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