“Is the faith tangible," asked Benedict XVI in 2008, "in our universities and schools?” The answer is overwhelmingly negative.

Catholic Higher Education and 

Studies in Advanced Relativism

By Connor Malloy

“The danger of a dictatorship of opinion is growing, and anyone who doesn't share the prevailing opinion is excluded, so that even good people no longer dare to stand by (such) nonconformists. Any future anti-Christian dictatorship would probably be much more subtle than anything we have known until now. It will appear to be friendly to religion, but on the condition that its own models of behavior and thinking not be called into question.” — Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1996

Visiting a Catholic campus this past summer, I passed a class meeting outdoors on that sunny afternoon. A student was presenting to her classmates on the topic of “leadership.” She was confidently expressing to them how she exemplified leadership in her life: “When I speak, I make sure I speak in a way so that people listen. Even if you don’t know what you’re talking about, just speak like you do know and loud enough so that people will believe you.” Was this young woman knowingly spouting examples from Relativism 101? So convincing was she that I fell for her ruse: I believed everything she said in those few seconds I was within earshot.

For those involved in Catholic higher education as students, administrators, faculty and parents this is a unique academic year, one in which the persuasion of the Catholic vision is met with increasing blank stares and uncomprehending minds. What is a Catholic university today? Is the use of the word “Catholic” a mere marketing tool, a brand to attract prospective students from certain economic backgrounds?

The book, A Reason Open to God: On Universities, Education, and Culture, edited by J. Steven Brown, is a comprehensive collection of Benedict XVI’s addresses centered around Catholic higher education and its place in culture. The foreword by Catholic University of America president, John Garvey, indicates that not only was Catholic education a top priority for pope emeritus Benedict, but that Catholic universities must not forget God, and that our relationship with Him is the center of the agenda. Garvey quotes from an address Benedict gave during his seminal trip to the U.K. in 2010: “A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints.” Education for the whole person probably appears on dozens of mission statements, but what about the becoming saints part?

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John Henry's words to describe the goal of Catholic university professors:

"I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious — but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it."