Trend: the increasing secularization and professionalization of the disciplines.

When Catholic Colleges Abandon

Theology Requirements

By Randall B. Smith

A major Catholic university is scheduled to consider this year whether it will cut its meager two-course requirements in Philosophy and Theology to one or none. Why, you may ask, would a Catholic institution be inclined to cut the two disciplines that have traditionally been entrusted with the task of imparting the specificallyCatholic elements in a Catholic education?

The first thing to note is that these aren’t the old debates of the 1970s and 80s when a new generation of scholars set out to displace the Thomistic orientation of Catholic philosophy and theology departments with an ostensibly more “modern” and “pluralistic” sensibility. Aquinas was out; Kant, Heidegger, and Analytic Philosophy were in—even though it was the Thomistic Revival spearheaded by Pope Leo XIII that had energized the tired old Catholic philosophy departments of his day, most of which had been doing little more than tired knock-offs of Kant and Hegel. So too in theology departments, Aquinas was out; Rahner, Lonergan, and Schillebeeckx were in—even though all of these newly preeminent theologians had themselves been steeped in the thought of Aquinas during their own education.

These forces continue to dominate many philosophy and theology departments in Catholic universities across the country, with the Boomers who dominate these institutions showing no signs of ceding power any time soon to the succeeding generation of Millennials. Having raged against “the Establishment” in their youth, they are now firmly ensconced in it themselves, having become what they most hated: old fogeys who resist change and insist on living in the past.

But something new is afoot as well. Clearly when the Boomers took over these departments, they had no intention of seeing the old requirements in theology and philosophy slashed. Undoubtedly they thought things would go on much as before, only now in exciting, new non-Thomistic ways. But things haven’t turned out that way. Like the other humanities, Philosophy and Theology are increasingly on the wane. It’s not merely that such departments aren’t especially “orthodox” any more—they haven’t been for years—it’s that they are increasingly seen as irrelevant to the current mission and goals of their institutions, having left themselves with very little to argue against their diminished position.

At the root of the current problem, I would suggest, is a trend that has been gaining strength for decades in the academy: the increasing secularization and professionalization of the disciplines.

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