Abstract
Concern for the flourishing and even the survival of religious institutions of higher education—both Catholic and Protestant—has been continual for much of the last century in the United States. In The Future of Catholic Higher Education: The Open Circle, James L. Heft offers an encouraging but realistic examination of the trajectory of Catholic higher education as it has confronted post-Vatican II changes and challenges in addition to guidelines and suggestions for a viable path forward. Is Catholic higher education doomed to follow the pattern of denominational detachment and gradual secularization so frequently found in formerly religious universities in America? Heft does not dismiss that possibility but argues that it is by no means a certainty, given a continued devotion to the Catholic Church’s intellectual tradition and a sense of mission shared by the faculty, administration, students, and local clergy.
As Heft traces the history of Catholic higher education, he describes a tension between two paths which arose during these post-Vatican II decades: either seminaries and universities could hunker down, isolated, into their own bubble of Catholicism, or they could follow the footsteps of secular universities, who were open to contemplation of all ideas but privileged none as institutions. Heft suggests a via media, relying throughout his text on the metaphor of the “open circle,” a term he borrows from Gabriel Marcel. In this paradigm, Heft envisions “both continuity (the circle, a community of believers) and development within and beyond it (its openness)” (p. 2). To remain Catholic in more than name, Heft contends, those colleges and universities which ally themselves with the Church must retain distinctively Catholic intellectual and religious traditions even as they engage fruitfully with modern culture and secular academia and welcome non-Catholic faculty—neither to remain in hermetically sealed insularity nor slide into blindly accommodating secularity.
To accomplish this difficult balancing act, Heft’s book first turns to what he terms the “True Norths” of Catholic higher education: Jesus, Mary, and John Henry Newman. Jesus is central as divine Savior and as a human who himself had to be educated, while Mary, as the Seat of Wisdom, played a major role in Jesus’ education, and for Catholics in general and Marianists in particular (of whose number Heft is one), she is a resonant figure. Newman’s conception of the ideal Catholic university, Heft argues, is still both applicable and wise. Heft also explores the relationship between the Catholic university and the Church, noting the long-running tensions between academic freedom and the authority of the Church; the 1990 apostolic exhortation on Catholic higher education, Ex corde ecclesiae, and the mandatum demanded of theology instructors; and finally between bishops and theologians. While Heft concedes that these negotiations are complex and difficult, he does not believe they are insuperable barriers to a healthy and mutually supportive relationship between the university and the Church.
Heft turns then to more pragmatic specifics of how to achieve that “open circle,” to ensure that academic freedom, moral formation, engagement with the world, and distinctively Catholic theology and worldview can remain while building a sense of mission among faculty and encouraging a balance between teaching and research. Heft claims that “[f]or Catholic universities, Catholic theology and philosophy and the humanities should remain their primary, if not their exclusive, academic commitment” (p. 10). While Heft encourages the study of other religions and advocates strongly for ecumenism, he links the primacy of theology in particular to the continued health of Catholic education. He also claims faculty and administration should be committed to the moral formation of their students, in no small part by living out their own faith in teaching, research, and caring for the students individually. Finally, Heft promotes integration between campus ministry programs and coursework as well as specific Catholic studies programs.
Throughout this work, Heft writes charitably but not naively about the challenges of Catholic higher education. As a professor and a former provost and chancellor at University of Dayton, Heft has ample experience on both sides of the university, and his recommendations are carefully calibrated to be specific where possible, but pragmatically general where not. Indeed, generalizations occasionally weaken his claims, but he frankly admits that the disparity in size and funding of Catholic institutions limits his ability to be more specific. Even so, his larger arguments about the importance of mission as well as his specific recommendations for faculty development and points of common ground between faculty, administration, and clerics offer a useful framework for all mission-based institutions, especially those seeking to retain their Catholic identity.