Ex Corde Ecclesiae: Promises and Challenges

How does the mission of the university relate to the mission that Christ gave his Church? This article explores the presuppositions that preceded Ex Corde Ecclesiae and offers an analysis of the recently approved ordinances for its implementation. Candid discussion of the challenges that remain in the implementation process concludes the article. Calling the 1967 Land O’ Lakes Statement by the presidents of the major American Catholic universities “not the path to follow,” the author explains how a successful implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae might look.


FRANCIS GEORGE Archbishop of Chicago
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U niversities live from the heart of the church, e.x corde ecclesiae, because the university was fashioned out of the cathedral schools and then into the peculiarly urban educational institution that is the forerunner of modern colleges and universities.Since the release of the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae (John Paul II, 1990) on the identity and mission of Catholic universities throughout the world, there has been a long and fruitful debate marking the life of the Church-a conversation about the nature of Catholic higher education and the proper means through which we can strengthen it and renew its purpose.
That conversation in this country reached a milestone when the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) approved the norms that will govern the implementation in the United States of the universal constitution on Catholic higher education.That vote was a product of this dialogue but not its culmination.In this article, I explore some of the challenges to realizing the promise of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.But in order to frame this analysis of the future, I will first sketch the terms of the debate that has already occurred.

PRESUPPOSITIONS
Behind and shaping this conversation about the implementation of E.\ Corde Ecclesiae are several assumptions arising from the faith taught by the Church-assumptions that were clarified and emphasized for this century in the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.There are four presuppositions from the faith itself which shape both E.\ Corde Ecclesiae and the implementation document voted by the U.S. bishops.
The first presupposition comes from an understanding of freedom and its relationship to truth.Christ has said that the truth sets us free (John 8:32)free from sin and free to be persons, beings meant for communion with God and others.In the light of faith, there cannot be in the long run any disagreement (although there can be enormous tension) between the truths that come to us from science and tested observation, on the one hand, and from faith and our own freedom as human persons made in the image and likeness of God, on the other.In the short term, of course, and throughout many people's lives, there is such tension.What we have done in our culture is build that tension into the larger social life that we live, into the culture itself, so that the fault line in our kind of culture lies along the line of our willingness to play off personal or individual freedom against objective truth.That is a fault line as serious and debilitating as was the fault line in Marxist cultures, which played off and subdued, if not obliterated, individual freedom in the name of social justice.A culture's willingness to play off two such fundamental values against one another creates a tension which is felt not only in the lives of individuals shaped by that culture but also in the lives of institutions shaped by that same culture.All people, in the light of faith as well as in our understanding of who we are as Americans, are certainly free.But in order to seek and act in accordance with those truths which will make us really free, that will fulfill us as persons not only according to our own objectives here but in the light of our eternal destiny, there has to be a constant dialogue about the natures of and relationship between personal freedom and objective truth.That dialogue and its ultimately pacific resolution is presupposed in Ex Corde Ecclesiae and in the implementation norms passed by the U.S. bishops.
The second presupposition concerns the relationship between historical revelation and human reason.Historical revelation is carried in the prophetic tradition of Israel and brought to its fulfillment, for those who accept Jesus Christ as Lord, in a recognition that in Jesus of Nazareth we find the incarnation of the eternal Son of God.The conversation between historical revelation and human reason owes much to the Patristic authors and to the Scholastic doctors such as St. Thomas Aquinas.It was explored recently in Pope John Paul II's encyclical Eides et Ratio (1998).
Revelation and reason do not contradict one another, although there are again enormous tensions.Many people have recorded those tensions.
However, the faith presupposes that all truths complement and reinforce one another because of the unity of truth.The God who created us in his image and created the world because he loves goodness and who then revealed himself in human history is a God who does not tell lies and does not contradict himself.To borrow the Holy Father's words, while reason and faith surely represent two distinct orders of knowledge, each autonomous with regard to its own methods, the two must finally converge in the discovery of a single whole reality, which has its origin and its destiny in God.Therefore, even though philosophy and other disciplines and sciences are methodologically distinct from theology, the normative conclusions they bring us cannot directly contradict faith and the exploration of faith in the theological discipline.Revelation is a primarily regulative or negative guide to normative reasoning that does not usually offer conclusions.It tells you: Here is the framework, and if you go in this other direction most probably you are going wrong.But revelation does not directly give scientific answers; it is not supposed to.Nor does it give philosophical answers as such; it gives an assurance that, in the end, truth is one.
The third presupposition is that the Church, as a communion, a set of relationships that has received the gift of God s self-revelation to us in history, is charged with handing on the truth about the origin, nature, and destiny of all of God's creation-especially the truth about human persons.
And the fourth presupposition or premise is that, as Catholic or universal, the Church must constantly reach out to everyone; but she reaches out always with the faith that comes to us from the apostles.Within that perspective, the successors to the apostles within the Church, the bishops, are not the source but, in a certain sense, the verification principle (to use a philosophical and scientific term) in the preservation and development of the faith.There is always a relationship, therefore, to the bishops who are a visible sign of invisible Catholic communion.

EX CORDE ECCLESIAE AND THE IMPLEMENTATION NORMS
As a step toward strengthening the Catholic identity of Catholic universities and thus responding to the Second Vatican Council's call for a renewal of all aspects of the Church's life, the most recent Code of Canon Law (Canon Law Society, 1983), contained a number of canons (807 to 814) that dealt with Catholic universities and other institutes of higher studies.These canons are based in the constitution on Catholic education from the Second Vatican Council, Gravissimum Educationis (Vatican Council II, 1965b).which said that a prudent balance must be struck between due regard for academic autonomy and due consideration for the truths of the Catholic faith.This was then the subject of conversation intemationally, and finally those conversations resulted in the 1990 Apostolic Constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which sought to explain the mission of Catholic universities and offered general norms in order to promote that mission, norms based on the four premises discussed above and on the new Code of Canon Law.These norms are to be applied concretely by Episcopal conferences (most of them are national conferences) through ordinances that will be reviewed and approved by the Holy See.
The first draft of the U.S. ordinances was deemed unworkable by educators and was shelved.We engaged in more dialogue between 1994 and 1996.
That dialogue was between bishops and presidents only-a very conscious decision which now creates its own difficulties.Actually, the implementation of Ex Corde depends not only upon presidents and administrators but also upon the board and most of all on the faculty and, within the faculty, the theology department.The decision was made not to try to talk to the three groups at the same time, for fear that the relationship of trust built up between bishops and presidents might be wounded or become more difficult to obtain if the presidents felt the bishops were secretly contacting their own faculty or their boards and pursuing conversations with them that were not, in a sense, monitored by the president; and so we spoke only with the presidents directly.Now, however, there is another conversation that has to take place with the faculty, and particularly theologians, and with the boards, the trustees.We have to catch up.
When the bishops got together last November, despite the reports in the press where, in order to create a story, journalists went naturally enough to those who would not be in agreement with many of the elements of Ex Corde, we discovered there was considerable acceptance of the proposed norms.What the press had not reported were the much quieter conversations that, bishop by bishop, president by president, were going on in all the dioceses of this country where the Catholic Church is fortunate enough to have institutions of higher education.When we got together and started asking each other, "How has it gone with your presidents?" the overwhelming majority of the bishops said, "Well, some of the presidents don't really like it; they'd really rather not be bothered; others have said it shows great promise; but most of them said they can live with it."When it came time to vote, the ordinances passed easily and without a great deal of discussion.The conversations that we had hoped would take place had been taking place.The bishops are extraordinarily grateful to the presidents of Catholic colleges and universities for their patience in carrying on this conversation over 10 years, bringing it through various stages.Sometimes it felt as though we were going backward rather than forward; but in the end, we have an implementation document that we can work with as the conversation continues.The Holy See recently approved that document.At this point, it will take another year at least, perhaps two, in order to have those conversations with faculty and boards to be sure that the implementation will be one that in fact strengthens Catholic higher education.
The document passed last November includes a variety of provisions.First, the university is to acknowledge publicly its ecclesial status as a Catholic university and its commitment to its Catholic identity.That is completed by its mission statement, most of which are quite acceptable as they are.
Second, to the extent possible given our very pluralistic society, the majority of trustees should be Catholics committed to the Church.In other words, the trustees should be men and women who can understand the nature and identity of the university and its mission from within the household of the faith.Most religiously affiliated universities have similar understandings.That is the case, for example, with Brandeis University, an excellent research institution, where, I am told, the board of trustees is entirely Jewish.Such is no longer the case for once Christian universities like Harvard and Yale and Princeton-but they are not the only model for how to be an institution of higher education in this country.In a pluralistic society, we need people who are not visibly members of the Catholic Church as teachers, administrators, and trustees for the sake of the institution itself.But the norms call for a Catholic majority, to the extent possible, so that the vision of faith will permeate the atmosphere of the discussions of the trustees, as well as of the campus itself.Regardless of their confession, or lack of it, all trustees should be committed to the university's identity as a Catholic college and its mission statement.Additionally, the implementation document calls for collaboration with the local bishop and diocesan agencies on matters of mutual concernagain, something that has to be the topic of ongoing conversation.
Third, the university president should be Catholic, of the household of faith; and if a non-Catholic is being considered, the university should consult the bishop.Laws in the Church are not like statutory laws in our country nor like common law.There are no exceptions to our laws.If something is going wrong, the law must be changed or abolished in order to legitimate a different practice.In the case of Canon Law and in all the provisions of the Church that are positive Church law, there is the fact of dispensation.That is, in accordance with the mind of the lawgiver, there can be a case where the law obviously should not hold.A dispensation is then given; and dispensations will be given when the case warrants it.
Fourth, the staff and faculty are to be encouraged to participate to the extent possible in the university's spiritual life.Again, to the extent possible.
Fifth, to the extent possible, the majority of the faculty should be Catholics, committed to the witness of the faith.In all cases, faculty members should be committed to the Catholic mission and identity of the institution and that commitment should be part of the conversation that accompanies the hiring and the tenure process.
Sixth, students, with due regard for their personal freedom, should have opportunities to receive authentic Catholic teachings and participate in the life of faith.
The final and related point concerns Catholic theologians.This is what has generated much controversy and misunderstanding and anxiety-understandably so, for people's livelihood is at stake.Theologians who teach Catholic theology should receive a mandatum from a competent ecclesiastical authority, which is in most cases the local bishop.What does the mandatum say?It is not a diploma, it is not a license to teach, it is not a canonical mission, which is a very strong term in canon law.A mandatum is the visible expression of a relationship called ecclesial communion.Since the bishop is the visible sign of that invisible communion, the mandatum is given by the local bishop.It is not a statement that says that the professor teaches in the bishop's name; he or she does not.It is not a statement that says the professor teaches in the name of the Church; a theology professor does not.It is a recognition that the data and conclusions of theology come from the faith community, and therefore that a relationship of communion to that faith community is normal as a way to both honor the profession of theology professor within the Catholic communion and to confirm that he or she teaches within that communion or relationship.A bishop-granted mandatum says, in other words, not that I, as Archbishop of Chicago, agree with everything that is said in a theology department within the Archdiocese.It says that the Catholics who are teaching in those departments are teaching in communion with me.They are already doing so by reason of baptism.It simply makes it clear that in this particular discipline-which above all others is intrinsic to our selfunderstanding as Catholics and necessary for our understanding of our mission-is one that is truly in the heart of the Church.
All of these provisions create a stable juridical framework in which a conversation can take place in order to situate the university clearly in the heart of the Church.It is sometimes hard for us to understand that you can have a relationship that does not rigidly control, because we are suspicious of relationships.We are now even suspicious of the marriage relationship, which is to set two people free.It has become a burden, if we look at divorce stastistics.In Ex Corde we're saying there is a relationship that does not control directly; it doesn't put someone under new authority.It simply says we are in a relationship of faith and ecclesial communion, and, therefore, we can respect one another and can talk with that context assured.In the Catholic Church, the bishops are a ''verification principle" for the teaching of the faith.What they say is normative, if it is consistent with the tradition that unites us to the apostles.But also absolutely necessary for a faith that respects human reason and that constantly seeks new understanding as new cultures develop and new languages are used to express the age-old faith are those who devote themselves to the study of scientific theology.They are necessary in a way, however, that does not make them directly normative for the community's profession of faith.They are necessary because they are free to do research, to explore, to identify new formulations which the bishops are not as free to do, because that is not our role as the official teachers.This form of research and of teaching is necessary to have life, to be sure that we are rethinking the data of revelation that come to us from faith in each generation and in each culture.But this inquiry is not supposed to be directly normative.And therefore the theologian does not teach in the name of the Church as such, but teaches always in communion with, in relationship to, the Church.
That single idea has been extraordinarily difficult to convey in the public conversation, especially in the press, in a culture that says you can't have a relationship that doesn't control.To be free, for this culture, means to be autonomous.That of course is exactly the opposite of what the faith tells us about being one in the truth that makes us free.Jesus is the savior upon whom we are totally dependent but who makes us free in the Spirit.
From this short survey of the implementation proposals, a number of obvious future challenges emerge.

FUTURE CHALLENGES
First, to continue dialogue with university leaders, the bishops must formulate a detailed, fair, and public procedure for granting and withdrawing the mandatum.We have not started to do that yet.It has to be done in conversation with the theological community.It must have recourse written into it to be sure that no university and no professor is in conversation only with a bishop acting on his own.The bishops must take this in hand and police ourselves, much as the professoriate has to police itself.Sometimes professors do that well within their own discipline and through their conversation and their professional associations and their publishing; but sometimes it does not work very well.Bishops do the same thing.While an individual bishop gives the mandatum, nonetheless, he will have received advice on how and when to do it.
Second, universities must develop their own statutes and policies regarding a number of issues: the board's collaboration with the bishop, its general plan to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae's vision of a university mission and identity, and whether or not, or how, it wants to require that a professor teaching Catholic theology needs a mandatum.A university can require that all faculty have a Ph.D.However, if an applicant for a faculty position does not hold a Ph.D., that is not the hiring university's fault or responsibility.The mandatum is like that diploma, although not identical with a diploma.The Church through the local bishop gives the mandatum; it is up to the university to say: All our teachers, or so many of our teachers, will have the mandatum.If they decide none of them have to have it, then I think there would be a conversation with the bishop.
The greatest challenges present themselves in this area because in 1967 the presidents of major American Catholic universities issued the Land O' Lakes Statement (1992) announcing that the traditional mission and identity of Catholic universities in this country were to be altered.They called for a sense of academic freedom and institutional autonomy no different from that of secular universities.If you have given yourself to this vision of the Catholic university, insisting that the Catholic identity be carried in nonstructural or non-juridical ways, Fx Corde is a conceptual and existential shock.To be told there is a juridical relationship that is built into ecclesial communion is in a sense to go back and say someone took a wrong turn in 1967.It is always hard, especially for faculty (as students know) to say, "We were wrong."It is even harder for bishops!But it is not so much being wrong as it is saying now: The 1967 statement is not the path to follow; there is now another way to go.To back up and to rethink a position is difficult.The bishops stand in awe of presidents who are willing to do that, because it is hard.The 1967 position has been called the path of mitigated secularization of Catholic higher education.For the sake of being a respected voice within the conversation that is higher education in the United States, institutions were separated from the juridical attachment to their founding religious orders and therefore to the Church, and they embarked on an experiment in pluralism.This experiment has been very useful and has given us direction that will continue; but it will now take place within the stable juridical framework which is Fx Corde Fcclesiae.
There were several reasons for taking that path in 1967, besides the desire for a kind of autonomy that would protect academic freedom.That freedom is supported and, one hopes, assured within the Ex Corde Fcclesiae document.How it will be worked out still has to be decided, but academic freedom has to be protected.But there were also other developments behind the 1967 statement.After the Second World War, the involvement of govemment and businesses in higher education, particularly in funding, greatly increased.Government and business have their own purposes which are not always the same as the mission of the Church.Driven by the desire for scientific and technological progress, government and business entered into affiliation with higher education.Foundations were created, often the charitable consequences of entrepreneurial or business success, and these had and have the ability to funnel significant funds into higher education.Given their own purposes, however, which may or may not coincide with the mission of the Church, and even may or may not coincide with the purposes of higher education understood as a liberal enterprise, dependence upon them for growth, or even survival, has had an influence on Catholic universities which is sometimes questionable.
The second development responsible for what we could call the mitigated secularization of Catholic universities is the more difficult of the two to resolve.It comes from that cultural ideal of freedom as autonomy that I mentioned before.We live in our culture as a fish lives in water.The fish does not often write about water because the fish takes it for granted.So also do we: Culture is second nature.Culture, often without our realization, gives us a way to relate so that we don't have to make conscious decisions minute by minute about what we have to do next.It imparts a way of acting and a way of thinking and a way of loving that become second nature.The notion of freedom as autonomy has become second nature to us as Americans.It has had great good results, good fruits; it also carries some very great disadvantages.
Beyond the details of Ex Corde and its implementation lies its purpose, and it is that purpose which I would like to talk about at the end of this conversation.If there is too great an emphasis on how we will get this done, on administering it, and if we are just concerned about how administratively a bishop relates to a college or university president, faculty, and board, we risk losing sight of the fact that Ex Corde is a statement about the mission of higher education.Why speak of a relationship, administrative, juridical, or otherwise, unless we are already in some kind of a relationship that gives us a common purpose?Church and university together.The more important question, therefore, is; "How does the mission of the university relate to the mission that Christ gave his Church?" With the Second Vatican Council, there came a deeply renewed sense of mission from the purpose that Pope John XXIII had in mind when he called the council in the middle of this past century.He looked at the history of the 20th century and saw that the human race, which in faith we believe is oneone creator, one redeemer, one destiny-was divided again and again in such a way that violence marked the pages of the 20th century's history-violence more extreme than that of any other century.People were divided in the First World War because they belonged to different nation states.And people of the same faith killed people, brothers and sisters in that faith, in the name of national autonomy, and national independence, in the name of freedom.
Later in the century people were divided in the name of race.An entire religious and racial identity, that of the Jewish people, our ancestors in the faith, was marked for extermination.The Slavic nations were marked for perpetual inferiority by a notion of a master race that should, by natural right, control the entire world.Then in Marxist ideologies, people were irrevocably divided by reason of their economic class.
Revolutions, world wars, and guerrilla operations mark and stain the pages of human history.Pope John XXIII, man of faith that he was, stood back and wondered who would tell this human race that it is one and that the bloodshed and the violence must therefore stop.He said the Catholic Church must take its responsibility because it proclaims itself one and universal.We preach the unity of the human race in God's love.How can the Church do that, if the Church herself is so divided?Ecumenism therefore became central to the Church's self-understanding as a result of the Second Vatican Council.In his farewell discourse in the Gospel according to Saint John, Jesus said the world will not believe if you are not one as "the Father and I are one" (John 10:30).John XXIII called this council to unite the Church, so that a united Church could transform the world.The purpose of the council was not directly to change the Church; it was rather to do away with all the increments of the ages that defaced the Church, if you like, or that hid the Church's true nature even from herself, so that the Church would be free to change the world.If the Church does not transform the world, if that is not her primary preoccupation-as a leaven within the human race-then she has betrayed her Lord.Lumen Gentium (Vatican Council II, 1964), the Constitution on the Church from Vatican II, talks about the Church precisely as a communion of peoples related in Christ because they share the gifts of Christ: the gospel, the seven sacraments, apostolic governance.And Gaudium et Spes (Vatican Council II, 1965a) adds that Church in the modern world-or now the post-modern world-must, to be true to herself, act as an agent or leaven for transforming the whole world.
Therefore, as Catholics, and most other Christians, and many other faith communities, the struggle is not to be independent; that is an easy thing to do.The struggle for us is to be related to Christ and therefore, in Christ, to the world that he loves and died to save, to be related to that world in Christ, in order to change it, so that it will be a little bit more like the kingdom he proclaimed and a little bit less like the world we live in now.The mission, therefore, says that you have to know the world from the inside and love it.The Cure of Ars, Saint Jean Vianney, said in the 19th century that the world belongs to the one who will learn how to love it.The religious challenge therefore of today is shaped by a new world, a different world.How shall we love it?

THE CHALLENGE OF EVANGELIZATION
We are at the beginning of a new millennium.Pope John Paul II, looking at Vatican II and looking at where we are a generation later, has called us to a new evangelization for this new millennium.He has been talking about this since 1983, when in Haiti he called for a novena of nine years to prepare for the 500th anniversary of the Gospel's coming to what was then a new world.The Pope says we need a new evangelization because it's a new moment in this hemisphere and throughout the entire globe.
A few years ago I went with the bishops of the Pacific Northwest for our ad limina visit.Every five years, every bishop goes to pray at the tomb of Peter and say the creed.Then he goes upstairs and talks to the successor of Peter.We were talking with the Pope as a group of bishops from Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho.We asked, "Holy Father, you talk all the time about a new evangelization; would you please tell us exactly what you mean?"He said, "Oh, I don't know what that means locally.It depends on you to define it, wherever you are."When we came home, we had to say, "Well, we don't really know what it means either, brothers and sisters, but together we're going to have to discover its meaning." The new evangelization says, first of all, that we are in a different context.When I was young, there were lands where the Church's faith and mission were carried by normal pastoral structures; parishes, hospitals, colleges, social services.Catholic charities, and all kinds of movements and religious orders; and then there were areas of the world which were called mission lands, where the Church was barely established and where missionaries went to preach the Gospel for the first time.We in pastoral lands had parish missions where the Gospel was preached to those who believed; they had the vision of faith but maybe morally they were not conforming their lives to the Gospel.One preached parish missions to call people to make a good confession, and they got in communion with the Lord again.Eventually, through the attrition of daily life, they needed another mission some years later.That was re-evangelizing, or secondary evangelization, by comparison with the primary evangelization that went on in mission lands.
That distinction is now effectively finished.Since the Second Vatican Council the Church is established in local churches, throughout the globe.Sometimes dioceses are less self-sufficient than dioceses in other places, but the pastoral structures are there.What is also there is not just people who believe but whose moral life has to be looked at from time to time, but people who now in large groups have decided that the Gospel is not good and it's not news: "been there, done that."Now not just individuals but whole classes of people, whole cultures, sometimes whole countries which once believed are post-Christian.They have decided not to believe any longer that Jesus Christ is Lord.Within that cultural context, which is new in the history of the Catholic Church, new in its massive dimension, the Pope says that a new evangelization has to recognize that the distinction between pastoring and missioning is no longer valid.
Therefore, there has to be very close attention to culture.When I first became Archbishop of Chicago, the Pope asked me to come in and talk after I had received the pallium, which is the sign of an Archbishop's authority and of his union with the Holy See, the Apostolic See.I said to myself that now he would tell me what he thinks my mission in Chicago should be.We were talking, and he still wasn't giving me directions.I was explaining that Chicago is this, Chicago is that, to the extent that I know it and that I remember it, from my having grown up there.But it is different now from when I was a boy, and I was explaining those differences to the Holy Father.At the end of my going on and on, thinking, "When is he going to say something?" he stopped me and said, "What are you doing to change the culture?"What am I doing to change the culture?
Certainly, what I have to do is go to universities and ask them to please give me a good analysis of this culture, using anthropology, sociology, economic science.Would you please tell us about this cultural environment, this second nature, in which we live?For universities are carriers of culture, very self-consciously so, in ways that other institutions are not.But in this culture, and in this country, it seems to me law is more important as a carrier of culture.We are legalistic people for good reason, because with all our differences-of ethnic backgrounds, and languages (first languages, family languages), religion, all the vast diversity that enriches us-it is the law that demands that we stay together.Law is not just an adventitious adjunct to our culture, as it is in some other places, where they can take the norms for granted because the culture is more common.We have a lot of statutory law because we have to negotiate constantly the terms of our remaining together.Those negotiations are put into laws, which then tell us not just what we can or cannot do but who we are.
Besides law, the next most important carrier of culture is education.The public school is a cultural artifact, much defended precisely because it does far more than teach people.It is a symbol of American democracy, a quasireligious symbol.The public school system is our state church.Not to understand the way in which education is a carrier of culture is to reduce it to a way to teach people what they need for their chosen discipline or vocation in life.It's far more than that, as we all know and as the idea of liberal education continually sets forth.Therefore, we need the Catholic universities to evangelize.Not that they themselves directly evangelize, although they should create a university culture where it is natural to believe.But their mission is directly to help form those who will go forth from them to transform that world.The universities need to tell us what that world is, primarily through cultural analysis and through other forms of analysis.Universities can also help the Church evangelize by giving us a language for the faith which is both faithful and timely.
The new evangelization includes three methods, three moments, if you like.Evangelizing includes dialogue.An ability to dialogue is possible only if there is great respect for the other, precisely as other.Human freedom, which is defended by the Church because it is a part of the Gospel, requires that the other be accorded genuine dignity.We respect others not because they are like us.We are not all just the same under the skin; we are not supposed to be.When you look at the history of the development of disciplines proper to this past century-sociology, social psychology, anthropologyand you look at contemporary philosophy, particularly certain existentialist movements, you understand how providentially these disciplines, cultivated in the university, are enabling the Church to understand the dynamics of what it means to truly respect the other, as other.The Church needs the university for its mission of evangelizing today, because we have to learn how to dialogue.And that is part of what universities are about.
Second, we need the universities because there is in a university a form of witness, and witness is a form of evangelizing.Witnessing to the way in which ideas and ideals and values can transform us gives us insight into the dynamics of religious conversion, of the movement of grace which enables one to be transformed in Christ, so that leamers can grow to be truly at the service of others.The universities as such, especially Catholic universities, must witness to generosity.It is generosity, more than anything else, that is the reason we can say we are made in God's image and likeness-a God who is love, a God who is totally generous in his own inner life, who is a constant self-giving of everything from each person of the Trinity to the other two persons of the Trinity.The generosity which is God's life, when it is found in us, is a sign of our being made in his image and likeness, of our having been transformed by his grace.A university or a college that educates people to educate others, that understands social work as a service to the dignity of human beings (and not just a vocation for the individual pursuing it); a university that trains business leaders in a free economy to be generous in the way that they go about their business, to be fair and honest, to be good to those who depend upon them for a livelihood; a university that says that what we are about, and what our graduates are about, is the common good, and not just individual projects or dreams or profits; that is a witness in itself, a kind of intellectual martyria to what the Gospel is all about.
And finally, besides including dialogue and witness, the new evangelization recognizes that, at its heart, all evangelizing is proclaiming that Jesus Christ is Lord.But how do you proclaim in a world that speaks a language that isn't much shaped by faith?The Church needs the universities to understand our mission; and universities have to understand that mission, therefore, from the inside, from within the household of the faith, while being themselves, as universities, the house of intellect.Saint Thomas Aquinas sometimes is not thought of as a missionary, but he had an extraordinarily strong sense of mission.He recog-nized that there was ignorance of the faith, and felt a call to contemplate, teach, and preach.He could have been a secular priest.Because he was from a noble family, he could probably have been a bishop; but that would have kept him rooted entirely in the pastoral structures of his age.He could have been a monk, because he was a truly holy man and wanted to become holier; but that too was a vocation requiring stability of place.Monasteries exist in a given place, and people come to the monks.Instead, he chose to be a friar, a Dominican friar, which was a totally new vocation that his family, which was quite established, did not want him to pursue.What was new about the friars was that they went out of their houses to change the culture.They went out, steeped in the biblical renewal that was part of the 13th century.And Thomas went back to the Bible itself and not just to the commentators; going back, he himself wrote commentaries on Scripture.We think of St. Thomas as the author of the Summa Theologiae (1955) or the Summa Contra Gentiles (1946).But he was also a commentator on the letters of St. Paul and on the Gospel according to St. John.What he was about in going out was to make Scripture available to people in ways that it hadn't been available before, in a language they could understand.
He was not just a preacher, but a member of a preaching order which vowed poverty.That was the second part of the religious renewal of the 13th century: The biblical renewal called men and women to a life of poverty.Why?Because there was new wealth in Europe at that time.They were moving from an agricultural and subsistence economy into an economy marked by commerce.There was a new mercantile class, and great wealth was suddenly spawned in that generation.In order to redeem that wealth, to make it truly the mission of the Church, some had to stand up and say, "I separate myself from it," as a form of witness; and Thomas took a vow of poverty.The insistence on returning to poverty, exemplified by St. Francis and St. Dominic, was necessary because many of the monasteries had grown too rich.Many lay Catholics had grown too rich.Many had forgotten the Gospel's call not necessarily to a radical poverty for all, but to a radical generosity that says all the gifts of this common human race are to be put at the common good, at the service of all of us.This message is still there in the social teaching of the Church and still very often forgotten.Thomas's sense of mission cannot be exactly the same as ours; we are in a different age.But that desire to do what he did, to refashion the Gospel in such a way that it makes sense to our people but does not simply collapse into the culture s norms-that is the mission of the Church.In a very particular way, it is the mission of every Catholic college and university.
I am grateful that we are continuing the conversation about the challenges of mission today by talking about the identity of a Catholic college.I hope that the dialogue around Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which is a stable juridical framework for that conversation, will be of great benefit to all.In the mis- We have to study rhetoric and understand what words work in this culture.There has to be a kind of a new apologetics, not fighting 16th-century enemies, but rather looking at today's challenges to the faith from secularists and biblical literalists or fundamentalists.What are the words, what are the songs, what are the plays, what is the literature, that now we can use as works of imagination to help us rethink that proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord in ways that make sense in the new millennium?