The University Needs the Catholic Church: Newman’s Idea of a University Discourse IX

A previous post considered how Discourse IX of Newman’s The Idea of a University crowns his philosophical principles of education with a clear religious vision. This current post will look at three points of connection between the university and the Catholic Church that Newman thinks are necessary parts of such a religious dimension.

Discourse IX is a carefully structured climax of all previous discourses, not a sharp reversal or separate inquiry. Newman says that beginning to speak about the divine prerogatives of the Church toward education feels like “coming into port” after sailing the difficult and tempestuous sea of natural philosophical arguments. He does not mean that they are unrelated, but means that revealed religion has the higher and more secure ground, because it is that to which all knowledge points, and that which fully illuminates all else. Newman sees a deep, even necessary relationship between philosophy and theology: “Nature and Grace, Reason and Revelation, come from the same Divine Author, whose works cannot contradict each other” (219).

In Newman’s view, the university has full intellectual rights to pursue knowledge, and the Church has the divine right to protect and extend the fullness of truth. This includes direct oversight of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual formation of its children. Both university and Church are authorities in their own domains, and they share an inescapable and mutual relationship. 

The university must look to the Church for 1) an ethical framework, 2) truths of revealed theology, and 3) the practical oversight and governance of bishops. These points have been and still are controversial, but are deeply relevant and important for the progress of Catholic education and intellectual formation today.

1) The Church provides a coherent and singular ethical framework for intellectual pursuits.

A culture of intellect tends to, without religious reverence, exalt itself into “intellectualism” and become “hostile to Revealed Truth” (218, 216). Devotion to knowledge needs grounding in love of God and neighbor, without which it might neglect or even militate against sacred truths that are approachable by reason, but often obscured by pride and sin.

For example, medical doctors should protect the body-soul dignity of human persons from conception to natural death. The teaching authorities of the Catholic Church have clearly and consistently spoken out against contraception, abortion, and euthanasia. Prescribing death is not medical care; it is an assault against the moral and spiritual integrity of humanity. In addition, it hampers the ability of medical professionals to investigate better approaches to beginning- and end-of-life care, since direct killing is objectively and gravely evil, and it obscures observations about natural processes that could result in deeper knowledge and better practice. Obedience to Church teaching on the part of scientists does not hinder scientific practice and research; science is enhanced by it.

This does not mean that theologians should or can dictate scientific conclusions or supplant the scientist’s work – “the Church has no call to watch over and protect science.” It means that the light of truth shining from theology illuminates all other disciplines. Newman uses another example about “political economy” in Discourse IV. The biblical notion that “love of money is the root of all evil,” that humans tend toward greed because of original sin, is very relevant to economics. Economists will find their best-laid plans thwarted if they are naive or falsely optimistic about human vices, and those plans will function better with a vision for discouraging greed. Everything is connected—the Church’s ethical framework reflects this full reality and guides the university’s intellectual pursuits to flourish within it.

2) The Church supplies the truths of Christian Revelation that reason (specifically natural theology, or theology approached from within the pale of human philosophy) cannot supply for itself, adding to the stock of universal knowledge that must be taught.

 The Church claims to teach revealed truths that are mysteries beyond reason, but are intelligible and more deeply understood with reason. God is Triune, Christ is fully God and fully man, the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. These are all examples of truths that are knowable by the revelation from God entrusted to the Catholic Church. Now that they are revealed, they can be known and studied more deeply in themselves and in their relations to other knowledge. Therefore, a university that professes to teach universal knowledge—that is, all knowledge available to humans—should take revealed truths into its system and teach them.

The Church does not impose these truths by force, but teaches and proposes them to conscientious thinkers persuasively. This is an extension of the Church’s prophetic and missionary mandate: “Where Theology is, there [the Church] must be; and if a University cannot fulfill its name and office without the recognition of Revealed Truth, she must be there to see that it is a bonâ fide recognition, sincerely made and consistently acted on” (227). Newman’s challenge is clear: the university’s duty to teach universal knowledge, if the Catholic faith be true, cannot be fulfilled without the Church’s authoritative supply of revealed truths. Newman is not saying here that non-Catholic universities are illegitimate or not really universities. He is offering an invitation: a university that wishes to truly be itself should remain open to, or be on a journey toward, the fulness of revealed Catholic truth.

3) The Church provides the ecclesiastical and episcopal oversight that constitutes the Catholic ethos, identity, or character of an institution that seeks to maintain a Catholic identity.

Providing an ethical framework and revealed truths imply the direct involvement of ecclesial authority in the university. Newman would say that a Catholic university is not really made Catholic by its mission statement, or curriculum, or faculty, or even theological teaching. A true Catholic university subsists under the episcopal authority of Church hierarchy, and exercises obedience to Church teaching and governance:

it is no sufficient security for the Catholicity of a University, even that the whole of Catholic theology should be professed in it, unless the Church breathes her own pure and unearthly spirit into it, and fashions and moulds its organization, and watches over its teaching, and knits together its pupils, and superintends its action. (216)

The practical oversight of bishops secures a truly Catholic ethos and brings about a corporate and institutional unity that imparts a living character irreducible to institutional externals. A real and living relationship with Catholic authority is required for any claim to the name or identity of ‘Catholic.’

Newman’s view of the necessary integration of reason and revelation, nature and grace, university and Church is of deep relevance and importance today. His works on education should be read with a deepened and renewed attention in light of his new status as Doctor of the Church and co-patron of education. Doing so reveals his vision of intellect and religion as deeply intertwined in the living practice of education. Educators, students, and institutions can experience a renewed sense of life and vigor by listening to his wisdom.

St. John Henry Newman, we pray that through your intercession our intellectual endeavors may be deeply united with the sublime truths of the Holy Catholic Faith.