VCCS: Catholic Social Teaching and the University

Catholic Social Thought
and Liberal Arts Education

David W. Haddorff¹^_
Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies
St. John's University

In their 1998 document Sharing Catholic Social Teaching, the United States Catholic Bishops provide directives and challenges to Catholic higher education concerning the implementation of the principles of Catholic Social Thought into the academic curriculum.² They encourage Catholic educational institutions to assess whether they effectively integrate this teaching into their curriculum, and if not, challenge them to find new ways to further integrate this material. My discussion focuses on the interrelationship of Catholic social thought and the liberal arts. As a moral theologian, of course, I think that this teaching is essential for courses in familial, political, economic, or medical ethics; thus, it directly applies to our ethics courses. Still, as the bishops understand it, Catholic social teaching extends beyond simply one or two academic fields but to the entire curriculum, both in terms of course work and programs like 'service learning.' Indeed, it should extend into every classroom, if possible. I realize that this teaching is more directly applicable to some academic fields than to others, so my remarks focus on three general strategies which can be applied across the disciplines.

In the papal encyclical, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, John Paul argues that the academic life of the university ought to extend its mission in the following ways: ³

"[Its] research [ought to be] carried out in light of the Christian message which puts new human discoveries at the service of individuals and society; education offered in a faith-context that forms men and women capable of rational and critical judgment and conscious of the transcendent dignity of the human person; professional training that incorporates ethical values and sense of service to individuals and to society; the dialogue with culture that makes the faith better understood, and the theological research that translates the faith into contemporary language." (49)

This quotation, in my view, discloses three important points: 1) that research knowledge, once applied in practice, is inherently ethical and service-orientated; 2) that critical and rational judgment must be linked with assumptions about human dignity and value; and 3) that faith relies on the dialogue of faith and culture, or faith and reason. The remaining part of my talk will discuss these points in more detail.

Teach Moral Responsibility for Persons, Society and the Environment in all Disciplines

The first point claims that all research we engage in, in some way serves individuals and society; it is service-orientated and inherently ethical. I am going to discuss the importance of being aware of the ethical implications of our research and teaching, and finding ways to integrate this into our work. This involves the issue of moral responsibility. In a recent article in America, William Bryon S. J. has succinctly and concisely summarized Catholic Social Thought into ten substantive principles.⁴ In the language of responsibility, these principles can be divided into three groups: 1) responsibilities to persons; 2) responsibilities to society; 3) responsibilities to creation. First, responsibility to persons means respecting the intrinsic dignity and equality of the human person. The human person, however, is never construed in isolation apart from his or her social relations. Thus, secondly we are responsible to the person-in-community, which also means we are responsible to society. Such responsibilities include supporting the rights of association, participation, solidarity, and subsidiarity. These principles presume that all knowledge has some bearing on the moral ethos of society and its conception of the common good. In addition to the individual and society, we are also morally responsible for the good of the environment, which is grounded in the principle of stewardship for creation. This principle means we must extend our responsibilities to non-human life and the integrity of creation.

In Catholic Social Teaching, the task of teaching students moral responsibility for persons, society, and the environment belongs to all areas within the university, not simply ethics courses. According to Church teaching, all of our research has ethical implications. Even quantitative results, once applied to concrete circumstances, often involve practical moral judgments about good and evil, justice and injustice, or violence and peace. It fosters judgments about 'who' we are as people and 'how' we ought to order our lives together. Given this, we should familiarize ourselves with the many documents in Catholic social thought, finding ways to integrate them into our coursework. The U.S. Bishops and Pope John Paul have written on numerous issues in political economy, society, the family, education, the environment, and medical care.⁵ These documents not only should be used in theology and philosophy classes but also in the social sciences, humanities, education, and business. By familiarizing ourselves with these documents, then, we can inform our judgments about how knowledge is practically applied to our specific circumstances, and how this involves making judgments of moral responsibility.

Link Critical and Rational Judgment with Human Dignity and Values
Even more broadly the second methodological strategy finds ways of linking critical and rational judgment with assumptions about human dignity and value. This involves ethical judgment, but also a keen social and cultural analysis of the risks of our own age. In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, John Paul reveals an important antithesis in late modern society between, on one hand, our insistence on human rights and on the other, the denial of those rights in actual practice.⁶ The problem is that the dominant worldview of our age begins with a view of human rights, which is grounded in an autonomous and independent human subject. This suggests that those who are dependent upon others, whether the poor, oppressed, mentally ill, handicapped, unborn, and the elderly, do not have the same rights as autonomous agents. In short, only free, rational communicative agents have rights. This error denies the relational nature of the human person, and our universal obligation to all persons, whether independent or dependent, strong or weak. Indeed, it denies the Creator's gift of life and the sacramental presence of other persons--parents and spouses and children and friends--persons who quite literally make us who we are. Moreover, John Paul is equally critical about theories and ideologies, like Marxism, that oversocialize us, by absorbing the individual into a collective social whole, or, various other natural and social scientific theories, that view the person as the sum total of his or her reactions to external stimuli, or to the conditioning power of one's genetic code. Our social and bodily nature, in short, cannot be reduced to either autonomy or heteronomy. In sum, both extreme theories of human nature deny human freedom in relation to God, others, and creation, which inevitably leads to the loss of faith in God, to conflict and exclusion of others, and destruction of the environment. In such a view, he says, "everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining: even the first of the fundamental rights, the right to life." (20).

Although, the pope says this 'culture of death' is powerful, it is rightly being challenged by the 'culture of life,' which not only affirms human rights, grounded in the relational nature of the person, but fights for their implementation into actual practice. As John Paul puts it, these "movements and initiatives raise social awareness in defense of life." So, these promising movements present an alternative ethos, established in the practices and principles of love, justice, and peace, in the protection of human and non-human life. Of course, these movements emerge from various institutions and associations within society, one of which is the university. In fact, in Evangelium Vitae and Ex Corde Ecclesiae, John Paul insists that the Catholic University is one of the most important institutions of the 'culture of life' as he also calls it the "Gospel of life." The university not only has a mission to educate but to foster the renewal and revitalization of society. With this in mind, as we find ways of linking the liberal arts with assumptions about human dignity and value, let us also reflect on the society and culture in which we live, and remember the Pope's sober reflection about the inherent conflicts between the competing philosophies of life and death, and their impact on our students' lives. By examining our own assumptions in our research and teaching, we see the larger implications of our thought on society through the lives of our students. Our mission as professors is not simply to educate but to be co-creators with God in the work of transforming society toward a culture of life.

Nurture Understanding of the Unity of Truth
Our mission as professors is not simply to educate but to be co-creators with God in the work of transforming society toward a culture of life.
The third issue inevitably follows from the second, in that it examines the relationship of faith and reason within the university, which fosters dialogue among the disciplines. In Catholic teaching faith and reason are not held in conflict but in a correlative relationship. This correlation is grounded in the notion of the unity of truth. Since God is the author of all truth and the creator of all reality, then by uncovering small truths we can discover something of the finger prints of its creator. Each act of intellectual creativity mirrors the boundless creativity of the God in whose image we were made. Human knowledge, which in many contexts of higher education appears hopelessly fragmented and disconnected, should, in the Catholic University, be integrated and interconnected. In Ex Corde Ecclesia, John Paul writes: "University teachers should seek to improve their competence and endeavor to set the content, objectives, methods, and results of research in an individual discipline within the framework of a coherent world vision." (22)

Indeed, such a 'coherent vision' of the liberal arts nurtures two important results: First, is a greater appreciation of an inclusive, or holistic, understanding of human knowledge. This holistic view challenges the narrow conception of knowing that has shaped modern consciousness and culture, namely the quantitative, mechanical, and instrumental. In this view, facts, values, meaning, and purposes, are often reduced to more basic and more real material and mechanistic entities. This way of knowing, by definition, cannot deal with the qualities of experience, including not only the familiar qualities of nature, such as color and sound, but also the larger constellations of qualities we class under the headings of meaning, value, and purpose. In materialistic thinking, these qualities of experience and knowledge are usually consigned to the unknowable, and often they are regarded even as sources of illusion and irrationality. In such a view, the affirmations of religious faith have been called into question and thrown on the defense by the dominant modern conception of knowing; so too have ethics, the arts, literature, and personal-communal meaning and values--all the realms of experience involving the qualitative. In contrast, a holistic or 'catholic' conception of knowledge attempts not to demonize quantitative knowing but integrates it with qualitative knowing; this fosters dialogue between faith and culture and faith and reason. Indeed, as John Paul reminds us, since there is a unity of truth, liberal arts education should effectively integrate this two kinds of knowing, with the goal of building up and contributing to the culture of life.

The second point is more practical, in that while the demands for specialization are real and important, there is opportunity, indeed a responsibility, to engage in conversation and inter-disciplinary work. In the Catholic University we should seek opportunities for the re-integration of knowledge, which nurtures our understanding of the unity of truth. This of course, involves conversation and dialogue, which links participants together into a genuine intellectual community. It is a conversation about everything--about engineering and political development, about diplomatic history and insect navigation, about renaissance literature and social theory, about truth and error, and human good and human evil. This conversation includes all that are interested, and all are invited to be a part of it; integration means conversation and dialogue.

So as we consider the bishops' challenge of integrating Catholic Social Thought into our liberal arts courses, let us remember that answering such a challenge begins with dialogue. Let the conversation begin.

Endnotes

^{1 _}David W. Haddorff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at St. John's University. He is the author of Dependence and Freedom: The Moral Thought of Horace Bushnell and has published in Horizons, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, Encounter, and Review of Social Economy. He has participated in the International Business Ethics conferences sponsored by the Vincentian Universities. He holds a Ph.D. from Marquette University.

² U. S. Catholic Bishops, Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1998).

³ Pope John Paul II, On Catholic Universities (Ex Corde Ecclesiae), (Washington, D.C: United States Catholic Conference, 1990). Citations of this document will hereafter be identified by paragraph number in parenthesis within the body of the text.

⁴ William J. Byron, S.J., "Ten Building Blocks of Catholic Social Teaching" America (October 31, 1998): 9-12.

⁵ For an extensive list of these documents see, U.S. Bishops, Sharing Catholic Social Teaching, pp.27-28.

⁶ Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae), (Washington, D.C: United States Catholic Conference, 1995). Citations of this document will hereafter be identified by paragraph number in parenthesis within the body of the text.

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