Catholic Universities
On
July 20, when this article was already sent to the editor, Vatican
State Secretary Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone prohibited the Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Perú from using the words “pontificia” and
“católica” in its name. Reasons were given—some false and others
ludicrous. For example, Bertone falsely claims that the university’s
statutes collide with the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Eclessiae. As
anyone can see by comparing both documents, this is simply not true. In
the second category, Bertone provides an abundance of ludicrous details:
that the university paid homage to Father Gastón Garatea and that
students and faculty read the book Liberation Theology by Father Gustavo
Gutiérrez in their courses. Both Garatea and Gutiérrez are practicing
Catholic priests, although probably Cardenal Bertone doesn’t like it.
What should a Catholic institution be, and what should a good university be?
Is there any relevant difference between a good university and a good
Catholic university? What does the word “Catholic” add to the word
“university”? Answers to these questions may help clarify our
understanding of both.
A good Catholic institution—or person, for that matter—is one that
simply follows what Jesus taught, that is: treat your neighbor, the
other person, as though he or she is an end in itself, not a means for
anything else. Be compassionate, cooperative and strive for equity. If
we take those aims in consideration, it is clear that most of us don’t
always behave that way and that most institutions don’t either, not
even, as we all know, the Catholic Church itself. Thus, we should regard
those objectives as regulative idealsin Kant’s sense, that is, as
something that we will never fully reach but that compels our actions
in a particular direction. These objectives, therefore, become the
criteria to judge our behavior.
A good university also has some high objectives, especially the search
for truth in all domains, the responsibility to pass knowledge from one
generation to another without gaps or distortions, and the moral
obligation to be relevant to society. In this context, what should a
Catholic
university be and in what sense should Catholic universities be
different from non-Catholic ones? The most important requirement for a
Catholic university is to be an excellent university, that is, to have
international standards of excellence for research, teaching and social
responsibility.
Both kinds of institutions look for the truth and are concerned about
transmitting it to younger generations, being relevant to society in the
quest of knowledge and equity. They also seek to be cooperative and
compassionate, providing good role models for other institutions and
people. “Role model” is a key word. A good Catholic university has as a
model an ideal community of responsible truth-seekers who respect other
views and work to make the world a better place for all, regardless of
their faith and background. If a Catholic university is good enough to
be a role model for even non-Catholics, then it is likely doing a good
job. If it is only a good role model for Catholics, you might suspect
something is wrong.
To the extent of doing a good job in the sense described, no important
differences exist between a Catholic university and any other good
secular university. One important requirement, which should apply to all
universities concerned with a wide horizon of research and education,
is that a Catholic university has to guarantee not only a professional
technical education but also a broad humanistic background. Through its
curriculum students become familiar with the history of classical human
culture, as well as the role the Church played in it, both in the good
aspects and the bad. The university should be a critical institution of
the system, not another means for its survival. Just as the Gospel
incarnates a revolutionary view of morals and human living by
criticizing, sometimes radically, the system and the Church of its time,
a Catholic university should also always be critical enough of the
established system to remind us of its errors. It also always has to
leave open room for the dialogue between reason and faith, that is,
between science and religion. Sometimes science and religion confront
each other with skepticism. There is no reason for this, and with a more
open attitude, both would learn from one another.
Furthermore, the Catholic Church has an explicit preference, especially,
but not solely, for the poor and the excluded—those who need more from
God. A Catholic university, then, should help students with intellectual
abilities but without economic means to pay for an expensive and good
education. At the same time, it should provide the opportunity to hold
academic and religious activities where interested students and faculty
can practice their faith. However, what is essential to true Christian
education is to educate students within religious and philosophical
freedom, so that they can choose autonomously what to believe and how.
Probably the most important goal of any, but particularly Christian,
education is to facilitate autonomy and self knowledge. Both of these
goals are possible only where there is intellectual freedom, pluralism
and academic excellence. In that sense, a Catholic university has to
open lines of research and debate, not close them by assuming we have
some kind of truth that others don’t have and that, therefore, we must
teach it to them. That is why a Catholic university that admits only
Catholics is not Catholic at all. Pluralism, respect for others views
and beliefs, intellectual freedom and support for all intellectual and
social initiatives, are essential elements for a true
Catholic education. Therefore, all or most intellectually relevant views
have to be present in a Catholic university, as part of the dialogue
the institution has to foster, even if these views are regarded as
non-Catholic, because self criticism and improvement are only possible
when we are familiar with views we not only don’t share but view as
contrary to ours.
The question now is whether Catholic universities hold these standards,
especially in Latin-American countries. In order to answer this question
we have to review a little history. As it is well known, most European
universities began as part of the Church. They started to diverge,
however, around the beginnings of modernity and Enlightenment. At that
time, the Catholic Church projected the image of an institution that
could limit intellectual creativity and scientific research. Of course
it didn’t have to be that way, because most scientific developments of
the time didn’t threaten faith at all, as proved by the fact that
nowadays those scientific developments are fully accepted. However,
members of the Church’s hierarchy wrongly considered scientific thinking
to be dangerous and the logical consequence was that the very image of
the Church was severely affected. This situation had a perverse outcome:
many academics made false professions of faith, which is already bad
enough, and many others lived scared of being prosecuted or fired for
not being orthodox enough. Instead of being Mater et Magistra, the
Church became the typical fairytale bad stepmother.
Thus secularism, understood as a progressive separation from the Church,
was the rule for intellectuals and academics of the Enlightenment. For
this divergence, not to call it divorce, between the academic culture
and the Church, both parties are to blame. However, in most cases the
hierarchy of the Church didn’t see things that way. In fact, Pope Pius X
(1835-1914) called modernism the source of all evils, which meant that
for many people to be an academic and also a Catholic started to be seen
as incompatible. Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903), an intellectual himself,
was the first to suggest establishing Catholic universities as a way to
confront the pervasive intellectual secularism of the time. The famous
University of Louvain was founded anew with such objectives in mind in
1835. And many North American and Latin American universities began to
open at the time, such as the Catholic University of America (1887), the
Catholic University of Chile (1888) and the Catholic University of
Argentina (1910). In some cases, these universities were founded by the
local bishop or the Church itself, but in other cases they were founded
by a group of Catholic people with the leadership of a priest, as was
the case for the Catholic University of Peru that was founded in 1917 by
Father Jorge Dintilhac and a group of Catholic gentlemen.
It is fair to say that Catholic universities in Latin America fall into
two big groups. In the first, most follow the criteria of excellence,
pluralism and academic freedom that I have mentioned before. This is
especially true for Brazilian and Mexican Catholic universities, many of
which are run by Jesuits, who have a long experience with excellence in
education. Another important institution is the Catholic University of
Peru, autonomous by Peruvian law, which has shaped most of the
intellectual life in that country as well as produced many of its most
important academics. These universities tend to believe that their main
obligation to society is to produce good scholarship, teaching and
social responsibility, rather than be the guardians of doctrine.
The other group consists of Catholic universities that tend to privilege
their role as institutions devoted to educating in the doctrine of
faith. They tend to be rather conservative and run the risk of becoming
too alienated from contemporary society to really be relevant to it.
Becoming an academic and religious island in the sea of contemporary
diversity can be seen in two ways. It might be regarded as a fortress of
truth and doctrinal purity in a world of heterodoxy, therefore being
the key to maintaining truth in times of confusion. But it might also be
regarded as a relic of a time gone by, in which the Church believes it
is the sole keeper of truth and has nothing to learn from non-Catholics.
If such is the case, these institutions run the serious risk of
succumbing to new manifestations of fundamentalism, which are the real
enemies of Catholicism. In fact, what has done more damage to the
Catholic Church in former times is its own fundamentalism, rather than
other religions or beliefs.
A curious example of this tension between two ways of understanding
Catholic universities is the case of the Pontificia Universidad Católica
del Perú. As mentioned before, this university was not founded by the
Church itself, but by a group of Catholic gentlemen and a priest in
1917. Many years later, the Peruvian intellectual José de la Riva Agüero
donated most of his inheritance to this university. Later on, the Pope
gave it the title of “Pontificia” for its excellence in education and
for its Catholic values. Now, almost a hundred years after its
foundation, what started as a small and rather poor university is
already the best academic institution of the country and a highly
regarded one in Latin America. It is also fairly rich. It always kept
its Catholic identity, reflecting the teaching of Ecumenical Council
Vatican II, which opened the doors of the Church for more pluralism,
freedom of belief, and respect for all views and strict defense of human
rights and ethical values.
Nevertheless, at present the PUCP is in a legal dispute with the
Archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, a member of Opus Dei,
who claims that the university’s budget should be controlled by the
Archbishop himself. In the recent past, his activism has been
suggestive: Cardinal Cipriani strongly supported Alberto Fujimori’s
dictadura from 1992 to 2001, explicitly and publicly expressed his
disdain about human rights, and now wants to control the best university
in the country. The conflict here is about what a Catholic university
should be: either a pluralistic place for religious freedom and Catholic
thought, or a dogmatic guardian of one particular way to understand
faith. Furthermore, most Peruvians think (84 percent in a
recent independent poll by Grupo Apoyo) that what the Archbishop is
really after is the economic budget of the University. In fact, Cipriani
has managed to divide the Peruvian Catholic Church to the point that
many priests and nuns oppose his attempts to control the University, and
favor its autonomy. In times when the Catholic Church doesn’t need more
problems, Cipriani has deeply split the Catholics of this Andean
country. Rather than being a symbol of unity, he has become a divisive
factor among Catholics. But this is just a symptom of the kind of recent
problems the Church has to face worldwide.
Latin America strongly needs more good universities and also more good
Catholic universities, in the sense I have spelled out earlier. This is
true not only because education is the only way in which social and
economic troubles of these countries can be overcome, but also to
continue the task of building a Catholic Church in the spirit of Jesus,
which is something we Catholics still have in our agenda. It is said
many times that Latin America is the most Catholic continent in the
world, because it has, with Africa, the largest number of practicing
Catholics. In fact, Pope John Paul II used to call Latin America the
“continent of hope.” Certainly we do have hope, but I seriously doubt
that this is the most Catholic continent, given the terrible rates of
inequality, unfairness, violence and poverty. Countries with these
calamities can certainly try to live up to Christian standards, but they
definitely are not models of Catholicism. Yet these countries—and their
universities—are still places of hope, where better and different ways
to understand Christianity may appear.
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