By David Warren
Among the most distressing things about the Catholic Church is its failure (in reality, OUR failure) to seize the many opportunities the “modern world” accidentally offers us. We have made ourselves smaller and more insignificant by our own choice, mainly by assuming that the times are unfavorable. In fact, the times cry out to be rescued. And this, particularly, in an institutional way.
There is a task, very different from that of environmental madness, or economic madness, or any of the other fashionable madnesses afflicting the world. And this task only occasionally requires a bit of imagination or courage.
Why do we flee when any of these qualities is asked for? Indeed, why do we flee when any of the seven “living virtues”—that is, the seven holy remedies against the seven capital sins—are presented, and as something more than mere novel possibilities?
I refer, of course, to humility against pride, generosity against greed, chastity against lust, gratitude against envy, temperance against gluttony, patience against wrath, and diligence against sloth.
All of them come into play in what should be an ongoing Catholic project to confront the challenges of the modern world and defeat them decisively. This is an all-out battle, a war on seven fronts, and yet we do not take it seriously.
My exemplary reflection this morning concerns our modern systems of education, specifically higher education, from whose student body our priests emerge.
Modern universities were designed, everywhere, to be a bureaucratic nightmare and, in almost every respect, the opposite of what St. John Henry Newman prescribed in The Idea of a University.
Newman did not describe an institution absolutely focused on theological studies, but one in which this “queen of the sciences” would enjoy the centrality that humans of Catholic faith naturally grant it.
This is not a superficial effort, as it has become in most of our university “programs,” and in all courses, including those in religion and theology, in our secular schools.
They exist for nothing more than the useless accumulation of credentials. They might claim to make you a better Catholic, as if the study of electrical engineering made you better with sparks, though perhaps it does not. It may improve your theoretical skills, except for the fact that theoretical skills have always lacked value.
Being a professional requires a much broader understanding of a trade. Making oneself useful, in any way other than as a paid repairman or in some other secular activity, is to lay bare the purpose of university formation.
It is equally available, and for far less money, outside the university campus. The campus, it is true, is a source of much money for professors and administrators; and it is a source of many other evils, as a bureaucracy inevitably becomes.
And it is true that some of the professors, even the tenured ones, may be sincere in their trades. However, there is a higher sincerity in which the “staff” is asked to participate in an end that surpasses mere instruction.
For instruction, in itself, is teaching the monkey how to fetch bananas, and need not even include sharing the bananas fairly. Moreover, the only connection to cosmic truth is that God has made the bananas, and this may not even be included in the course.
Instruction in theology can be equally superficial, and almost certainly will be, unless there exists that kind of mortal seriousness present in a life of prayer and toward a pious purpose.
It is not only that theology and religion are taught, as they are not in any secular university, but that they are transmitted in a manner entirely different from how things are transmitted in contemporary campus life.
In fact, it is like a means to an end, outside itself, even in seminaries. It is a necessary and enabling step on the path to becoming a paid religious, and if it is not endured at the time, to the point of obtaining passing grades, it will have been a complete waste of time.
For one of the standards I would maintain is that a school course is absolutely useless unless one can look back with at least a slight sense of gratitude after having left it. But even failure in our schools today is not a valuable experience.
Or perhaps the university only contributes to one’s entertainment, as might be observed in the lives of the freshmen and first-year students I have known, whether their place was secured by a copy or by daddy’s money.
An excellent institution for academic learning no longer exists, if it ever did. A reading on university life in the Middle Ages will convince anyone that students have long been unfit for learning, preferring instead various forms of violence.
They remain so, on campuses throughout the United States and Europe, and riots for various ignorant causes are in fact more common the higher one climbs the tree of academic prestige. Politically organized riots—among students, professors, and educational administrators—are a feature of contemporary urban life wherever there are universities.
My own belief is that universities were an unfortunate invention and, therefore, I stand with Donald Trump in his apparent plan to defund them and close at least the most elite schools.
The economic argument for this is indisputable; there are trillions of dollars to be saved. But I believe the educational advantages are more important.
Training for the trades is better promoted through fully specialized technical schools for which students will certainly pay. And there is no need for public subsidies; however, most trades will benefit from traditional apprenticeship arrangements, if the trade is genuinely worth preserving.
The Church should intervene by reviving colleges attached to cathedrals and monasteries, located mainly in remote places or in isolated towns. For large cities, by nature, will only foster disturbance and irreligion.
About the author
David Warren is former editor of the Idler magazine and columnist in Canadian newspapers. He has extensive experience in the Near and Far East. His blog, Essays in Idleness, is now at: davidwarrenonline.com.