Engagement & Identity: Response to Mark

Mark is a great dean, and so I'm not surprised at all by his charitable and irenic post, in which -- responding to my thoughts about Cathy Kaveny's "Perfect Storm" essay -- he cheers the fact that MOJ-friend and veteran Paolo Carozza and I agree with Kaveny that "[o]ur important task [in Catholic universities] . . . is building capacity for critical engagement with culture, which is what Cathy is challenging us to do."

For my own part, I am very pleased (and not surprised) that Mark appears to agree with Paolo and me that "meaningful 'engagement' . . . is not possible absent a commitment to distinctive Catholic identity and sound formation and education in the faith.  That is, [a] focus on [a university's Catholic] identity is not in the service of moralism, or sectarian separation, but is precisely on the conditions for meaningful engagement."  In other words, talk about "engagement" with the culture as the mission of a Catholic university -- as opposed to the mission of a few experts in things Catholic who work at universities -- is not likely to get us very far, absent a focus on what Mark calls "capacities", or on what I called the "conditions," for meaningful engagement.  These conditions, again, will necessarily include a Catholic faculty -- not just some faculty trained in the "Catholic intellectual tradition," but Catholic engineers, chemists, accountants, and business-law scholars who serve as Catholic role models, mentors, parents, and friends.  These conditions include also a shared commitment to the university's Catholic identity -- not in a narrow, sectarian, fearful, or moralistic sense, but in the sense of knowing what we are called to be -- and to the formation in the faith of students.  And, of course, a deep sense of the Catholic university's place in "the heart of the Church" -- as well as in the "current of engagement" -- is essential.

In John Cavadini's excellent open letter, he warned that the "Catholic university" project cannot be reduced to providing a platform for select faculty, trained in a disembodied "Catholic intellectual tradition," who are interested in engaging or conversing with "the culture."  The point of a Catholic university, in other words, is not merely to be the home base for a few gnostic priests and priestesses.  Cavadini puts it well:

The ancient Gnostic heresy developed an elitist intellectual tradition which eschewed connection to the "fleshly" church of the bishop and devalued or spiritualized the sacraments. Are we in danger of developing a gnosticized version of the "Catholic intellectual tradition," one which floats free of any norming connection and so free of any concrete claim to Catholic identity?

Any understanding of a Catholic university (or, for that matter, a law school) that is worthy of the description has to include an account of the moral, spiritual, and intellectual formation of students, and of the way the university serves and participates in the Body of Christ -- in Cavadini's words, the "real, incarnate Body of Christ, the Church as it is with all its blemishes and not the abstract, idealized Church in our minds - is the lifeblood and only guarantee of our identity as a Catholic university.  There is no Catholic identity apart from affiliation with the Church. Appeal to 'the Catholic intellectual tradition' apart from some explicit relationship to the Church risks reducing the tradition itself to an abstraction."

But again, I'm sure Mark agrees.  =-)