Fr. John Jenkins on "The Challenge and Promise of Catholic Higher Education"

Thanks to Bernard Prusak, at dotCommonweal, for this account of a recent lecture by Notre Dame's President, Fr. John Jenkins, on the "Challenge and Promise of Catholic Higher Education."   You can watch the video of Fr. Jenkins's talk here.  Here's a bit from Prusak:

Part 3 begins at 38:30 and takes up the two questions laid down by parts 1 and 2: 1) If some model like a revived neo-scholasticism isn’t the way for Catholic colleges and universities to go, then what is? That is, how else can Catholic higher education be coherent and distinctive? 2) What do Catholic colleges and universities have to say about the “higher purposes” of learning and inquiry? In other words, what answer can Catholic higher education give to the “danger” presented by the accelerating commodification of education?

Jenkins’ answer to both these questions is the same: what can orient and shape Catholic colleges and universities, and what can inform these institutions’ self-understanding and presentation of themselves, is the long tradition of Catholic thought. As he acknowledges, Jenkins is drawing here from Alasdair MacIntyre, who defines a living tradition as “an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.” As MacIntyre also writes (again in After Virtue), “Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict.” Jenkins’ proposal is that the Catholic tradition, rooted in the doctrines of creation and redemption (minute 39), provides both “a rich set of values not readily accessible at our secular peers” and a set of commitments that “open up the possibility of interesting debate” and distinctive research programs and curricula (minute 42). Though coming toward its end, this is the heart of the paper. . . .