Renaissance in Catholic Higher Education

by Donald DeMarco, Ph.D.

During his celebrated visit to Cuba a few years ago, and while being escorted along the Havana seafront by Fidel Castro, a sudden gust of wind caught the Holy Father’s skullcap and blew it into the Straits of Florida. Without hesitation, Castro strode out across the waves and retrieved it. The next morning the incident was reported as follows: in the Cuban Communist Party organ, Granma: “Fidel Walks on Water”; in the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano: “Miracle Saves Papal Headgear”; in El Nuevo Herald, the anti-Castro newspaper read by Cuban exiles in Miami: “Aging Castro Can’t Even Swim.”

The above anecdote may be fictitious, but it does underscore a valid observation that the Media often reports not what it sees but what it wants others to believe. In fact, it has become tiresome to allude to the evident and often extreme bias that exists in much Media reporting. Let one factual example suffice. When the Basilian Fathers held a symposium in honor of their founder, St. Basil, one of the presenters confirmed a long-held and decidedly uncontroversial view that a portion of a certain work once attributed to the founder was actually written by Didymus the Blind. A Toronto newspaper carried its coverage of the conference under the following headline: “The unmasking of St. Basil—Toronto priest stuns experts by proving he’s fraud.” Needless to say, it was the newspaper that stunned the Basilians by its fraudulent reporting.

Journalists are notorious in their penchant for putting the kind of “spin” on the news that serves their own ideological interest. Indeed, the expression “spin wars,” though fanciful, is an accurate way of describing the battle that goes on in the Media through the wild attempt to subordinate truth to political purpose. The more the Media manipulates the truth, however, the greater becomes the need for genuine education. As the spin wars rage out of control, the more the need for Catholic education, in particular, becomes imperative. The Media could very well be acting as a catalyst to bring about a new renaissance in Catholic education.

Irresponsible journalism mirrors the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the sense that it brings about increased confusion. This Law of Entropy in physics tells us that the universe is running downhill; its Media counterpart informs us that news reporting is moving in the same direction—toward increased disorganization, randomness, and mind-boggling confusion.

How is it possible to reverse journalistic entropy, to bring about greater order, understanding, and reliability to news reporting? This question is tantamount to asking, “How can we unscramble a scrambled egg?” The scrambling of an egg, like the scrambling of the news, or, for that matter, the scrambling of Catholic teaching, tends to breed despair. If the Second Law of Thermodynamics (The Law of Entropy) is, as physicists tell us, their most sacrosanct scientific law, how can there be any hope to reverse the process?

Yet there is an answer, and a rather simple one at that. How do you unscramble a scrambled egg? You feed it to a hen. It might take a while, but the mother hen will eventually reorganize and reintegrate the scramble and restore it to its original unity as an intact egg.

Reorganization, reintegration, restoration, rebirth, and renaissance are all processes that belong to the maternal. The first three words of the pope’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae, his document on Catholic higher education, translated into English—”Born from the heart of the Church”—bear three maternal images. There can be no birth or renaissance without the maternal principle. The heart is also a maternal symbol and refers to a process of integration. It also refers to love, which is the principle of unity. By contrast, the mind (or brain) is often associated with analysis, dissection, reducing to parts. The Church (ecclesia) is also maternal, particularly in its interest in embracing and nourishing all who are within her reach.

The maternal roles of birth, heart, and Church are indispensable for the renaissance of Catholic education, for unscrambling the scrambled doctrine that has created so much bewilderment and chaos within the post-conciliar Church.

Added to the problem of “spin wars” is the concurrent one produced by “data smog.” Putting a spin on information distorts its real meaning. But the sheer amount of information that is currently being transmitted throughout our society is overwhelming. We tend to go numb in self-defense. The information super-highway exhausts us without taking us in any particular direction. We are overwhelmed, lost, and confused. What we lack is the integrating factor, a wisdom that would give meaning to what otherwise is mere cacophony.

The American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, referred to this problem several decades ago when it was much less severe. In retrospect, her words seem to be not only perceptive, but also uncannily prophetic:
Upon this gifted age, in its darkest hour,

Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric.

Miss Millay could hardly have phrased the problem more succinctly and more exquisitely. In the midst of a “knowledge explosion” we suffer from a “wisdom drought.” There “exists no loom,” she cries. But there is one. And it is the “heart of the Church.” From a historical point of view, as Pope John Paul II tells us in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Catholic education is born from the heart of the Church. If it is to be reborn, it must pass through the same process.

    Millay’s imagery lends to imaginative responses. Let us imagine a high wind blowing through a cherry orchard and leaving the ground littered with cherries. The inhabitants of the orchard might look upon this situation with favor, collect the cherries in their baskets, organize them into pies, and bake them in their ovens. But if there are no baskets or ovens, there can be no pies. In that case, the cherries remain on the ground, “unquestioned, uncombined.” The situation is comparable with what educator Mortimer Adler has identified as the chief malaise in contemporary education — ”alphabetiasis.” We are adept at cataloguing our information and housing it in fully computerized libraries; but we have lost the art or the wisdom to weave information into meaningful fabric. We can file, but we cannot fulfill.

The elusive modern world needs an integrating wisdom (the “loom”). But it neglects to realize that wisdom has always been personified by the woman. Mary is the Seat of Wisdom. Even to the pagans, wisdom was exemplified by Athena and Minerva.
In speaking to a group of pilgrims on October 18, 1998, just one week after the release of his encyclical, Faith and Reason, the Holy Father stated: “Woe to humanity should it lose the meaning of truth, the courage to seek it, the confidence of finding it.” Truth is a source of unity. There can be no education without truth. At the same time, however, there must be a disposition to receive the truth in an undistorted and unsplintered way. This is where the function of the maternal notions of heart, love, and wisdom come into play.

It is generally recognized that René Descartes is the Father of Modern Philosophy (there is no corresponding appellation regarding the “Mother of Modern Philosophy”). Descartes reduced man from a knower to a thinker, from a flesh and blood person to a mere cognitive activity. Thus, he fractionalized man and distorted his truth. Descartes’ true genius was not in philosophy but in mathematics.

Descartes’ contemporary, Pascal, tried in vain to disabuse his colleague of that obsession with dividing and reducing, which is the bane of all rationalist thinkers. Pascal spoke of the heart and how the heart functions in an intuitive and integrative way, a way that eludes pure reason. The Star Trek character Mr. Spock seems to epitomize the central problem of the modern epoch. Spock is a Vulcan, not human. As such, he is not equipped with feelings. He is Descartes’ splintered man personified — all reason, no emotion.

The Catholic Church has always stressed integrated notions such as the Incarnation, Corpus Christi, the Theology of the Body, the Heart of Jesus, and so forth, to combat the tendency in education toward reductionism. Catholic education is truly an education of reality. Reality itself is undecomposable. Jacques Maritain’s personal motto, “Distinguish to Unite,” illustrates the importance of reason and love. We reason to make needed distinctions, but our love for truth urges us to honor it in its original unity.

The desire for truth is simply another way of describing a thirst for education that is inscribed in our hearts. As the Holy Father has stated in Ex Corde Ecclesiae: “It is necessary to work towards a higher synthesis of knowledge, in which alone lies the possibility of satisfying that thirst for truth which is profoundly inscribed on the heart of the human person.”

John Paul II has outlined the path along which our renaissance of Catholic higher education will proceed. It is a path that is both maternal and filial, emphasizing the primary and essential roles of both Mary the Mother of God and her Son who is God Incarnate.

Dr. DeMarco is a professor of philosophy at St. Jerome’s University.

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