In destroying the assumptions of the Enlightenment
postmodernism provides a new opening,
a clearing for Christianity and revelation.

The Catholic university
in a postmodern world

By Albert DiIanni

n In the last half of the twentieth century, Catholic universities have been on the defensive and suffered a failure of nerve. From an academic point of view, they have made unparalleled progress and now compete with the best universities in the land. On the other hand, it cannot be said that all is well in Catholic academe. Catholic parents pay sky-high tuitions only to listen with consternation to the unconventional views uttered by their offspring. Often Catholic university graduates are not regular church-goers and from a moral standpoint seem to have learned more from television talk shows than from the magisterium of the Church. The ideology of political correctness and multi-cultural "diversity" movements have invaded our campuses and with them a questionable tolerance for a variety of alternative lifestyles.

These influences reach into the very heart of university policy. For many years now, staff recruitment at Catholic universities has been based on academic merit alone, with little attention paid to a person's lifestyle or religious beliefs. This raises the question whether a university can truly be "Catholic" if a majority of the faculty is non-practicing or of another faith. In the matter of developing curricula and course content, Catholic universities have often followed the lead of their secular counterparts. In the 1960s and 70s, core-curricula with many requisite courses, especially in philosophy and theology, were abandoned in favor of a market approach to course selection. This has been rectified only to a small degree in the past few years. The very name "theology" has often been changed to "religious studies" with a correlative shift in emphasis. Religious studies departments tend to present Christianity less as true and more as one among many significant religions-a smorgasbord of meaning-systems. Historico-critical approaches abound. Apologetics, the defense of the truth of the faith, is considered somewhat uncivil and is pushed into the background. Hugo Meynell decries this situation and declares that the last Christian apologist was C.S. Lewis.1

There are many explanations for this watering down of traditional Catholic aspects of the university in both dogma and morals. In the climate of anti-Catholic bigotry of the early part of the 20th century, these universities did exhibit a "ghetto-mentality" and were perhaps overly fearful of academic freedom, without some degree of which true scholarship cannot flourish. In recent years, the Church's militancy has been toned down in favor of non-triumphal and ecumenical approaches and out of respect for religious freedom. The changes of Vatican II have been heady for a Church that traditionally kept aloof from other religions and placed great stress on authority and obedience. But they only partially explain the current secularization of Catholic universities. The root reason is to be sought in wider cultural factors. It is to be found in the relentless attack on Christianity mounted by modernity, an attack which began with the Enlightenment and reached the height of its ferocity in the middle of the twentieth century.

Enlightenment thinkers Hume and Kant, enthralled with the efficacy of modern science and its methods, had advanced powerful arguments against the proofs for the existence of God. Until recently, the conventional wisdom has held that these arguments are unassailable. 19th century thinkers, Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, built on them and presented religion as a projection or an alienation that masks what human beings really desire-wealth, sex and power. They developed a powerful modern critique of Christianity as being anti-life, what philosopher Paul Ricoeur has styled the "hermeneutics of suspicion." This is the legacy of the Enlightenment and it left contemporary Catholic universities reeling.

Avoiding the response of fideism-sticking to a literal interpretation of the Bible and shutting oneself off from scientific development-Catholic universities adopted a liberal response. The liberal tactic is to jettison cargo, to surrender some of the claims of Christianity, to change its content to a degree while retaining its language as a kind of mythic overlay useful for purposes of motivation. In taking the liberal route, Catholic universities did not differ much from other North American universities. Most of them had begun as religious institutions and were now embarrassed by their religious roots. Early 20th century philosophers like Josiah Royce had strengthened the faith of their students. But soon the field was crowded with avowed agnostics and atheists. Science became the new metaphysics. Philosophy professors, convinced that they could add nothing to the body of knowledge, contented themselves with analyzing the logic of various forms of discourse, moral, artistic, historical, scientific, and religious.

Postmodernism or the end of modernity

But most recently, without warning, liberal modernity has itself been forced on the defensive. Suddenly, the assumptions of the Enlightenment were everywhere under attack and the Western world now finds itself in an era that many call "postmodernism." Postmodernism takes many forms but its core belief is that the Enlightenment, a movement that began in the 17th century and endured till our own day, is now dead. Its faith in inevitable progress to be procured though science has proved illusory. Its attempt to reach social consensus by fashioning an autonomous morality based on scientific reason alone is now seen to have failed. Pleas that it will succeed if only we allow a bit more research fall on deaf ears. It is apparent that something more fundamental is at play and that radical surgery is needed.

This demise of modernity has spawned two different reactions. First, that of the deconstructionists, among whom are many feminists and other social activists, who reject the whole quest to achieve "objective truth" as an illusion. "Truth" is reduced to the opinion of those in positions of power in society or within a particular academic discipline. Deconstructionist spokesman Richard Rorty maintains that, though the majority of people in the West favor liberal democracy, no cogent defense can be made of this or any position. You may favor democracy but it is impossible to demonstrate that a dissident is illogical or irrational. The most you can do is to declare him or her a "fanatic," as outside the mainstream and a candidate for ostracism. Rorty's favorite examples of anti-democratic fanatics: Friedrich Nietzsche and Ignatius of Loyola.

However, other philosophers do not take the ultra-skeptical deconstructionist route. They see the demise of modernity as a new opportunity for truth. Christian thinkers see in it a clearing of the forest, a new beginning for faith. It makes possible a new confidence in Christianity and a different and more powerful apologetics. The demise of modern thought patterns is causing people to steer clear of the liberalism of the mainline Protestant churches and to turn to evangelism. According to Harvey Cox, Pentecostalism is the world's fastest growing religion. "In the desert of criticism," says Paul Ricoeur, "we desire once again to be called."

An amazing phenomenon has occurred in academic circles, of which few are aware. One by one the arguments of Hume and Kant against proofs for the existence of God-considered unassailable by secularists for years-have been undermined. Placed under severe scrutiny by secular philosophers, they have been shown to be fallacious and to be based on an outdated view of the universe. The theories of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche have been winnowed for their positive aspects while their skeptical assumptions and conclusions have been abandoned. The suspicioners themselves have been placed in the dock. In the words of Diogenes Allen, "A massive intellectual revolution is taking place that is perhaps as great as that which marked off the modern world from the Middle Ages. The foundations of the modern world are collapsing, and we are entering a postmodern world. The principles forged during the Enlightenment (c. 1600-1780) which formed the foundations of the modern mentality, are crumbling . . . . No longer can Christianity be put on the defensive, as it has been for the last 300 years or so, because of the narrow view of reason and the reliance on classical science that are characteristic of the modern mentality."2 Thinkers like Bernard Lonergan, William Rowe, Michael Foster, William Alston, Austin Farrer, Simone Weil, and Barry Miller have been key. We will examine some of their arguments in greater detail below.

Many people, even some of the most educated, are not aware of the developments in philosophy that have rendered untenable modernity's critique of Christianity. Deconstructionism, with its relativism and excessive pluralism, has stolen the academic headlines. Because of this many people would be startled by the claim that the ultimate reason why they should go to church is because Christianity is true. But despite the lack of recognition, the intellectual sea-change has taken place. And it is important that, above all, academic institutions take formal cognizance of it. If we grasp the magnitude of this occurrence a grand educational challenge wells up before us that can electrify Catholic universities for decades to come.

But before we can move forward, we must examine the fall of the Enlightenment more closely. In precisely what does this collapse of modernity consist? What were its major assumptions and how has their invalidity been demonstrated? We will describe them and briefly explain why they have been shown to be untenable by a postmodern critique. We will then draw out some of the implications of this postmodernism for our Catholic universities.

The untenable assumptions of modernity

1) The assumption that the idea of God is superfluous.

How did Enlightenment thought come to the conclusion that God was superfluous? It happened in stages. With the appearance of the new empirical science of Galileo and Newton, many Christian thinkers were convinced that nothing gave more powerful testimony to God's existence than the new view of the universe as matter in motion ruled by the laws of Newtonian physics. So Christianity was transformed into Deism, a natural religion sufficient in itself with no need for revelation. God was creator, but generally did not intervene in the world. Science was the preferred explanation of events. God functioned only as an agent who filled in for any gaps in scientific knowledge. But this meant that when new scientific developments did fill in the gaps, God, conceived as a "gap-filler," was rendered more and more superfluous. For this reason, when asked by Napoleon how God fit into his system, the scientist Laplace answered: "Hypotheses non fingo" ("I have no need for such hypotheses!")

But now a postmodern retreat from this picture of God and the world has begun. It began with a humble recognition of the limitations of science-by acknowledging that science can only discover the actual order of things. It leaves untouched questions that must be answered. Questions like, "Why does the universe have this particular order rather than another," and "Why does the world exist at all?" Hume and Kant had declared such questions meaningless for several reasons. One was because they conceived of the universe as a series of discrete events, each of which had its own cause, and argued that if every event within a series was assigned a cause, it was superfluous to ask for the cause of the whole series. But today philosophers, among whom the agnostic William L. Rowe, have shown that these arguments are fallacious and that there is a legitimate sense in which such questions can be asked. Says Rowe: "It is one thing for there to be an explanation of the existence of each dependent being and quite another thing for there to be an explanation of why there are dependent beings at all."3 Many philosophers are now saying that some of the traditional proofs for the existence of God, while not demonstrating that God exists, do provide some evidence that such a belief is reasonable. The Australian philosopher Barry Miller claims to have gone beyond this and to have provided an actual proof for the existence of God.4

These postmodern moves in the philosophy of religion have found psychological support in recent scientific developments. While the "big-bang" theory in no way serves as a proof of the creation, it does imply that there is a sense in which we can think of the universe as a unified whole and that it possibly had a beginning in time. It can no longer be claimed that philosophy and science have established that the idea of a world as a whole is incoherent or that it is clear that we live in a self-contained universe. For centuries both science and philosophy have been used to exclude even the possibility of God. Recent developments in both philosophy and science have shown that this claim can no longer stand. We are in a fundamentally different cultural situation.

2) Second, the assumption that a purely rational basis for morality and society could be found.

A second unfulfilled project of the Enlightenment was to ground traditional morality and society on secular reason alone. Kant claimed that all rational beings, by virtue of their rationality, are "conscripted into the army of duty." He sought to show, by appeal to the freedom of the rational agent alone, that some things are always wrong. Social contract theorists like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, interpreted morality as a system of enlightened egoism. People made short-term sacrifices, they believed, out of motives of long-term gain. They did so to avoid the punishments that society inflicts on the overly selfish. The utilitarians banished the idea that any action was intrinsically evil in itself and developed a kind of "situation ethic" based on consequences alone. But recently Alasdair McIntyre and others have concluded that all these attempts to place morality on a new secular footing divorced from conformity to a human telos have been bankrupt.

In the wake of the Enlightenment most people were still religious and by habit still adhered to moral principles. But in the last thirty years, with the decline of religious fervor and the weakening of traditional morality, the chickens have come home to roost. It has become apparent that we cannot reach a consensus for action on the basis of rational discussion alone. We seem farther and farther apart on questions of war and peace, sexual mores, the distribution of wealth, abortion and euthanasia. On all sides we hear calls for a return to family values, to the restoration of religious institutions, to a return of civility in our cities and neighborhoods.

3) Third, the assumption that knowledge is inherently good and that progress is inevitable.

Enlightenment culture led us to believe that scientific methods were the "objective" road to a knowledge that was intrinsically good. Today we are becoming increasingly aware that there is no inherent connection between such knowledge and its beneficial use. The terrible technology of warfare, both nuclear and chemical, accidents like Chernobyl, and the dire possibilities resident in the science of genetic engineering are sufficient to give us pause. The information superhighway has already revealed itself as fraught with dangers. Scientists do not control the uses to which their knowledge is put, and many even decline to take responsibility for its uses. They espouse an ethics of feasibility-what can be done in science should be done-with little thought about possible consequences and necessary controls. Today more and more critics stress that besides being a scientist, the scientist is also a human being, made in the image and likeness of God. His or her actions must be an honor and tribute to that image.

In the early days of modern science and technology physical life was so dramatically improved that people were caught in a dream of inevitable progress. They believed that a world enlightened by science and liberal education would free us from social bondage and from our vulnerability relative to nature. Without faith and superstition we would become a city of enlightened citizens deciding things on a rational basis and constantly enhancing our quality of life. For a while it seemed to work. But then our interventions into nature spawned ecological disasters and our cultural intrusions through various forms of social engineering were revealed as utter failures. Though technology produced a "green revolution" making India a net exporter of wheat, it also tended to destroy eco-systems. Communism, long a darling of the left and of liberationists, startled the world with its failures in Russia. Many facts came to light. It was revealed that following the example of "the end justifies the means" set by Lenin, social engineers had caused the death of millions of people in the 20th century. Paul Johnson, the English historian, blames Mao Tse Tung alone for 30 million deaths. In capitalistic countries well-intentioned social programs were increasingly blamed for the creeping blight in our cities. Welfare programs seemed to lock people into a perpetual victimhood, into a cycle of drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy and suicide. The modern search for rational solutions had foundered, because we had forgotten the human will and such "myths" as original sin. Paul Ricoeur has reminded us that our will is a "servile will," a will that is free but which also tends to enslave itself. There is an increasing recognition that evil is real and cannot be removed by educational and social reform of a merely secular kind. Progress is not linear and inevitable. It will be secured only with careful religious and moral surveillance.

Implications for Catholic universities

The end of modernity opens up new vistas for Catholic universities. We must first of all point out that the Enlightenment has been found wanting on its own principles, the principles of trial and error, of generating hypotheses and testing them. It has been found wanting because it simply has not worked. We cannot be cajoled into believing that more time alone is needed. We must either move in new directions or die. This is the practical meaning of postmodernism.

In response to the end of modernity, Catholic universities cannot follow the deconstructionists down a radical skeptical path. Rather, they must summon up a new courage and insist that faith is reasonable and that it has something to say to society at large. They must reclaim a space for theistic religion and for revelation in the realm of public discourse. They must resist, as obscurantist, the efforts to restrict public discourse to the rational or the a-religious. They must urge society to follow the truth, to trust the truth, wherever it may lead, even when it leads into transcendent dimensions. Refusal to do so on Enlightenment grounds has been revealed to be short-sighted, outdated, and fallacious.

In destroying the assumptions of the Enlightenment, postmodernism provides a new opening, a new possibility of reason and truth, a clearing for Christianity and revelation. The real problem is not with the notion of truth in general, but with a particular form of truth generated during a particular historical era. Modernity's problem was the primacy of science, the tailoring of all truth according to the criteria of scientific truth. This is reductionism, the failure to understand that different areas of human experience demand different kinds of evidence. Evidence in morality and religion is not the same as evidence in science. Science must find its place among other distinct human endeavors of equal or greater importance.

The Enlightenment is not to be rejected in toto but it must be evaluated in a way that reveals its strengths as well as its weaknesses. It must be praised for its scientific and technological successes and for its brave struggle in favor of civil rights and the banishment of prejudice. On the other hand it must be criticized for its scientific reductionism, its erroneous interpretations of morality, religion and art, and its consequent impoverishment of human existence.

With the terrain cleared, Catholic universities can play a leadership role that is not triumphal but rooted in truth. They must begin with the proposition that Christianity should be believed not on utilitarian grounds or because it is meaningful-but because it is true. The principal effort of a theology department of a Catholic university should be to defend this proposition. It should go beyond mere religious studies and teach from a viewpoint of faith and revelation, showing that faith is not irrational but eminently reasonable. Fides quaerens intellectum. A theology department should attempt to exert an influence upon the whole university by showing how Christian principles can have a positive impact on all the cultural disciplines and all areas of life. Philosophy departments should not fear to teach metaphysics and realistic ethics based on Thomistic principles. They should take heart from the words of Philippa Foot, an Oxford philosopher, who said at Harvard University that despite her atheism, she had learned more about moral philosophy from Thomas Aquinas than from any other thinker.

University presidents and academic officers should invite other departments to participate in interdisciplinary dialogue on the principles of Christian education and extend invitations even to faculty of other universities. Religious teaching on the part of campus ministers should go beyond advocacy in social justice and deal with our intimate personal relationship with God, without which even social justice has no ground. The mystical-eschatological aspects of religion based on our ultimate goal to enjoy fellowship with the Trinity must be revived.

In the realization that the Kantian critique has finally been overcome, Catholic universities should exhibit a post-Kantian confidence. God is not a mere projection, an answer to a meaningless question or a noumenal reality who can never be known. God is creator and sustainer of the world and of its particular order. There is a plan of God, an eternal order of things. Morality is not just a system for balancing individual preferences, but a system of laws that has its roots in God and in its fundamental aspects is binding on us all. Religion is necessary both as a ground and a motivating force for morality. Without religion morality will never touch the heart and affect the will. Altruism can never be generated out of a social contract rooted in enlightened egoism. In such theories justice becomes a mere second order good, a necessary evil, an egoist's pis-aller. Within a moral order which is basically Christian, there is a sense to the proposition that the end does not justify the means. There is some prospect for controlling the use of scientific knowledge, or at least of restraining its destructive uses.

Politically, Catholic universities should not fear to argue in favor of a voucher system in education whereby parents are helped to be able to send their children to schools of their choice. In doing so, it must at the same time reject all attempts at curriculum control on the part of the State. Technologically, television, too little exploited up till now, along with the Internet, should become major tools in a Catholic university's effort to have a Christian and Catholic impact upon the culture. Can Catholic universities not cooperate with the bishops to develop a first-class national or international network? We are in a new cultural situation with many new possibilities and a new hope. We must strive to understand the scope of the shift that has occurred in the fields of philosophy and theology and in the culture at large. In such a promising context, a well-thought-out vision of Catholic education cannot but open up the vista of a new and exciting future. n

1"Faith and Reason," the Tablet, March 11, 1989, p. 276.

2 Christian Belief in a Postmodern World, Louisville, Ky. W/JKP Press, 1989, p. 2.

3The Cosmological Argument, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975, p. 264.

4From Existence to God, London and New York, Routledge, 1992.