Various news accounts concerning the newly appointed president of the Catholic University of America - who, by the way, thinks the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional & violates Vatican II teachings - have highlighted some troubling positions of his. For example...
* How is it that the new head of the Catholic University of America can claim that "Corporal works of mercy are no less important to the life of the Church than its sacramental ministry"? As wonderful and important as corporal works of mercy are, the Church was not founded as a charitable institution, but rather to make possible the salvation of eternal souls. How is it that a Catholic university president can seemingly equate human works primarily aimed at the preservation of mortal bodies with incomparable gifts of God which make possible the salvation of immortal souls?
* How is possible that the same CU president could claim a congressman with a 100% pro-abortion voting record could reflect "the very best values and traditions" of a Catholic school?
* How is it possible - as this same CU president claims - that "no school that regulates ideas can justly call itself a university"? Is it not a principal duty of a worthy Catholic educational institution to impart truth and reject error & falsehood? Would any reasonable academic permit faulty math to compete with true math in the educational arena? Wouldn't a worthy academic seek to remove the confusion & error and present only true math to the students? And if they did so, would any reasonable person actually object to this "regulation of ideas"? Obviously, truths are not opinions and should not be presented on an equal footing with contrary "ideas" (i.e. errors). As Fr. Fahey has stated...
"Nothingness can have no rights since it has no existence. It is impossible for a thing which does not exist to have any rights. Therefore to attribute rights to a non-existent entity is an injustice. But what are you doing if you attribute rights to error except attributing them to a non-existent entity? It is enough to consider what truth and error are in order to understand this. Truth is found in the intellect in the measure in which the intellect is in exact conformity with reality. When the intellect has an idea which is not in conformity with reality, then we have an error. But what is really happening in such a case? I have in my mind the idea of something as if this thing formed part of the order of being. I attribute it rights in my mind, as if it were portion of the divine scheme of things. But it is not so in reality. In point of fact it is a baseless creation of my own mind. How can I take as the foundation of my life and of my actions a 'reality' which is no reality? What can be the outcome of such an aberration? Precisely what happens in the case of any structure raised without foundation. If I take as a basis for my life and action an idea of my own to which nothing real or objective corresponds the whole intellectual and social edifice I raise on that basis is of necessity bound to crumble. There can be no other solid foundation for action and life than an objective reality. This then is why truth alone has the right to exist in the individual and in the social order. From no point of view can error claim this right. When it gets a footing in a mind or among the multitude, it usurps rights not belonging to it, it is unjust. Evil is the privation of the being and goodness due to a thing. Now error is the specific evil of the intelligence, the privation of the grasp of the order of the world which the intelligence is meant to have. It is a malady to be cured, a disease to be healed, a cancer to be eradicated, not a perfection to be extolled and proclaimed worthy of respect... Our Lord came down to restore the Divine Life of Grace to the human race and to each individual in it. For this end He revealed truth to the world. This truth belongs to Him in virtue of His divine right and also in virtue of His work of redemption. If this truth belongs to Him and is given to the world by Him in a well-defined sense and for a very definite purpose, then to ruin or lessen it is to commit an injustice. It is to sacrifice the rights of Jesus Christ... Certainly there is no place for anything but truth."
Note that Jesus did not allow "competing ideas" (i.e. errors) to circulate freely among His followers and scripture repeatedly warns of the danger of error among the flock. Did not Jesus - the greatest Instructor - also "regulate ideas" by teaching with authority and condemning error? Is is it really too much to expect that a Catholic university focus its teaching on that which is true?
"[E]very Christian child or youth has a strict right to instruction in harmony with the teaching of the Church, the pillar and ground of truth. And whoever disturbs the pupil's Faith in any way, does him grave wrong, inasmuch as he abuses the trust which children place in their teachers, and takes unfair advantage of their inexperience and of their natural craving for unrestrained liberty, at once illusory and false." (Pope Pius XI, "Divini Illius Magistri", 1929)
Related: Catholic Education (Reflections)
[6/16]
Posts
