What Makes a University Catholic?
Chesteron observed, “This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion; that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the aim. We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear each other’s eyes out . What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.”2 This essay will not consider the question of whether a Catholic university is a worthwhile thing. Most everyone who has given it serious thought knows that there are pressing objections to the desirability of a specifically Catholic university. I have heard it alleged that, academically speaking, a Catholic university is a bad idea because it precludes or at least threatens honest intellectual work and, further, undermines academic freedom. The thinking behind these views is, if a school is really Catholic, then it is committed to a set of (supposedly divinely revealed) claims and principles that cannot be subjected to debate or dissent. But a university, by its very nature, is ope
