By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
I can’t remember any non-Catholics who taught me as an undergraduate at Fordham in the early 1960s. It was a different time. Over half my professors were Jesuits; the others were men I simply assumed to be Catholics, except for an Indian mathematics professor. Thinking back, I guess he was Hindu. But I never thought about it one way or the other.
During the years I spent at St. John’s University working on my master’s degree, I had two professors who were not Catholic. One was Jewish, the other a Hegelian who gave no indication that he took revealed religion seriously. His idea of Hegel’s “Geist” was not God the Father. But they were two of the best professors I ever had.
If anyone had asked me at the time why they had been hired, I would have said that the hiring committee at St. John’s must have been impressed with their scholarly credentials and past teaching experience; also with their willingness to respect the Catholic identity of the university. Which both men did. I can say without reservation that they did nothing in their classes to cast doubts upon the Church and its mission.
For the record, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), issued by Pope John Paul in 1990, and adopted by the American bishops in 1999, instructs Catholic colleges in this matter.
With respect to the hiring of faculty, the bishops’ statement reads:
“In accordance with its procedures for the hiring and retention of professionally qualified faculty and relevant provisions of applicable federal and state law, regulations and procedures, the university should strive to recruit and appoint Catholics as professors so that, to the extent possible, those committed to the witness of the faith will constitute a majority of the faculty. All professors are expected to be aware of and committed to the Catholic mission and identity of their institutions.”
But what does that mean in practice? Should a Catholic college hire a less qualified chemistry teacher who is a Catholic, rather than an outstanding atheist? What about an agnostic philosophy teacher with stellar credentials, if the college is looking for someone to teach a course in Marxism, and if the other candidates for the position are young and inexperienced and with a commitment to their professed Catholicism that is difficult to pin down?
Should the atheist and the agnostic applicants be given serious consideration if hiring them will result in the faculty becoming 56 percent Catholic, but not if hiring them tips the balance? Does it matter if the hiring committee is confident that the atheist and agnostic applicants will not proselytize their beliefs, as was the case with my former Jewish and Hegelian professors?
I submit these are not easy questions. Commonweal has been running a series of articles in recent weeks in which professors and administrators at Catholic colleges explain the way they make these decisions.
The latest, in the May 19 issue, by Joshua Hochschild, a professor and former dean at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Md., offers some insights that would be worth your time to consider. (It is available in Commonweal’s online edition, www.commonwealmagazine.org.)
It would be reassuring to find that most administrators at Catholic colleges take this question as seriously as does Hochschild.
Hochschild begins with a premise that should be unobjectionable: “It is widely agreed that Catholic colleges don’t just want to ‘count Catholics.’ Current and prospective faculty members, whatever their religious convictions, can contribute to the mission of a Catholic university in diverse ways.” This means, he continues, that a Catholic university’s mission cannot be secured by simply asking applicants whether they are “comfortable with our Catholic mission.”
Rather than suggest questions that Catholic colleges should ask applicants, Hochschild turns the tables. He proposes questions that non-Catholic applicants for teaching positions at Catholic colleges should ask themselves.
For example, “How well do I understand the fundamental relevance of Catholicism to the university’s academic mission?” An applicant should “reflect seriously on the ways in which Catholic mission can’t be thought of as something merely superadded to a university mission.”
Further, applicants should ask themselves if they “understand that Catholic mission cannot be limited to particular moral or practical issues, or just to matters of ‘personal faith’.”
They must come to grips with how a Catholic university seeks an “engagement with a tradition of deep reflection about the human condition…as a manifestation of the broader Catholic intellectual tradition,” which should be seen “not as a dead canon, but as a living conversation about deep and universal questions.”
In practical terms, this means the applicant should understand that a Catholic university’s mission “for an undergraduate liberal arts college” will take place in “core-curriculum development and teaching,” while at a Catholic “research university” it may focus on “distinctive research questions and projects” that “show awareness of the Catholic notion of the unity of truth.”
Specifically, Hochschild asks the applicant to ponder whether he or she believes “the Catholic intellectual tradition can help me pose more interesting research questions and pursue more interesting inquiry as a scholar?”
Hochschild offers examples of “methodological (and sometimes metaphysical) assumptions about human nature,” which he believes would make it difficult for non-Catholic applicants for teaching positions at a Catholic university to be intellectually honest with themselves: “materialistic assumptions in physical sciences, determinism in psychology, social constructivism in sociology and communication studies, Marxism or post-structuralism in history or literary studies.”
He concludes with the central question non-Catholic applicants for teaching positions should ask themselves: “Do I recognize the assumptions and limitations of my own discipline, or of trends within my discipline: Can I help model how the discipline can be complemented by, and integrated with the Catholic vision of the person.” Beyond this, “Can I advance Catholic mission in the teaching and mentoring of students?”
Is it realistic to think that non-Catholics would sincerely ponder these questions when applying to teach at Catholic colleges? That is hard to determine. The hiring committees at Catholic institutions have their work cut out for them if they seek to implement Professor Hochschild’s guidelines.
But it can be done. It was my Jewish professor who introduced me to the writing of Orestes Brownson, and the Hegelian who helped me explore Jacques Maritain’s work.
Our Catholic colleges charge their students enough for them to undertake this responsibility. Sycamore Trust, a group of Notre Dame alumni, recently issued a press release reporting that Notre Dame’s tuition, board and room for next year will be “an eye-popping $66,375.”
One would think there would be something distinctively Catholic that Notre Dame offers to justify this price, when, Sycamore Trust notes, “down the road in West Lafayette, Purdue president Mitch Daniels and his board have forgone any tuition increases for five years while reducing room and board charges,” leaving the full price at $20,032 for an Indiana resident.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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