By Martin Patrick Hughes, Ph.D.
* This article comprises both Parts I and II of what was published in The Reign of Mary No. 92.
“What is truth?” (John 18:38). That’s an interesting question. Mankind has struggled with it ever since the Fall of Adam and Eve. Once we lost those gifts which we had before the Fall, mankind has had to struggle and search for the truth. Pilate unknowingly got right to the crux of the matter when he posed his famous question to Christ. The Gospels record no response from the Son of God, as He stood there before Pilate. What answer was there to give? The Truth was there, standing right before the Roman judge, but he failed to see it. The centurion of the Gospels had seen it. The apostles had seen it. The Samaritan woman had seen it. The woman caught in adultery, the innumerable scores of invalids, lepers, and blind people that Christ had cured, the three people He raised from the dead – all had seen the Truth. Faith is a gift which each man must choose to accept or to reject. Pilate, unfortunately, made the wrong choice.
But on another level, “truth” has always been a difficult concept for fallen man. It is believed that before the Fall, Adam was blessed with great faculties which we cannot even begin to imagine. He never had to struggle with calculus, the fundamental laws of physics, or the Pythagorean theorem. It is believed that he had a detailed knowledge of all the processes of nature. His knowledge of science, of the workings of the material world, all was perfected without the need for study. He understood everything from the structure of the atom to the laws governing the cosmos. As the saying goes, he had it all.
But after the Fall, man was intellectually but a pale shadow of his former self. Once a depository of understanding and wisdom, now man must suffer and toil to understand anything. And we don’t even need to refer to the endless generations who have struggled with organic chemistry. When I was two or three years old, it took me weeks to learn how to tie my own shoes without the rabbit getting stuck under that darn bush. Now they’ve got velcro. Isn’t it just like human nature to always try to find a shortcut?
But there are no shortcuts when it comes to education. In an increasingly sophisticated world, there is an ever greater need for education and learning. In other respects, in a world which is increasingly darkened intellectually by the black night of error, there is a growing need for the illuminating flame of true education. Christ has given us the imperative, “let your light shine before men, in order that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). Christ has called us to set the standard, to spread the Gospel of His truth throughout the world. In today’s society, one of the best assurances we have of being able to carry out that command is to get a good education. This is no easy task. All young Catholics today must face a difficult dilemma: We need to obtain a good education in order to lead others, by word and example, to the Truth. But the means of obtaining that education, namely the universities and colleges of today, themselves pose a serious threat to our Catholic faith. It is no easy task to preserve the precious traditional values and beliefs which we have been given, when we are immersed in an environment which puts them under constant attack. But I assure you, it can be done. Moreover, it must be done.
Sitting at home, taking a passive role in today’s world, is simply not an option. Merely surviving in modern times from the material point of view requires a sound education. It is very difficult to be able to look to the needs of one’s soul when his most pressing need is putting food on his family’s table. As St. Thomas Aquinas has said, it is desirable to have a sufficiency of material goods, in order to have the time and the ability to look to the needs of our souls.
Perhaps more importantly, as I will discuss in detail further on, a sound education is absolutely essential for us to battle the forces of error on an intellectual level. Certainly going off to college poses its own threats to the health of one’s soul. This does not mean that we should take the ostrich’s defense, burying our heads in the sand and running from the challenge. On the contrary, we must prepare for the challenge of keeping the faith alive in a hostile environment. The apostles and early Christians did not retreat from the idolatry of Greece and the debauchery of Rome. They first prepared themselves before facing the challenge of spreading the Gospel to all nations.
Anyone who attempts to do otherwise, who retreats from the challenges of today, anyone who seeks the passive escape, fails to truly understand the call of the Gospel. Those are the ones Christ was referring to when He spoke of the servant who went off and buried his talent. What good are talents which are hidden and not used? What good is a gift which is not shared for the benefit of others? Of what use is the light of faith, if it is hidden under the bushel of human respect? Getting an education is not just a necessary means of preparing for the challenge of spreading the faith in today’s world, it is in itself an opportunity to spread the light of that faith. These were the thoughts I had when I chose to go off to college.
A Public University
My first decision was to choose a school. I went to a regional state university in the area where my family lived. Although there was a highly-regarded “Catholic” university closer to home, I chose a public school to avoid the modernism and heresy which are taught in today’s Catholic higher educational system. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once advised a group of Catholic high school students that they would be better off going to a state school where they would have the chance to fight for their faith, than going to a modern Catholic university where they would have the new watered-down, modernist version of the faith spoon-fed to their unsuspecting minds. That was 25 or 35 years ago; it is certainly much worse now.
After I enrolled, I began to acquire a much deeper appreciation for my Catholic upbringing, and my traditional Catholic secondary education. I will be forever grateful to my parents for the tremendous sacrifices they made to provide me and my brothers and sisters with that education. It has proven to be an extremely strong foundation for my faith. I realized once I entered college how important that upbringing is, and how much we must depend on it. Perhaps a discussion of a few of the things I encountered in the ivory halls will help to demonstrate how important a good Catholic education is.
In my first quarter at college, I was advised to begin taking the general university requirements. These are a series of courses, in a broad range of subjects, which constitute the core of a typical liberal arts education. The list of courses (and I use that word loosely) to choose from is itself an indictment of the current state of higher education in America. As George Roche, the president of Hillsdale College in Michigan, has pointed out, it seems that the classics of Western Civilization have been thrown out with the “heave ho” chant of Jesse Jackson and the other “enlightened” liberals of the last 30 years. All the works of the “dead white males” from Aristotle to Aquinas to Jefferson, all the cultural advances of Western society of the last 3,000 years, all the things that have made our civilization great, all have been tragically replaced by the currently fashionable tenets of liberal doctrine. Today, all decisions in higher education, from who to hire and fire to what courses to teach, how to teach them, and what to teach in them, all these decisions rest upon the dictates of what Irving Kristol calls the “unholy trinity” of race, gender, and class. Thus in addition to “An Introduction to Macroeconomics” and “American Literature,” my list of available courses contained such classics as “Women’s Studies,” “Chicano History,” and other such testaments to humankind’s triumphant climb out of the “Dark Ages.” My informal discussions with fellow students revealed that “Women’s Studies” was simply a front for male bashing and radical feminism, while “Chicano Studies” merely provided a soapbox for a poorly educated individual of Hispanic lineage to rant against the alleged abuses of American imperialism. Ask any student in practically any university today: the report from the front is that multiculturalism is alive and well in the ivory halls. But I digress.
I chose the economics course and “An Introduction to Ethics” for my first two requirement classes. “Ethics?” In a modern university? What was I thinking? I had taken an excellent ethics course in my philosophy class in high school, which was taught by the future Bishop Mark Pivarunas before he was ordained a priest. Thus I felt adequately equipped to test the waters. As it turned out, to no one’s surprise, the modern professor’s idea of ethics contrasted rather sharply with what I had been taught in our high school course on the scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The outline of our college course involved an overview of the philosophy of five different writers of the enlightenment period. You would think that given five tries, one of them might come up with something reasonable. And you would be wrong. We ended up having five completely different views, all of them purely humanistic, yet still in complete contradiction with one another on what “morality” consists of, and what it is based upon. None of them got it right. They merely demonstrated how far fallen man can stray when not following the light of grace, the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and the guidance of Holy Mother Church. “The light has come into the world, yet men have loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, that his deeds may not be exposed” (John 3:19-20).
But in a way, this course demonstrated so clearly and convincingly how absurd and false these humanistic theories are. In some way or another, all of them agreed on one particular point: that the basis for the concept of moral authority lies within man’s own self. There was no reference to an external source of morality, no reference to God – after all, these philosophers were “enlightened.” Rather, each of them stated in one way or another that humankind is the source of moral authority. Thus they collectively disprove what they individually teach. After all, here are five different philosophers who all claim that morality finds its source in human nature, but who all then go on to offer five different versions of what that morality consists of. They all disagreed on what day-to-day morality is. But since they are all human, and humanity is the source of moral authority, how could there be disagreement about what is moral? This in itself disproves the fundamental assumption which each of their arguments is based upon, namely that the standard of true morality is found in mankind, within the collective human society.
This analysis is a typical use of scholastic philosophy. In an argument, if the assumptions are correct and the logic (the line of reasoning) is correct, the conclusion which they produce will be correct. However, if either the assumptions or the logic are incorrect, the conclusions will not be correct. That is what I learned from Bishop Pivarunas back in high school. But none of my classmates in college had the privilege of taking that same Catholic philosophy course. Some of them felt that what we were being taught in “An Introduction to Ethics” was wrong, but none of them could say why it was wrong. At the end of the course, after the final test was over, one young lady said to the teacher, “So what are we supposed to take home from this course? All these philosophers disagreed on what morality is. I mean, what is the difference between right and wrong?” The teacher replied, “Well, let’s take abortion for instance.” Then he asked one of the students, “What do you think about abortion?” “It’s a woman’s choice.” Then he asked another student. “It’s okay as long as it’s early in the pregnancy.” Then he asked another student. “It’s immoral. It’s always wrong.” Another student replied, “It’s all right in cases of rape or incest.” He got as many answers as there were students he asked. Then he turned to the young lady who had first asked “what is the difference between right and wrong?” “Well, there you go! There you have it!” “But what do you mean?” she asked. The teacher folded his hands in front of him and pressed his fingers to his chin. We had come to learn that this was the sign that he was about to make a final, definitive statement. After a dramatic pause for effect, he turned to the student and said, “If it’s right for you, it’s right for you. If it’s wrong for you, then it’s wrong for you. It’s that simple.”
That was the result of ten weeks’ worth of intensive investigation into the basis of morality. It all came down to that! How simple can it be? I would have been stunned had I not seen it coming. But I could literally feel the frustration of all the other students in the room. They were 18 or 19 year-olds who were no longer satisfied with the standard “because I said so” rule of right and wrong. They took this class because they were sincere, they were really looking for a philosophy of right and wrong that they could base their lives upon. Lord knows they hadn’t found it while hanging out in the mall, listening to AC/DC. I took a moment to look around the room after our teacher’s revelation. I studied the faces of those other students: faces which spoke of confusion, frustration, and a growing apathy. I knew from talking to many of them that they had come to that class, and invested so much effort, in order to come to a better understanding of the true meaning of life. And when their sincere efforts were finally rewarded with the mantra of the radical hippie, “If it feels good, do it!” they knew they had been sold a bill of goods.
I had many other equally educational experiences in college. I met plenty of feminists, liberals, multiculturalists, radical environmentalists, and adherents of every other shade of error that falsehood disguises itself with these days. One environmentalist I knew advocated everything from blowing up dams to putting “chemicals which cause sterilization” in municipal drinking water. I had teachers who used the classroom to advocate “a woman’s right to choose.” I saw the scientific process inverted in biology class, but only in regards to evolution. New experimental evidence is no longer used to adjust the hypothesis under investigation – provided the hypothesis has anything to do with “evolution.” Instead, the experimental results are twisted in any manner possible to support evolution. Indeed, while they still refer to it as the “theory” of evolution, it has been accorded the status of “law” right up there with Sir Isaac’s gravity. There are many other things which I encountered in college, from the advocates of homosexuality to closet communists, but I’m certain my point has been made. Anyone who ventures into the realm of higher education today must be prepared for what lies in store.
A Catholic University
After graduating from college, I entered graduate school at the University of Notre Dame. Thus I have had the opportunity of acquiring a first-hand look at both public and Catholic higher education. In graduate school, students generally take classes only in their discipline, so I was spared the heresies of the modern church. Still, I have seen enough and heard enough to relate some of what a young man or woman can expect to encounter at a modern Catholic university.
I have many friends who are undergraduates at Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College and Holy Cross College. (Saint Mary’s is the women’s college adjacent to Notre Dame, and Holy Cross is a junior college which, like Notre Dame, is also run by the Congregation of the Holy Cross. Both of these colleges are across the road from Notre Dame, within walking distance of the campus, and have strong affiliations with the university.) I have had many discussions with these students about what is taught in the theology, philosophy, and sociology courses at these schools. One student told me about his daily debates with other students and his teacher in which he had to defend the Church’s stand on abortion and the concept of absolute right and wrong. One young lady, a theology major at St. Mary’s, told me of an incident in the spring of 1993, in which a noted feminist was invited by the faculty of the theology department to come and speak to the theology students. Of the many heretical statements she made during the round table discussion, her claim that Our Lady was not a virgin was by far the most blasphemous. Only two students objected. None of the faculty present did. The thought that such a blasphemous claim was made at a school named for Our Blessed Mother is enough to turn one’s stomach.
Just from talking to various students at these schools, I have found that many do not believe in hell, and have a concept of life after death which is suspiciously reminiscent of the beliefs of eastern mysticism. Historical revisionism, even regarding fundamental historical church facts, is rampant at Notre Dame and other Catholic colleges. One young lady I talked to was surprised to learn that I still believe that none of the apostles was a woman. (Such a decidedly medieval concept!) Many students and teachers have spent the last several years demanding that the university administration recognize the gay and lesbian group on campus. (To its credit, the university has repeatedly refused.) Virtually no students believe in the dogma of no salvation outside the Church. And why should they? They are being taught something different in their theology classes. The concept of papal infallibility has also been badly mangled before being presented in class. The result of all these errors is a student who defines his own Catholicism, and chooses to accept or reject Church teachings as he sees fit.
Much of what the University of Notre Dame is today can be traced to its former president, Reverend Father Theodore Hesburgh. His autobiographical book “God, Country, Notre Dame,” is truly fascinating in many respects, and should be read by any traditional Catholic student who is enrolled in a modern Catholic university. A discerning reader will find, under the surface text, a first-hand account of the struggle between the liberals and conservatives in the church to control Catholic education. (The liberals won.) This ideological struggle is perfectly personified in the book by the frequent clashes between Father Hesburgh and Cardinal Ottaviani, a staunch defender of orthodoxy.
One of the biggest victories of the liberal camp came at the “Land O’ Lakes Conference” held in Wisconsin in 1967. It was organized shortly after Vatican Council II, and embodied the radical, revolutionary spirit of the council quite well. Orchestrated by Father Hesburgh, the conference was a direct attempt to free Catholic universities in America from any church control. The liberals made the charge that academic and intellectual integrity can only come when the mind is free from the restraints of any external authority. They appended the phrase “lay or clerical,” perhaps in an attempt to muddy the waters, but their efforts were a direct attempt to gain independence from the church. This claim of academic freedom is nothing but an intellectual submission to the free-thinking movement of the Renaissance.
There are so many contradictory elements in this type of thinking that they need to be delineated. First of all, how can these universities claim independence from the influence of the Church, yet still call themselves Catholic? Second, the claim of intellectual independence from any authority is, in itself, a submission to another authority, the school of free-thinking liberalism. (In much the same way, the claim that there is no morality creates its own, newly-defined, relative morality-of-the-moment, as previously discussed.) When these universities threw off the ideas of the traditional Church, they created a vacuum which, as surely as day follows night, was soon filled with other ideas and another way of thinking. How could it be otherwise?
But whose ideas have taken their place? Our brief look at today’s Catholic colleges and universities has provided a sobering answer. The leaders of Catholic higher education in America have capitulated to the strident voices proclaiming the fads of the day. Volume has drowned out the voice of reason, and the currently fashionable arguments have replaced the steady, time-proven teachings of the centuries.
“Open-mindedness” is now in vogue, while adherence to the principle of absolute morality, faithfulness to the totality of church teachings, and an uncompromising and unapologetic commitment to truth, have been thrown out along with the Latin Mass.
But how open-minded is that? The liberals in power at Catholic universities today, the inmates now running the asylum as it were, are quick to take their cue from their cohorts in non-Catholic state schools. They have an interesting concept of “open-mindedness” to be sure. As George Roche has said, “On some campuses the ‘diversity’ ranges all the way from Maoist to Stalinist.” While the ideas of the famed “dead white males” are constantly criticized, you dare not offend the feminists, the communists, the spotted owls, or any other protected group. So while they stridently voice their autonomy from all church influence, they slavishly chain themselves to the unforgiving tyranny of political correctness. They condemn anyone who stands by the banner of traditional Catholic teaching, yet they exhibit a surprising alacrity in being the first to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to embracing those who profess an “alternative morality.’ Their inclusiveness extends to everyone but those with traditional, conservative views.
Thus while many conservative speakers and writers have been criticized, vilified, and condemned as “intolerant,” liberals of any and every shade of non-Catholic thinking have been invited to campus under the claims of open-mindedness and tolerance. While I have been at Notre Dame, we have had speakers on campus like:
- Greg Louganis, the world-class Olympic gold medalist from the US. But he wasn’t invited because of his athletic accomplishments. In recent years he has publicly acknowledged that he is a homosexual, and was invited to ND as an advocate for gays.
- Bishop P. Francis Murphy, auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, who publicly called for the ordination of women.
- Fortunately, we have had conservative speakers as well, such as William F. Buckley, Jr., thanks to certain conservative student groups. But such speakers always manage to bring out the protesters, who are only open-minded enough to listen to anyone who doesn’t disagree with their views.
Charles E. Rice, a professor in the law school at the University of Notre Dame, has insightfully illustrated the contradictions of the liberals currently entrenched in the university’s administration. In an article published two years ago in the student newspaper “The Observer,” he discussed how the university had cited the “Land O’ Lakes” conference in refusing to follow certain church teachings regarding Catholic universities. But this self-righteous claim for independence gave way to a servile attitude of submission when the interference came from the liberal corner. An information packet from the Indiana Department of Health, an agency of the state (from which the university claims freedom from interference), arrived at the University Health Center that year. It was the latest liberal leaflet about the dangers of AIDS, how it can be spread, etc. The circular gave instructions that companies should educate their employees about these dangers, especially the danger of unprotected sex. Condom use should be encouraged – the usual song and dance. Strangely enough, the university (a self-proclaimed free-from-all-influence Catholic university, I might add), did not stamp the package “undue influence, return to sender, see Land O’ Lakes.” Instead, an effort was made to comply with the suggestions of the state agency. It is so interesting how the liberal mind works. They flame with indignation at any attempt by the church to influence the Catholic university, but they stumble all over themselves to toe the line when the influence comes from the liberal state. They humble even Oedipus in their scrupulous efforts to follow the dictates of the almighty oracles of the liberal establishment. As has been said so many times before, they are a cesspool of contradiction.
For me personally, it is very disheartening to see a Catholic university which I have known and loved all my life being led by heretics down the road of modernism. My family has long shared in the rich, hallowed Notre Dame tradition – long before she established a reputation as a hotbed of liberalism. That reputation is not the Notre Dame that I love, the Notre Dame I take pride in; that is not what the Golden Dome stands for in my mind. I wish that Catholics today could know the Notre Dame of Father Sorin, and the other French priests and brothers who helped him establish the university in 1842. I wish everyone could know about Father Corby, the Civil War chaplain and president of the university, and the long line of staunch, faithful, Irish priests who followed him as presidents during the university’s first 100 years. I wish that Notre Dame today still embraced what she stood for when my father and his brothers walked under the shadow of the Lady on the Dome, over 50 years ago. Just as traditional Catholics long for the church of the ages, I miss the university which held the line against the tide of liberalism in America for a century. When I reflect upon the parallels between our church and my university, I recall to mind the ancient words of St. Athanasius, words which are just as powerful and appropriate today as they were some 1600 years ago: “Who has lost and who has won in this struggle Ð the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the faith?”
RECOMMENDATIONS
I have made an effort to share with the reader some of my own experiences in higher education, in both a state and a Catholic university. I hope that in doing so, I will have convinced you of the dangers inherent in pursuing higher education. This is by no means meant to dissuade anyone from getting an education; on the contrary I would encourage young people to go to college, provided they realize the effort required to protect their Catholic faith. It is a great challenge for young people to preserve this gift of the faith in college today. There are temptations on all sides. There is the constant mind-numbing presence of distortions, lies, and bigotry against conservative Catholics; and perhaps worst of all, the numerous attacks, both subtle and explicit, on their core beliefs. Maintaining the faith in its fullness requires a dedicated commitment every day:
- This commitment must begin before the student steps out the door. A solid prayer life is vital. Frequenting the sacraments, praying the daily rosary, being faithful to morning and night prayers, and making the effort to be mindful of the presence of God during the day are indispensable elements of a strong prayer life.
- The student must also prepare mentally for the intellectual attacks which come fast and furious once he or she enters class. These are encountered in almost every subject. They range from easily identified dangers (such as false philosophies in philosophy class, attacks on the bible in geology, atheistic evolution in biology), to the more subtle problems which are encountered in history, art, government, and many other disciplines.These subtle attacks are more insidious because they almost silently destroy the basis, the foundation, of our Catholic beliefs. This makes it more difficult to defend against them. How many students have lost their faith without even knowing it? It could begin with a false statement in a history book. Or more subtle yet, perhaps a distortion of some historical fact: all the more dangerous because it is “half right” as well as half wrong. Or it could just be an editorial comment about some event in history. A student who is unprepared and uncritical of the ideas which he is learning finds these ideas entering unnoticed into his mind, then into his way of thinking. In the end they begin to influence everything he believes, so that his entire outlook on life is changed. How many parents have been left wondering what went wrong, when their young son or daughter announces that he or she no longer believes in God? How often has it all started with one small, seemingly insignificant idea!
- Friends and companions. The importance of good companions has always been emphasized to young Catholics. As a child, St. Martin of Tours was converted to the faith by the good example of his Christian playmates. At the other end of the spectrum, there are countless examples of people who have lost their faith due to the influence of bad companions. In college today, we are isolated as traditional Catholics. Spread out across the country and around the world, we often do not have the good friends we had in our parish back home to rely on. That isolation can be overwhelming at times. But we are on the threshold of the Information Age. In universities especially, we have the ready means at our disposal to minimize that isolation: the internet!Twenty centuries ago, St. Peter established the papacy in Rome, in the very heart of the Roman Empire. By doing so, he was able to exploit the central location of the city in the middle of the known world. He could also take advantage of the famed Roman roads and some of the best transportation the age could provide. The popes, bishops and priests of the early church used the means of communication that the world provided, and turned them to good use. We should do likewise. Having traditional Catholic email friends and pen-pals is an opportunity to strengthen one’s own faith when it is under daily attack. There is strength in numbers. Almost all university students have access to email. Why not take advantage of it?
- Choice of subjects. Multiculturalism is rampant in higher educational institutions. The far-reaching influence of “race, class, and gender” as determinants in all administrative decisions has already been discussed. Together with political correctness (a euphemism created to camaflouge the excesses of the liberal Thought Police), multiculturalism has generated a plague which seeps into almost every discipline imaginable. Sociology, philosophy, government and history are perhaps the most mortally affected by this virus. Now all cultures, religions, social structures and systems of government are placed upon a plane, and presented as being virtually equal in their intrinsic value to man. This is nonsense, of course. As William A. Henry III has pointed out in his excellent book, In Defense of Elitism, “It is a far greater accomplishment to put a man on the moon than to put a bone through your nose.”We must steadfastly and unapologetically defend and affirm the superiority of Western culture, and the traditional values and beliefs which that culture embodies. Why is this so important? Because attacks on Western culture are indirect attacks on the Church. All the great advances of Western culture stem directly from the influence of the Catholic Church. When northern Europe was overrun by barbarians, it was Catholic Ireland which spread the civilizing influence of the faith back into continental Europe. When Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, it was the ideals of Catholicism which raised the pagan native cultures up from human sacrifice and the worship of nature. It was a desire to spread these ideas and ideals of the Catholic faith into unknown regions which prompted Columbus to venture out across the Atlantic in three tiny wooden boats. His commitment to the faith cannot be questioned, except by the multiculturally minded, politically-correct revisionists of our age. Everything good in our cultural heritage comes in some way from the Church, from the eradication of slavery to the advances of medicine. Learning was preserved in the monasteries of Europe when ignorance infected the rest of the world. It has often been said that the divine origin of the Catholic Church can be demonstrated simply by this fact: No other institution in the history of the world has had such a profound, civilizing, and enriching influence on mankind than the Church.So, getting back to the question of a student’s choice of courses, it is easy to see which courses will have some redeeming value, and which ones will be more of the same old liberal, revisionist propaganda. In the words of our oft-cited patron George Roche, “…beware of critical this, reevaluation of that, revisionist anything, or the like. Chances are high it will be an attack on the West.” Common sense is a trustworthy guide in choosing which courses to take.
- Educate yourself. Don’t be satisfied with what is offered as an “education” in today’s world. From the academic point of view, most of what is taught in today’s colleges is a pure sham. (In this case I am talking not about the standard textbooks of physics, engineering and chemistry, but the “philosophy, heritage, culture and values” content of a liberal arts education.)Dedicated traditional, conservative students need to educate themselves in these areas. It is our generation, we young people, who have the obligation of passing on the torch of faith to generations to come. We must not hide our light under a bushel, we must not bury our talents. It is essential that we let our light shine before men. We have to understand how absolutely critical our education is, especially as Catholics. We are the first generation to come after what many believe is the “great apostasy” predicted by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Thessalonians. This is a decisive time in history. If the body of faith which has been carefully nurtured for the last 20 centuries is to be passed on to the future, we are the ones who will do it, and we must become aware of that responsibility. We must become aware of how essential this is.And what exactly is it that we must pass on? Obviously, the faith. But what constitutes the faith? Or better yet, in what form is the faith transmitted to others? It is transmitted through ideas, through knowledge. After all, what is belief but a framework of knowledge? What is knowledge, but an accumulation of ideas, or better yet, the right ideas? The faith is passed on through knowledge, and therefore we must become knowledgeable. The faith is defended and protected by ideas and ideals, therefore we must acquire those ideas and ideals (again, the right ones). The bottom line is, for the faith to survive and be transmitted to those who will come after us, we must be educated. And I’m not talking “Women’s Studies.”The bottom line is again, “Whose ideas are we going to adopt and pass on? Those of Aquinas or those of Rousseau? Those of Thomas More or those of Thomas Dewey? Those of Abraham Lincoln or that of Bill Clinton?” Perhaps like many of today’s infamous “polls,” my query contains an indication of the desired response. We must pass on the right ideas, therefore we must acquire the right ideas.In order to do this, we should avail ourselves of those books which contain the ideas and truths which we hope to pass on. For those young people who must face every form of falsehood (from Lutheranism, Marxism and neo-Nazism to eastern mysticism and radical environmentalism) in today’s universities, acquiring a good personal library is an absolute necessity. Moreover, we must be educated in a wide range of subjects. It is inadvisable to enter the battle of ideas unarmed. Perhaps a good place to start would be to join an organization such as the Conservative Book Club in America, where many excellent and educational books are available each month. Another thing to do would be to discuss these good books with our conservative Catholic friends. Sharing some books, and developing a reading list are good ways to spread knowledge. It is very hard to put together such a reading list because of the many excellent and deserving titles which will no doubt be left off, simply because one can’t read them all. Having therefore established an excuse for myself, here goes:
- “The Closing of the American Mind” by Allen Bloom
- “Inside American Education” by Thomas Sowell
- “One by One” by George Roche
- “God and Man at Yale” by William F. Buckley, Jr.
- “Man and Woman” by Dietrich Von Hildebrand
- “A Nation of Victims” by Charles J. Sykes
- “The Content of our Character” by Shelby Steele
- “The Disuniting of America” by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
- “Legislating Immorality” by George Grant and Mark A. Horne
- “The Conservative Manifesto” by William Hennessy
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Build a Catholic point of view, nurture a Catholic way of thinking. This is absolutely essential! The need for it is best illustrated when we consider the blatant contradictions inherent in the liberal thinking which directs many of today’s Catholic universities (vide infra). Why have the people in charge at these universities, faculty and administrators alike, fallen so far into the murky, clouded rationalizing which justifies these contradictions? Why do they cater to the whims of the Thought Police of political correctness? Why are liberal ideas carrying the day over our Catholic ideas? It is precisely because these Catholic ideas, as with all ideas, cannot coherently exist in some abstract form. They must be understood within the context of a Catholic point of view. Once that point of view – that framework of reference – is diluted, the ideas which rest upon it begin to weaken.All ideas must exist within some frame of reference. In our Catholic way of thinking, that reference is God. Take the idea of absolute right and wrong, for instance. Morality does not exist simply by itself, without some point of reference. It must have some foundation upon which it rests, something which gives it authority. In our day-to-day life, what guides our decisions about what is right and what is wrong? For the hippie, it comes down to what feels right to him at the time. For us as Catholics, we can refer to the Ten Commandments.So what then is the difference between the 60’s radical and the traditional Catholic? The essential difference is these two differing frameworks of ideas. The self-guided hippie claims no external reference. He makes moral choices (if they can be called such) based upon his independent, self-centered, self-glorifying, internal framework of ideas. The traditional Catholic’s reference to an external standard, the Decalogue, is incorporated into his framework of ideas. But why are the Ten Commandments a reliable point of moral reference? What gives them their binding authority? Obviously, their authority comes from their Author, God. God is the central point of reference for all our beliefs. He is the Author of our framework of ideas. He is the external, absolute Standard which cannot and does not change by His very Nature.Many critical students of the enlightenment think that the Church doesn’t want anyone exercising freedom of thought, that the Church curtails the creativity of the individual mind. Such misinformation and nonsense can be readily dismissed out of hand, by simply noting that the Church has been the center of learning for 2,000 years. The fact is that Our Holy Mother the Church, guided by the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Wisdom, perfectly understands human nature. Fallen human nature. She understands that man, in his fallen state, will reason himself into falsehood unless he is guided by grace. I’ve seen it happen. That’s why there are so many false ideas out there. “For everyone who does evil hates the light…” How is the individual mind guided in determining what is true and what is false? We can’t rely on our nature since it is fallen – we must rely on something outside ourselves. We must rely on the Church. Where does her authority come from? From God, the Creator. Again, any way you look at it, our framework of ideas must rest on God. Our central reference always returns to the Creator.Anyone who has the gift of reason can think. Thus we have so many ideas and philosophies saturating our society. But in the realm of ideas, whose ideas will hold sway? Whose ideas will we adopt? Our Catholic frame of reference tells us that there are good ideas and bad ideas, there is right and there is wrong. It is not enough simply to reason and to think, regardless of the truth. We must reason logically and think correctly. We must not rely on the subjective views of our own imperfect intellect. We must trust in the objective mind of Holy Mother Church. As an old Swedish proverb says: The freedom to think is great. The courage to think right is greater.
CONCLUSION
Growing up, I was blessed to have two devout and dedicated parents who made certain that my siblings and I had a thoroughly Catholic upbringing. They made tremendous sacrifices so that we could attend the Latin Mass, and to ensure that we all received a traditional Catholic education. My parents thoroughly understood the maxim, “the family that prays together stays together,” and they led us in the family rosary every day.
Perhaps the single most important element required for a young man or woman to maintain their traditional faith when they go off to college is a good Catholic family. If as children they do not acquire those fundamental beliefs and habits which we should all have as Catholics, they will not have a strong foundation to fall back on when they are out on their own. A wholesome, loving, nurturing, traditional Catholic home environment is irreplaceable. Those who hope to maintain the faith on their own amid the evils of our day have overwhelming odds against them.
This should be seen and accepted as a challenge to the faithful Catholic young men and women of today. It is our duty not just to preserve our faith, but to pass it on. The need for virtuous, well-trained, fervent Catholic young parents is greater today than ever before. Period. Anyone who claims otherwise is simply ignorant of the incredible forces arrayed against families — all families — today. From feminism to homosexuality, from social programs which benefit unwed mothers to the anti-family and anti-parent entertainment programs aimed at children, there is a concerted, calculated assault on the family which is unparalleled in the history of man. This is our challenge. This is the duty which God expects each of us to rise to. Young traditional Catholics everywhere must recognize this fact, and shoulder the responsibility of building strong Catholic families for the future.
Those who hope to raise good Catholics in today’s world are accepting a challenge like never before. Far from being overwhelmingly discouraged (which is what the devil wants, after all), we need to fall back upon our own adolescent formation, and upon our Catholic education. We need to look to our parents, to those who have gone before us, for the wisdom and the example and the courage to accept the task which lies ahead. We need to turn to the popes, the moral leaders of the church, for clear, reliable guidance in this undertaking. The writings of the popes from the past 150 years, from Pope Pius IX to Pope Pius XII, are particularly pertinent, since they lived closer to our age, and were so prophetically mindful of the evils of these times. We must also turn to the saints, the spiritual leaders of Holy Mother the Church. What a tremendous and all too neglected source of inspiration and intercession they can be.
Once we begin to see who is behind us, who is with us, I like the odds. They can have all their angry feminists, they can have Rousseau and Marx, they can have the eastern mysticism, the liberalism, the humanism, and all the other passing fads of the day. We’ll take the legacy of twenty centuries of Catholicism. We’ll trust in the intercession of the saints in Heaven, and the Poor Souls in Purgatory. We’ll stand upon the Rock, and the 270 Vicars of Christ who have succeeded him. After all, we have the assurance of Christ Himself, “…upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). With St. Teresa of Avila, we should say with calm and confident courage, “God and I make a majority.” What Catholic young person today, after reflecting upon the divine assistance we have at our disposal, can fail to be filled with the courage to take on all the challenges which await us?
Passivity is no longer an option; we must be active. The challenge is there, and the stakes are too high to watch from the sidelines. Christ tells us, “he who is not with Me is against Me” (Luke 11:23). Whose side will you be on?