What should Catholic education look like today? As universities move toward more efficient and technical processes in higher education, is there still room for seeking truth and knowledge for its own sake? These are some of the questions explored by Timothy P. O’Malley, theology professor and director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. OSV News’ Charles Camosy spoke with him recently about the state of Catholic higher education and his vision for its reform.
Charles Camosy: How would you describe the typical contemporary university and higher education in the U.S. today?
Timothy O’Malley: If you read the Chronicle of Higher Education, nearly every issue uses the term “crisis.” It’s true that higher ed (whether Catholic or not) is in crisis. There is the crisis of the demographic cliff, the crisis of the sudden disappearance of research dollars, and the crisis of a loss of authority – who trusts the university?
But of course, the word “crisis” need not be understood negatively. Luigi Giussani often said that a crisis is ultimately a decision point, an occasion of discernment.
Does the college or university want to be a space of encounter between students and truth? Between students and professors? Or are we OK with the “machinification” of the university?
Learning and research alike are slow and often inefficient processes. A student’s insight into a text or some mathematical theorem only occurs after false starts. Research comes about through years of contemplative study on the part of faculty members. But there is a push for immediacy that interrupts both processes.
Several years ago, I read what I suspect was supposed to be a utopian vision of the future university that was highly efficient. Students no longer relied upon professors or texts for learning, but everywhere they went, there was a hot spot that enabled them to ask questions to a generative AI bot. Catholic universities have a specific vocation here: We possess a vision of the human person, knowledge and the truth that does not conform to “machinification.” We can be bastions of a contemplative, even sacramental way of being and knowing, but we must possess the courage to swim against the stream.
Must learning be efficient?
Camosy: Your new co-authored book on this topic draws on figures like Josef Pieper and St. John Henry Newman. Why focus on these thinkers?
O’Malley: I first read Pieper as an undergraduate, opening up his “Happiness and Contemplation” in a second-level theology course. What I discovered in this work was a radical proposal: Human beings are made to be happy, happiness involves knowing, but knowledge is ultimately a contemplative act rather than a matter of technique.
Pieper believes it’s OK to take up a leisurely, useless form of knowledge. Not everything can be efficient or, for that matter, immediately useful. Sometimes, human beings read literature, produce art, write a poem or gaze at a sunset – and the result is not something you can later put on your resume.
First suggestion: slow down
Camosy: Can you give a summary of the positive view for reform of Catholic education you propose?
O’Malley: The book’s suggestion is to slow down. Give more time for grading (and let universities actually reward that encounter between student and teacher). Gather faculty together across disciplines to read each other’s work. Reward a leisurely pace to university life, recognizing that teaching is not reducible to knowledge transfer but is instead always a slow, contemplative encounter.
We can’t keep up with the machines, so let’s stop trying. But that requires possessing a universal vision of what the university is up to. We need a philosophy for the whole university, something that unites the biologist, economist, nursing professor and theologian together in a common pursuit. Without that, we’re not really a university anymore.
Be an example for others
Camosy: Does any of what you propose have legs outside of a Catholic context?
O’Malley: I think so! In fact, I suspect that it’s the vocation of Catholic higher education to offer another possibility for all university life.
There are so many different types of Catholic colleges or universities – including the small liberal arts institution, the community college or technical school and the mega-research university.
What we share in common is a vision of the human person as a creature made to behold, wonder, discover and delight in the gift of the world. We believe that this is how we recognize the dignity of each person in our community of learning: We are made to discover truth as a gift. We are free to enact that truth that we discover in communities committed to the common good.
Yes, this is a Catholic approach to reality – but it’s also one that is prophetically humane.
For millennia, colleges and universities have first been about cultivating humble wonder at the pursuit of truth in a community of friends, seeking together to know and enact the good.
We can’t become sectarian entities, refusing to talk to peers at other types of institutions. From the heart of the Church was born the university, and the renewal of the university (whether Catholic or not) will involve a renewed way of contemplative knowing across all universities.
Catholic colleges or universities need a renewal of all colleges or universities – we depend on each other.
Charles Camosy teaches moral theology and bioethics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.