This is a topic that I have thinking about for a number of yrs. My original plan had been to write a thesis on the topic, forming a conception of the Ideal Christian University, the Optimal Christian University (based on the practicalities/realities of the world), and finally comparing these two concepts (in a rather damning manner) to my own university… Notre Dame. Like most of my grand plans, some combination of outside factors and laziness destroyed this one. However, i am still interested in the question, and I am curious as to where you all would start with this. I suppose I could have put this question in a different forum and simply asked about the “ideal University” [you are welcome to talk about the ideal University if you don’t think Christianity/religion should be a major part of a school], but I framed the question this way as a Christian who was at a [proclaimed] Catholic University.
One interesting place to start (not that I necessarily agree with it all), is Richard Neuhaus’ 11 theses on the Christian University:
My problem with Notre Dame was really a problem with the administration which ruined alot of my experiences there. The administration is simply very overbearing. There is a general perception that those higher up know what is best and everyone else should do as they are told. it was not a very intellectually open atmosphere. i wouldn’t say that Catholic Dogma was forced down everyone’s throats, but many things were regulated (students at ND can be expelled for having sex outside of marriage at any point during their time at ND…including summers away from school). I would also say that the administration, and especially its “justice” system, showed a distinct lact of humanity and christian kindness. For example, a good friend of mine was kicked out of his dorm with 3 weeks left in the year for having a girl stay overnight (dorms are single sex, visiting hours are regulated, and breaking those visiting hours can cause expulsion, though generally causes being kicked off campus). With three weeks left in the year he had to find a place to live. i believe they gave him 1 week to do so, and declared after that week his stuff would simply be thrown out. My own personal experience was being threatened with expulsion and being asked “do you know where you are?” (in a very menacing tone) for having the gall to distribute condoms (keep in mind that Notre Dame’s rules against pre-marital sex and contraception have created an atmosphere which has fostered, according to a long-time nurse in the Student health center: “the worst Gonorrhea problem I have seen at any University” Honeslty, I am well aware of why the rules are in place, and, often as not, agreed that they should be there. I had serious problems with the way rules (and punishments) were instituted.
That being said, I had some amazing profs in both history and philosophy (philo with some big name prof - Alisdair MacIntyre and Alvin Plantinga - who were suprisingly enough excellent teachers) who were not only great educators, but wonderful people who really embodied the Christian spirit [these were not just lay profs, but also Catholic Priests and a Rabbi]
I must say I was also dissapointed by the general lack of questioning at ND among the student body. Notre Dame is 87% Catholic, yet I found it hard to find people to have intelligent conversations about Catholicism. Most people seemed to fall in two ends of a spectrum - 1. never really questioned their beliefs 2. outright rejected Catholicism without thinking about it simply because their parents told them to believe it. Honestly both ends of the spectrum annoyed the hell out of me and that was incredibly dissapointing to find in a University that bills itself as the greatest Catholic University (at least in the U.S.)
I found it especially sad that instead of celebrating the amazing tradition that most of us shared [by looking at it critically, and seeing how amazingly well thought out it is - sidenote, Catholic moral tenets are incredibly well thought out and logical assuming the the fundamental dogma of Catholicism, and I tend to appreciate system that follow logically from their fundamentals and don’t hedge on things later on down the line] we were instead being taught to basically, hold the party line. It saddened me to find that those who should have been some of the brightest Catholic students in America (as well as some from around the world) were basically being told that we didn’t have to understand the religion, we just had to follow it…
that, in a rambling nutshell, was what i did not like about ND
Doesn’t Notre Dame know that the greatest Catholic University is Georgetown? naaa, I’m just playing.
Wow. sounds like you had a helluva non classroom time. i went to school at Loyola University in New Orleans and I do not have those type of horror stories for two reasons. First, we lived in New Orleans and that kind of threw alot of the stricture of Catholicism out the window. Secondly, Loyola is a Jesuit university and wonderfully the Jebbies are all communists. Thank God! they’re so quasi heretical that they’ve run people out of the religious studies department for being too Catholic. We did have to dance around the midnight no girl curfews, but we could drink in our dorm rooms so I really didn’t care. besides having sex in Audobon Park is kind of fun. (there was also that time I got oral pleasure on the church steps, but that’s not for this forum.) Nobody at Loyola would take the insult of being told what to do if the school said we couldn’t have premarital relations of any type.
now, the university administration does tend to run things in a top down manner that pays too much attention to the big pocket donors, but every university is like that.
Hermes, come on now, you know Georgetown isn’t Catholic (gotta love the jesuits - militant defenders of the faith getting kicked out of every country because they piss rulers off to anti-catholicism within their own schools - they tried to get rid of the crucifixes in the rooms at G-town so as not to offend anyone - who piss off the Church leadership… I think the key here is that Jesuits need some authority figure to piss off at all times, and if secular authorities aren’t paying attention to them, they will just piss off the Church)
“hey you Off the continent - NOW!” That’s the best assessment I’ve heard of the jesuits EVER
Something else funny about Jesuitism. Ignatius of Loyola was a soldier who was wounded in battle. He spent several months recuperating in a castle after he damn near died in a conflict. While resting up, he asked the nun/nurse if they had any romances to read (romances in those days meant vernacular literature, usually dealing with chivalrous tales and adventures of knights - Mallory’s Le Morte d’artur is an example. Don Quijote is a spoof). She said no sorry, but we have this lives of the saints. Loyola figured what the hell, he was bored, and took to reading the lives of the saints. Midway through he realized “Hey! I can be a soldier for GOD!!!” When he healed he went on a pilgrimage and from there everything is history. The scary/hillarious thing to consider is what would have happened if the castle had a copy of Knights of the Round table? The foundation of the Jesuits hinges on the lack of possession of adventure books.