As a few of you
may know (and even fewer care), I attended the University of Notre Dame du Lac
in northern Indiana in the late 1970s. I
was in the Notre Dame Glee Club for four years under Dr. David Clark (“Coach”) Isele,
majored in Accounting, and managed to graduate, going on to get my MBA at the
University of Evansville, Indiana. Eventually
I became Director of Research for the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) in Arlington, Virginia.
CESJ’s Core
Values, Code
of Ethics, principles,
and programs are
based on an Aristotelian-Thomist understanding of natural law, Pope Pius XI’s
breakthrough in moral philosophy with the discernment of a particular “act of
social justice” as analyzed by CESJ co-founder, the late Father William J.
Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. (president of Chaminade College-Now-University in Honolulu,
rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, and chairman of
Dayton University), and the binary economics of Louis O. Kelso. CESJ’s work has been praised by President
Ronald Reagan and received the personal encouragement of His Holiness Pope
Saint John Paul II during a private audience with members of Polish Solidarity,
as well as a long list of clergy of other faiths as well as politicians from both
sides of the aisle, at least when they were still speaking to one another.
Our book, Curing
World Poverty: The New Role of Property (1994), for which I was a contributing
author and served as assistant editor, grew out of a seminar we presented at
the Vatican for heads of religious Orders, and was hosted by His Eminence
Achille Cardinal Silvestrini. Curing
World Poverty was published by the Social Justice Review, the
official journal of the Central Bureau of the Catholic Central Union of America
in St. Louis, Missouri, and sold enough copies (5,000) to qualify as a “small
press bestseller,” not exactly Harry Potter, but nothing to sneeze at, either. These and other things are described in CESJ’s
“Accomplishments Brochure.”
So why isn’t this
more widely known?
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| Leo XIII |
Quick answer:
As I will show in a couple of books that are scheduled for publication later
this summer (one on “economic personalism” and one on what the heck happened to
social justice), the general understanding of natural law (and thus Catholic
social teaching and that of other faiths and philosophies based on the
Aristotelian understanding of natural law) has been subverted by a paradigm of
thought loosely defined by the labels socialism, modernism, and the New Age —
the “new things” (rerum novarum) noted by Pope Gregory XVI in 1834 in
the second social encyclical, Singulari Nos, and referenced by Pope Leo
XIII in 1891 in his encyclical on labor and capital.
In plain English,
that means people who pit their personal faith against reason. Less plainly, moral relativism has taken over
as the result of a shift from the Intellect to the Will, creating a situation
in which might makes right, so that a forceful false opinion trumps objective
knowledge that is empirically valid or logically consistent.
CESJ’s “Just
Third Way” based on objective reason and empirical evidence does not fit into
preconceived notions based on subjective faith, and so tends to be rejected out
of hand without being given a fair hearing — or any hearing at all, for that
matter.
More involved answer:
Academia, especially Catholic Academia, is morally bankrupt.
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| University of Notre Dame Administration Building |
Now, that
requires a little explanation. I am not
just echoing others who have come to the same conclusion for one reason or
another. My conclusion is based on
personal experience and a number of attempts to interact and dialogue with
academics at various institutions, both religious and secular. Not all institutions of higher learning,
certainly. One in particular (that I
will not name to protect the innocent) has been very open.
Because it is my
alma mater, however, three experiences with Notre Dame proved especially
disappointing — and you have to have experienced some aspect of the spirit of
Notre Dame to understand just how deep and bitter that kind of disappointment
is for an alumnus to admit.
I relate these
experiences in general terms as an example of how what many (most of them
admittedly alumni) consider the premier Catholic university in the world has
fallen from the position it once held.
It would also probably lead to reprisals of some kind were I to name
names, which would serve no purpose other than to confirm me in my opinion, in
addition to making life very miserable for some fellow “Domers.” I assure you, however, that these experiences
took place, and I have the hard evidence sitting in front of me as I write
this:
·
An attempt to discuss CESJ’s Just Third Way with
the university administration — based on work explicitly encouraged by a
canonized saint, mind you — was brushed aside by a highly placed administrative
official with the statement that they were not interested and would
never be interested (!).
·
A noted faculty member declared that CESJ’s “Pro-Life
Economic Agenda” is contrary to Catholic social teaching because it is
based on an understanding of the natural law discerned by reason, not by faith. When the noted faculty member was presented with explicit statements from
Aquinas and the Fathers of the First Vatican Council regarding that point, the
noted faculty member declared that the noted faculty member only accepted papal teachings. When the noted faculty member was provided with specific language from the
popes in the encyclicals on that point, it was ignored.
·
A meeting arranged by a member of the “Notre
Dame Family” with the assistant director of an official organization on campus
seemed to go well, even though the assistant director asked no questions (not a
good sign), and ended with the assistant director saying, “We will have to work
together.” Regular follow-up for nearly
two years, including emails, telephone calls, mailings of books and materials,
and so on, got no response or reaction.
Admittedly, Notre
Dame is not alone in this sort of thing, nor are those the only instances at
Our Lady’s University. It is, sadly, no
different from the (non) response we have gotten from Georgetown or the
Catholic University of America, as well as a number of smaller Catholic
colleges and universities scattered across the country.
So why pick on
Notre Dame?
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| "J.M.J. Dear Dr. Sterba of Notre Dame: You cannot logically prove the existence of non-existence. Yours, Fulton J. Sheen." |
In yesterday’s Wall
Street Journal, there was an amusing little piece about two writers named
James Paul Sterba, “I’m Jim Sterba, and So Is He” (07/10/19, A-17), one of whom writes for the Journal, the other who teaches at Notre Dame. There had never been any confusion between
the two, however, until the coming of social media. J.P. Sterba wrote his column for the Journal
to avoid what he considers unnecessary flak and fallout because —
. . . the other James P. Sterba [of Notre Dame] is about to publish his
18th book, “Is a Good God Logically Possible?” His answer: No. In an email, he wrote: “I argue for the view
that the all good, all powerful God of traditional theism is logically incompatible
with the degree and amount of evil in the world. This is an unusually strong stance . . .
[that] adds a brand new arrow to the atheist’s quiver.” Remember, this guy teaches at a Catholic
university. He expects an uproar from
various God squads. And some of the
fallout will rain down on me.
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| C.S. Lewis |
Now, anyone who
has taken even an introductory course in logic or philosophy can shred the
argument of Notre Dame’s J.P. Sterba in minutes. Anyone who has a modicum of common sense
without the benefit of an education at a Catholic institution of higher
learning could do it in seconds. The
Anglican apologist C.S. Lewis did it in an essay. Fulton Sheen did it in one sentence. The argument that the existence of evil
disproves the existence of God is as old as atheism itself, and its refutation
only a little younger.
(The Big Logical
Reason why J.P. Sterba’s logic isn’t logical is that it violates logic: you
cannot logically prove the existence of non-existence. You can’t prove that God or anything else
does NOT exist. You
can only prove that God exists, and then only if you accept the argument. D’oh.
(And the quick explanation
why Notre Dame’s J.P. Sterba is full of hot air? Free will.
“Good” is that which is in conformity with nature. “Evil” is that which is not in conformity
with nature. An all good God cannot prevent
evil because that interferes with free will, and coercion is not good, but
evil. Besides — if there is no all good
God, how do we know that good is good, or evil is evil? Maybe all the things we think of as evil are
really good, and all the things we think of as good are really evil! Who’s to say?
An academic churning out a publish-or-perish piece of hack work to try
and stir up a little controversy and cash in on it?)
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| Father William J. Ferree, S.M. |
So, if this is
what “the” Catholic university is inflicting on its students and the public,
what hope is there for anyone else? And
if that is the kind of thinking coming out of Academia, Catholic or otherwise,
no wonder “they” don’t want to hear anything as logical and reasonable as
CESJ’s Just Third Way. . . .
Is there anything
that can be done, however? We here at
CESJ think so. After all, one of the
principles of our understanding of social justice is that (speaking in social
justice terms) nothing is impossible. As
Father Ferree put it,
No problem is ever too big or too
complex, no field is ever too vast, for the methods of this social
justice. Problems that were agonizing in
the past and were simply dodged, even by serious and virtuous people, can now
be solved with ease by any school child. (Rev. William J. Ferree, Introduction to Social Justice. New York: Paulist Press, 1948, 47.)
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| John Henry Cardinal Newman |
Over a century
and a half ago, John Henry Newman (1801-1890) inquired into the purpose of
education when he was asked to become Rector of a new Catholic university. As he explained in the discourses, lectures,
and essays that became The Idea of a University (1859, 1873), a
university education must —
·
Teach universal knowledge,
·
Be distinct from instruction for a vocation or a
profession, and
·
Assist people in becoming more fully natural
persons.
Newman’s term for
this last was “Gentleman,” which requires some explanation. He meant someone (an adult human male,
obviously) who has cultivated his capacity to acquire and develop the natural
virtues, especially justice. By
including all people instead of limiting it to adult males — to which we think
Newman would not have objected — we at CESJ can fully agree.
We can therefore
without hesitation subscribe to Newman’s “idea of a university” on the three
main points, if our modification of “Gentleman” to “everyone” is admitted. For this reason, and because we believe that
everyone has the potential to become morally virtuous, we propose the formation
of a “new” type of university consistent with Newman’s points or (at the very
least) that existing institutions bring themselves into alignment with them.
We at CESJ, in
fact, have been discussing the idea of “Justice University”
that might breathe new life into Academia the way Mortimer Adler’s “Great Books”
program took the academic bull by the horns.
It’s at least worth looking into, and a bit more relevant than yet
another book — even from Notre Dame — that just has people rolling their eyes
and shaking their heads in despair or wonder.
#30#