The Reintegration of Intellectual and Moral Education in the University

The following text is drawn from "The Integration of Intellectual and Moral Education in the University," found in Renewal of Catholic Higher Education: Essays in Catholic Studies in Honor of Don J. Briel, published in 2017 by University of Mary Press. It serves as the second of a two-part series. For the first installment, see "The Sundering of Intellectual and Moral Education in the University."

In this second article I wish to turn to six recommendations essential to the reintegration of moral and intellectual formation. As a preliminary comment let me insist that the way forward is not simply backward, returning to the way things were before the rupture. That is to say, my purpose in recounting the history of the relationship between intellectual and moral education in the university has not been to assert that the Boston College of 1900 or Newman’s Oxford is a perfect model for us to imitate or impose today. I hope to make it clear that the ways in which we recover the integration of intellectual and moral education in Catholic universities will often need to be as innovative as they are faithful to the tradition. Furthermore, I have no perfect “one-size-fits-all” model of an integrated education to propose. Different circumstances dictate different models. My goal below is to offer recommendations at a level of generality applicable to various situations. Nevertheless, Catholic Studies is, it seems to me, one of these simultaneously “innovative” and “faithful” models for holistic formation. Catholic Studies incorporates each of the following six elements to a high degree into its integrative philosophy and practical approach to education. This, I venture to say, is one major reason for its present flourishing, at least where this approach has actually been done. Catholic Studies offers the Catholic university of today a coherent vision of formation and a corresponding interrelated set of principles and practices that could powerfully assist any efforts the university undertakes toward the broad reintegration of the moral and intellectual life of its students.

1. Maintaining the Distinction between Intellectual and Moral Education within an Integrated Vision

First, any attempt to reintegrate moral education and intellectual education in the modern university will nevertheless need to maintain the distinction between the moral and the intellectual. Even in Newman’s day, this integration was not achieved by a single institution but, rather, by an institution within an institution, which remained relatively autonomous. Neither was it achieved by a single individual (e.g., the professor). Rather, it was the college, under the care of a tutor, where this integration principally occurred, not in the professor’s university lecture hall. But the professors and all administrators of Newman’s day realized and often took personal interest in the fact that the way a student behaves when not studying or hearing lectures nevertheless makes a great difference in the quality of the student’s intellectual, not just moral, character.

Newman believed that the Church helped to guarantee the integrity of the university:

On the other hand, the college was a place of “careful catechetical training, [that also allowed for] a jealous scrutiny into [the students’] power of expressing himself and of turning his knowledge to account.”³ Thus the person in the college central to the process of integrating intellect and will in the life of the student, of learning and morals, was the tutor.⁴ The tutor to whom the student was assigned was responsible for making sure that the content of academic subjects was understood sufficiently and internalized deeply. Moreover, he was given the task of making sure the student under his tutelage developed the proper discipline of study and behaved morally and well, i.e., in such a manner that his way of life and activities apart from study would not undermine his intellectual formation.⁵ Regarding the distinct but complementary roles of college and university, Newman concludes, “Colleges constitute the integrity of the University. A university embodies the principal of progress, and a College that of ballast; each is insufficient in itself for the pursuit, extension, and inculcation of knowledge; each is useful to the other.”⁶ Thus, while the object of each is distinct, the work of the university in advancing and transmitting knowledge is rounded off and becomes formative of the whole student only when this learning is inserted and integrated into the student’s broader “collegiate” life.⁷

…the professors and all administrators of Newman’s day realized and often took personal interest in the fact that the way a student behaves when not studying or hearing lectures nevertheless makes a great difference in the quality of the student’s intellectual, not just moral, character.

Maintaining the integration of moral and intellectual education while respecting their distinct objects is somewhat difficult in the American setting. In most cases, dormitories at the contemporary university are structurally very different from Newman’s colleges and deliberately omit moral education as their object, instead making student safety and comfort their primary therapeutic ends. Furthermore, as noted earlier, contemporary dorm life is completely separate from the intellectual life of the wider institution. Thus we need new models of student living and association, as well as new means of religious and moral instruction. When done well, these models will also help us avoid a potential pitfall in efforts to reintegrate moral and intellectual education: namely, that of trying to force moral formation directly into the classroom. A “How-to-Be-Moral 101” course that some very adventurous students may even be willing to take as a pass/fail cannot achieve the objective. We are not made moral by listening to lectures and taking written tests on our personal lives. Such false steps would also undermine the intellectual object of the university, because the mind cannot develop “under the lash.”⁸

In the end, intellectual education without moral education is prone to the vice of pride, serious intellectual and moral error and, ultimately, skepticism.⁹ On the other hand, a university education that emphasizes the moral to the detriment of the intellectual will fail in properly training the mind, and risks moralism: the reduction of the moral life to a set of rules or sentiments that may not sustain rational assault later in life. Thus, there is a need for integration but with the proper distinctions.

2. The Prudential Balance of Freedom and Regulation

Second, effective moral education requires the prudent balance between the demands of freedom and the imposition of rules for the sake of the proper moral development of young men and women.

Virtue to be such must be freely chosen. Indeed, an overly coercive environment not only will not help students mature morally, but will likely produce young Pharisees or rebels—that is, fundamentalists or relativists. It might also produce what David Brooks calls the “organization Kid”: the passive rule-follower who is “eager to please, eager to jump through whatever hoops... eager to conform” because conformity always yields acceptable outcomes.¹⁰ An overly permissive environment, on the other hand, creates a different set of problems, which hardly needs comment here.

There is a third problematic environment created by improper application of rules, what we might call the “nanny university.” As Harry Lewis explains:

The goal of moral education, alternatively, will be achieved when we set high ideals for our students and then hold them to their own aspirations. This in part requires rules and other elements of campus culture that encourage the pursuit of virtue yet permit consequences for vice in order to help students grow into individual responsibility and self-mastery. In this way, the university can foster authentic freedom in which the students come to interiorize “rules” as a call to responsible and virtuous action as mature and confident adults issuing more from within themselves than from others.

3. Teaching Virtue Ethics and the Importance of Magnanimity

Third, in order to effectively educate students morally, there needs to be a clear presentation of Christian anthropology and the life of virtue, which will inspire students generously to answer the call to greatness.

Even very simple accounts of the nature of the human person as a being made for happiness and of virtue as a power that can be increased through practice are extremely helpful to young men and women. It is not uncommon for college students to whom I have presented a basic Christian anthropology and an account of the virtues to respond as though I had explained everything about their lives to them. Desiring, as many students do, to live a better life, and sensing that the worldly allurements around them will not make them happy, they experience as liberating the knowledge of what constitutes true happiness and the road map for its attainment.¹²

There is one virtue in particular that I would like to briefly highlight: magnanimity. In an age that tells young people that they are their own gods and the authors of their own happiness, we sometimes encounter an interesting mixture of pride and insecurity in our students. A false view of their own importance only opens students to the insecurity that comes from experiencing, time and again, that they in fact make rather poor gods—especially in terms of determining what will make them happy. This admixture can lead to pusillanimity, fleeing from great things, and the despair and sorrow that come from it. Feeling they have no mission and that life is something that simply happens to them, some students simply give up and run after distractions or trivial things. Students need to know of their high calling in Christ and the virtues they need for living up to it. I have thought this for a long time, which is why I was so taken by an observation of Pope Francis to the bishops of Brazil on the occasion of World Youth Day:

4. Forming Communities of Virtue

Fourth, effectively educating students morally must include a strong communal dimension with an ordered way of life.¹⁴

At the most basic level, the life of virtue needs to be learned through practice. That being said, in order to learn to love one’s neighbor, one needs an actual neighbor or neighbors. Many contemporary living situations on campus do not provide one. Sharing a space is not the same as sharing a life. In order to learn virtue and love, we need environments of shared life. Regular prayer is also best learned with others: Even the most basic rules of courtesy, often lost in our increasingly barbarized age, need to be practiced with others in a community that values them.

Pope Benedict, in an appeal to St. Benedict, argued for the importance of community in the modern world: “Our culture is on the verge of being out of balance... Time and again, our world could so easily find its corrective in the Benedictine rule, since it offers the fundamental human attitudes and virtues needed for a life of inner balance, those that are requisite for social life—and for the maturity of the individual.”¹⁵ The monastery and the university are different institutions. Still, as Benedict asserts, we should seriously consider and apply successful models of communal life in the Church in this relativistic age because, as we stated earlier, the way we live influences the way we think.

Communal life at the university is also important because so many of our students have not experienced it. Smaller and sometimes fragmented families, the isolated living of suburbs, the ease of transportation that makes the majority of our social engagements voluntary and therefore chosen in conformity with our preferences—all make for a highly individualized and individualistic set of habits. These habits, confirmed by a powerful rhetoric of individual identity and self-assertion, coupled with the experience of being full-time consumers, make for self-oriented, egocentric people. The way out of this self-orientation is in part by living a common life while going to college, which often requires us to set aside our personal preferences for the sake of the common good. This will involve a commitment to some shared activities, such as meals, recreation or cultural outings. Further, if community is centered on prayer and the liturgy, this also combats selfishness by taking the focus away from the self and putting it on God and the needs of others.¹⁶ As Don Briel points out (and as I’ve witnessed myself), to sponsor and encourage various forms of intentional community of friendship based on virtue is a hallmark of Catholic Studies and is a factor most definitely contributing to its flourishing.

Sharing a space is not the same as sharing a life. In order to learn virtue and love, we need environments of shared life.

At the same time, we should be careful not to allow communal environments to become overbearing, or to insist on uniformity. There is difference between uniformity and solidarity. The former asks that everyone do the same thing. Solidarity recognizes all that is shared—foundational truths that orient one’s life and a love of Christ and desire to be like Him—but also allows for a breadth of expression and a healthy freedom of thought and action. I mention this because a desire for uniformity that undermines the freedom of solidarity is not uncommon among idealistic, dedicated and intelligent college students. It has been my experience that as students begin to appreciate the value of communal environments and the joy that comes from sharing life and mission, they can be tempted to construct living situations that demand too much conformity in matters that are either inessential or where real diversity is not only permissible but actually mutually enriching (e.g., devotional practices, pastimes, hobbies, etc.). The net result can be a somewhat stilted moral education. These environments can become too insulated and can undermine the purpose of a university. “A University is a direct preparation for this world,” Newman writes. “It is not a Convent, it is not a Seminary; it is a place to fit men of the world for the world.”¹⁷

5. Encountering the Poor

Fifth, an effective moral education will include the opportunity for a regular encounter with the poor. Indeed, a proper moral education simply requires sustained encounters with the poor.

In order to be effective, though, encounters with the poor should be personal. Pope Francis gives a beautiful description of what it means to have a personal encounter with the poor in a speech he gave to thousands of pilgrims in Buenos Aires on the feast of St. Cajetan:

In addition, in order to be efficacious, opportunities to encounter Christ in the poor need to be combined with serious intellectual reflection. Students can treat service opportunities that lack intellectual content as mere tasks to be accomplished, something to check off of a list, or a good emotional experience and nothing more. And despite the common assertions that Catholic Social Teaching is “dynamite” or the best-kept secret of the Church, and despite even entire courses on Catholic Social Teaching, terms like “the common good,” “human dignity,” “subsidiarity and solidarity” and “the preferential option for the poor” have a tendency to remain mere buzzwords or abstractions for many students, unless combined with a genuine encounter. Service of the poor, a good in itself, can thus also provide an excellent means of integrating moral and intellectual education. And while many opportunities for service to the poor and “volunteering” already exist on our campuses, there is often no robust educational rationale or coherent philosophical or theological vision behind them. Catholic Studies on university campuses will promote such regular and sustained encounters with the poor, both because Catholicism upholds the “preferential option” for the poor and because it is committed to a unified moral and intellectual formation of its students.

6. Defining and Teaching Leadership

Sixth, moral education should train students in leadership. This should be explicit. It is not enough simply to assume that training in the liberal arts or a particular field produces leaders as a natural by-product. This may have been true in a different time, when a young person was learning how to take on responsibility and see that tasks were accomplished and goals achieved with others in various day-to-day settings. Today's ambient culture and the experience of daily life allow many young people to evade the demands of leadership and responsibility for others entirely. Many of our students come to college with very little experience of taking responsibility in matters of high importance.

The mission in the university, to educate the whole human person—both intellect and will—thus finds a natural affinity with the mission of the Church. In fulfilling the first, we serve the latter.

The situation is perhaps made worse by the fact that many of the activities called “leadership” in a university setting amount to little more than the oversight of relatively inconsequential tasks or club management. There are of course exceptions, but we should intentionally seek to provide meaningful leadership opportunities for students. For a number of years now, the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas has offered many students leadership formation in its Leadership Intern program, which has become a venue for many of the other recommended elements outlined above to be implemented and experienced.

Given demographic shifts in the Church and society in this country, I also believe that Catholic efforts in higher education have a responsibility to educate Latino leaders. By this I mean that the university should cultivate leaders for the Latino communities themselves, but also for our country and the Church. Here again there is something to be said for the forward-looking vision of Catholic Studies and its Latino Leaders program at St. Thomas.

Finally, we need to be explicit and clear about what we mean by “leadership.” Given the innumerable books on leadership and the ubiquitous use of the word, it is important to teach the Catholic vision of leadership and give students access to exemplary leaders of the past and present, many of whom have integrated holiness and political prudence.²¹ Leadership needs to be understood as being rooted in discipleship to Christ and carried out as an exercise of responsibility for the good of others, with their Ultimate End in view. It starts with following Christ and taking on His mind and His character. Not every student will be Christian, but for those who are, it is important that this be the first principle of leadership.

Conclusion: Moral Education, Holiness and Apostolic Work

Although the primary object of a university is not necessarily to evangelize, it is inadvisable and perhaps impossible to completely separate the mission of Catholic institutions from this fundamental mission of the Catholic Church and all of its members. This is of particular importance in this post-Christian age. We live at a time when the Gospel does not come to modern ears as something new and extraordinary, but instead as something old and failed, perhaps even as something evil. This is no cause for great alarm for the Church. It has lived through many predictions of its death. It has faced grim persecution as well as the sometimes more dangerous temptations inherent in cultural and political ascendancy, and it has survived both.

When the Church is marginalized and increasingly pressed by the wider culture, the disparity between the way Christians live and the “lifestyles” of those around them is more evident, and fidelity to the Gospel comes at a higher cost. In a post-Christian age, then, perhaps one intentional goal of a Catholic university or a Catholic educational center, such as Catholic Studies, at a larger institution is to be “apostolic.” We are faced with increasing numbers of students who themselves have not been evangelized, even if they come from Catholic homes. Thus we should be especially concerned with presenting the Truth about reality in a way that is inviting and convincing. We should expect that in teaching Truth, hearts may be opened to an encounter with Christ. The Truth, when presented clearly and in its fullness, presents every person with a choice. The Catholic vision of the world is not something one studies like the migration pattern of birds. It evokes a response at the deepest level of the soul.

Further, our educational efforts should allow room for, encourage and help foster a life of discipleship for those students who desire it. Perhaps this goes beyond the object of the university as Newman conceived it (as distinct from the “college”), but given the times, I think we should deliberately make room for it in today’s university. This does not necessarily mean that we should create special programs as part of our educational efforts or provide a course on evangelization and discipleship, although either may be a good response in some situations. Perhaps this object is better attained by allowing outside groups, religious and otherwise, that are devoted to evangelization and deepening Christian life to simply meet our students or partner with us in our work.

The Church’s mission of evangelization in this historical moment needs plausible witnesses, and while the university is not primarily ordered to the formation of saints, perhaps in our Catholic educational efforts we should make every appropriate effort to serve that end. In a sermon titled “Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth” (1832), Newman asks how it was that the Gospel spread from being an obscure eastern religion to become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Having acknowledged God’s providential hand, he further concludes: “[The Truth] has been upheld in the world not as a system, not by books, not by argument, nor by temporal power, but by the personal influence of [holy] men... who are at once the teachers and the patterns of it.²² The power of this personal influence is rooted in the majesty virtue, Newman continues, but not

The mission in the university, to educate the whole human person—both intellect and will—thus finds a natural affinity with the mission of the Church. In fulfilling the first, we serve the latter. Our efforts to reintegrate moral and intellectual education have consequences beyond the university and even beyond our political and social order.

¹ Newman, Idea, ix.

² Newman, Historical Sketches, vol. 3 (London: Longmans, 1903), 179.

³ Ibid., 190.

⁴ This is true at least in Newman’s earlier Oxford days. Later, at Catholic University of Ireland, he seems to place moral and religious formation more in the hands of the collegiate residence rector and the chaplain. See “Discipline and Influence” in Historical Sketches. “Professors and Tutors” gets at the idea as well. See My Campaign in Ireland (Aberdeen: A. King & Co., 1896), 98 and 114-119 on the role of the dean of the collegiate residence. Also, see Letters and Diaries, vol. 17, Charles Stephen Dessain and Thomas Gornall, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973) 199-200.

⁵ This can be found in some of his letters during his years as tutor at Oxford, especially in some of his disagreements with the provost Edward Hawkins. See vol. 2 of the Letters and Diaries.

⁶ Newman, Historical Sketches, vol. 3, 182.

⁷ Also key in all of this is the university church and chaplain. See Newman’s essay on the University Preacher in The Idea of a University, his letters at the time that he was building the first chapel at CUI, and My Campaign in Ireland.

⁸ John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London: Longmans, 1908), 268.

⁹ See, for example, Newman’s reflections on Peter Abelard in the Historical Sketches, “Strengths and Weakness of University: Abelard.”

¹⁰ David Brooks, “The Organization Kid,” Atlantic, April 1, 2001 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization-kid/302164/.

¹¹ Lewis, Excellence, 147.

¹² A course like “The Search for Happiness,” containing Christian anthropology and the study of the virtues within the natural order and elevated by grace, reinforces this dimension of moral education.

¹³ Pope Francis, “Meeting with the Bishops of Brazil: Address on the Occasion of the XXVIII World Youth Day,” July 28, 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/july/documents/papa-francesco_20130727_gmg-episcopato-brasile.html).

¹⁴ Another way of saying this is that moral education requires settings and opportunities where friendships based on virtue may arise, not merely on pleasure or utility, for such friends not only mutually strive for virtue but their good character makes them good for each other.

¹⁵ Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003), 392.

¹⁶ I should note an exception to what I have just said about the lack of communal experiences for modern young people. Some of our students, such as Hispanics, come from very communal backgrounds. My father is Mexican. In this case it is a service to provide communities in which the very things they believe important to life are available to them and lived well.

¹⁷ Newman, Idea, 233.

¹⁸ Pope Francis, “Video Message to the Faithful of Buenos Aires on the Occasion of the Feast of Saint Cajetan,” August 7, 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130807_videomessaggio-san-cayetano.html).

¹⁹ For an excellent introduction to the thought of Dorothy Day and the mission of the Catholic Worker movement, see Mark and Louise Zwick, The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins (NY: Paulist Press, 2005).

²⁰ Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §30.

²¹ A refreshing account of leadership appealing to a broad audience is found in Alexandre Havard’s “Virtuous Leadership” approach. See Virtuous Leadership: An Agenda for Personal Excellence, 2nd Edition (New Rochelle, NY: Scepter, 2007) and Created for Greatness: The Power of Magnanimity, 2nd edition (New Rochelle, NY: Scepter, 2014).

²² Newman, Oxford University Sermons (London: Longmans, 1909), 92.

²³ Ibid., 92.

²⁴ Evangelii Nuntiandi, §41.