The identity of any Catholic school is both a distinction and an opportunity--a
great challenge and a unique grace. If it was the critical task of the 20th
Century to ensure that Catholic colleges would be true colleges accepted
academically by their peer secular institutions, it is perhaps just as vital in
this 21st Century to ensure that our schools also continue to be
unashamedly Catholic, morally grounded, and qualitatively self-consciously
different from purely secular schools. To be homogenized into the
undifferentiated academic culture of most schools today would constitute a
colossal loss of nerve and a sad, perhaps a shameful, betrayal of the Church’s
academic tradition. Because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ we should never
be like everyone else. Existing at the heart of the Church should make
Catholic schools better. Think of the Lord we serve. Think of the
history that is ours. Think of the tradition of learning, the gift of
culture, the spirit of holiness, the commitment to service, the shared sense of
community that constitutes the educational heritage of the Catholic
Church! Our own CSC schools should never choose between being excellent
or being Catholic. A school in the Holy Cross tradition should not be
either-or; but rather, both-and. Catholicity in itself has both identify and
universality. Catholic tradition in all its ancient variety and richness
is so profound, so wide, and so self-confident in its own exploration of the
truth that it can dare to ask questions and it can dare to promote
dialogue. The excitement, the energy, and sometimes even the passionate
dissidents of ‘disputatio’ all are a valued part of our intellectual
heritage. It was well known to the Fathers of the Church, as to the great
lecture halls of the first medieval universities that our Church
invented. Catholicism exposes needs and empowers capacities that can fill
the human heart with amazement, the intellectual life with the light of
the Gospels, and the academic enterprise with profound purpose. The
community experience, the vast exhilaration of worship can humanize the rigor of
the intellectual life and give both students and professors an enduring passion
for learning, and a deeper capacity for wonder. A hunger for knowledge, a commitment
to justice, the connections between science and mysticism, friendship and
generosity, and especially the transforming experience of God give hope and
meaning to academic inquiry. Scholarship and teaching if pursued in the
context of faith should be open to a truth that is without end, that enlarges
our hope, and diminishes our apprehensions. Catholic colleges in general,
and all Holy Cross schools in particular, are therefore called by our
confidence in the Gospel to be the yeast in the loaf of higher education and
make a singular contribution both in our own Church and to the educational mosaic
of the wider world. So, our schools can never think and act just like
every other school—politically correct, unquestioning, and totally submissive
to all the cultural dogmas of this moment. The universal Church, and the
world, does need excellent schools that have the conviction to be true to
themselves and, therefore, stand out rather than blend in.
