In spite of the important work of philosophers including Alisdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, the average American still harbors a mistaken notion of the secular and its relation to classical Liberalism. While this was excusable in the 19th century, and perhaps even into the 20th, since the 1960’s it is without excuse.
Allow me to unpack this.
First, from early modernity, the secular was conceived, by thinkers such as John Locke, as the counterpart of “religion”. That is, religion in Locke’s view concerns private beliefs about otherworldly matters that should be kept utterly separate from earthly affairs. Heaven and earth should not be mingled, he tells us in his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), where it is clear that he thinks religion concerns beliefs about supernatural matters outside of this world—beliefs which are first and foremost matters of individual choice.
As someone who has been teaching in a Catholic university for twenty-five years, I can tell you this is still the pervasive understanding of religion today. It should be noted, however, that this is fundamentally different from the way, say, St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas thought of religio. For the latter, religio is related to the virtue of justice insofar as it is giving the Source of all things his due. Religio is the natural response of a rational human being to the existence of, and order within, the universe.
Notice specifically that it’s a natural and not supernatural response. For Thomas, then, religion is a natural and reasonable response to the nature of reality. It’s the natural gratitude that human beings experience in the face of the universe’s existence and order, and it has given rise to a variety of religious and ritualistic traditions throughout human history. To add a final note from Augustine, although religio has existed throughout human history, it has found its fulfillment and true form in the Catholic Church.
If religio is natural and is a response to reality, however, it would seem to infringe on what we moderns think of when we think of the secular. We tend to think that the secular is what you get when you get rid of or bracket that which pertains to faith, which is by nature sectarian. This is what Charles Taylor calls the “subtraction story” understanding of the secular. But that’s precisely the view that he critiques. Secularism, he tells us, tells a different story about where we’ve been and where we’re going; it also tells us a different story about who we are and what the universe is like. It tells us, for instance, that human beings are not naturally but only voluntarily religious, and that religion is otherworldly. According to this story, we are all born in neutral, so to speak, and come to decide from a position of neutrality whether or not to add religion to our natural or secular bag of tricks. (This is why my students have an allergic reaction to infant baptism.)
But if secularism is not a subtraction story, then religion is not an addition story. Religion is and has been the natural response of the overwhelming majority of normal human beings to reality. It’s not something they add to their “secular” lives. Indeed, it’s the ordinary (what we moderns mean by secular) that gives rise to religio, classically conceived. The harvest, a perfectly ordinary thing, gives rise to the harvest festival. Just as death, a perfectly ordinary and common part of our world, gives rise to burial rituals. And hunting, a perfectly ordinary thing, gives rise to cave paintings, quite extraordinary things!
What does any of this have to do with the Catholic university in America today?
If classical Liberalism invented the pair religious/secular—and it did so insofar as it gave both words a new meaning—we Catholics have been too willing to go along with this story. We also see religion as being radically separate from politics, philosophy, science, economics, and the like. It’s something that we too have come to see as an add-on, like leather seats in a new car. The car would remain a car without them, even if we choose that we like it better with them.
When we start seeing religion as an add-on, we begin to exaggerate the degree to which we can all get along in a society that radically reduces the jurisdiction of God and the scope of religion. We claim that we have come to find common ground in the “secular” realm based on a putatively “natural” reason and “natural” ethics. You know, all the “self-evident” stuff that Jefferson talked about as if it weren’t still the “social imaginary” (Taylor’s phrase) of Christianity that he was basking in. But notice that a now different social imaginary makes it now self-evident that a man can marry another man, or even claim that he’s a woman and make it so.
This attitude, although mistaken, could be excused as long as the ethic that came with classical Liberalism was, de facto, a Christian one merely masquerading as a secular one. But this passing off of the Christian ethic as merely “secular” or “natural” quit holding traction as early as the late 1800s, and by the 1960s the jig was up. Nietzsche was the first to have exposed the lie, but by the time Darwinism, Freudianism, and Marxism had their day, the notion of a “secular” ethic that applied to both Christians and non-Christians became laughable.
And the notion that the secular is just what you get when you subtract the distinctively religious elements began to look rather silly as well. We’re not living in the Deistic, Unitarian Enlightenment anymore. As G. K. Chesterton found out in his days on Fleet Street in London in the early 1900s, Edwardian intellectuals were a whole different breed than the Victorians who preceded them. If the latter had become religiously agnostic but still humanistic in their morals, the former were avowedly naturalists, reductionists, materialists, pessimists, determinists, relativists, and nihilists. The list of “isms” that Chesterton deals with in “The Suicide of Thought” (in Orthodoxy) is the result of the battles he was waging in those days. As early as 1905 he knew that he wasn’t dealing with neutral and benign philosophical or political positions; he was dealing with diabolical heresies.
What you get when you reject the supernatural, Chesterton tells us, is not the natural but the unnatural. What you get when you insist on reason without faith is not reason, but unreason, for healthy reason recognizes the importance of something which transcends reason and makes it possible.
Since the 1950s, at least, American Catholic universities have downplayed the tension between the Catholic bit and the American (Liberal) bit. Again, this may have been excusable for a while, insofar as a broad agreement on ethics still existed in the days of, say, John Courtney Murray. But the revolution of thought that had already occurred in Chesterton’s days on Fleet Street began to make serious inroads into America’s universities in the 1960s. Here, all of the mistakes that were already implicit in John Locke and Thomas Jefferson and had become explicit in the nihilism and anti-humanism of the early 20th century were now making themselves felt in American culture.
It should have been obvious that what passed for merely “secular” thought was overtly atheistic and cynical. The so-called Frankfurt School, which began to make an impact in the U.S. at about this time, was a strange mixture of Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx: Nietzsche’s pessimism and cynicism mixed with Marxist optimism and utopianism. All that was once considered highest in human nature was here exposed as so many irrational drives and impulses: will to power, the ego, and such.
It was time to give the id some breathing room to shake up the bourgeoisie. Just apply this nihilism, materialism, reductionism, and the like to human sexuality and you get the sexual revolution. Indeed, I don’t think it’s too much to say it was the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 70s that brought this somewhat rarified, radical thought to the streets, or at least to the sheets. Marcuse was a big fan of the hippies and vice-versa.
This is a story that is still very much playing itself out, as the cocktail described above is no longer contained in the shaker of the radical university. You can now get it at Starbucks.
Catholic universities in America have gone on pretending that secularism is benign and that, largely, secular ethics are humanistic and compatible with Catholic ethics. This is used to justify a certain marginalizing and downplaying of distinctly Catholic doctrines and morals. In other words, we can have a campus atmosphere—again, Taylor’s “social imaginary”—that is broadly Liberal or secular, within which the Catholics and non-Catholics can get along and upon which they will all agree, and then we’ll add Catholic sprinkles for those who opt for them.
What has happened, however, is that the deep anti-Catholicism and radicalism that still tries to pass itself off as secularism (e.g., what all right-thinking, non-haters believe) has set a tone on Catholic campuses, which makes the actual Catholics feel a bit like pariahs. It’s the Catholic who believes Catholic things who keeps his head down and mouth shut, while the rest run around announcing their preferred pronouns and decrying microaggressions.
If the opening ceremony of the Olympics taught us anything, it ought to have taught us to see the radically religious nature of modern secularity. People are naturally religious, even “secular” people, if one can believe such a thing. And religion naturally is expressed in ritual. The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics was not an all-inclusive and Liberal event, religiously neutral in nature. It was the ritual of a rival religion that hates and has always hated (Jefferson and Locke included) the Catholicism that it has always sought to replace.
Those of us who care about the state of the Catholicity of Catholic universities in America, but who go on pretending that Liberalism’s solution to religious diversity is the right one and that the secular is just the absence of the explicitly religious, have officially become part of the problem.
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Howsare identifies the deficient rationale of Catholic educators who believe academia should be a disinterested search for truth rather than acknowledge there are irrefutable principles of truth that must be inclusive to the curriculum of a center for learning.
He’s correct in his reaction to the radical secularism evident in the Paris Olympic parody of the Last Supper. The perpetrators so devious they denied intent and accused the faithful of Christian delusion regarding art. Most Catholic academics live in a hostile environment, not only in the secular institution but in the Catholic. Widely known is Notre Dame’s Fr Hesburgh’s contribution to secularism in Catholic academia at Land O’ Lakes. Rome’s obligation is to demand non compliant institutions remove the title of Catholic. Pius X was correct on many scores academia one.
Thank you, Father. I am retired from 47 years of ‘catholic’ university teaching, and seem to be unable to find anyone who will believe that in America there are almost no Catholic universities. Noteworthy exceptions: TAC, WCC, and maybe two or three others. Moreover, the is, as would follow logically, no situational awareness of the anti-cultural, anti-Catholic social environment — the ‘social imaginary, as Taylor has it.
I contend the “others” number is more than two or three. Ave Maria University, Christendom College, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Benedictine College, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, Belmont Abbey, University of Dallas, John Paul the Great Catholic University, and perhaps the Catholic University of America are among the others I’d add…but your larger point regarding their scarcity is completely valid.
Hard-hitting and so forcefully truthful. Now to convince all Catholics of the reality of our satanic culture.
Chesterton is mentioned, and also said: “a person who ceases to believe in God does not cease to believe; he believes in everything.” As in Paris, any perversion that might float by. Earlier from merry old England, another warning worthy of close look today is John Henry Newman’s “The Idea of a University” (1852).
And, now in the United States, value-neutrality is a total vacuum welcoming chaos and even the smoke of Satan.
In the 1960s Pope Paul VI said something like this about the Church….Strike Three, your out! The Great Schism of 1054, the great Reformation of 1519, and in 2024 the Humpty-Dumpty (who “sat on a wall”!) Synod on Synodality: “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”
Thank you Rodney. Perhaps our universities are too cerebral and not delving into or developing the spiritual life. Hearts must be converted before truth can be discerned. As St. Paul chided the foolish women for “ever learning and never able come to a knowledge of the truth “. Truth is learned on our knees in brokenness and humility. Without humility knowledge alone is a very dangerous thing and breeds pride and intolerance. All of the great “isms” have one common denominator which is the unforgivable sin- pride. Most of our PhDs are nothing more than Pride piled Higher and Deeper. Religion is not a tack on option, it is the driving force and the determinator of all life. It’s time to put the horse before the cart in our educational institutions.
Curriculum must be Christocentric.
…or at least require substantive reading outside of homogenized text books.
In the film, “Shadowlands,” a student confides to C.S. Lewis that “we read so we can know [!] that we are not alone.” Today, in order to feel [!] that we are not alone, instead of reading, we do finger-food “texting”–with a limit to 160 characters.
T.S. Eliot was right: “this is the way the world ends [….], not with a bang but a whimper” (“The Hollow Men,” 1925).
Q: Who was the co-author of Land of Lakes?
A: Theodore McCarrick, among the leadership of the diabolical, who serve “the empire,” and live to “decapitate the Body of Christ.”
The Cardinal Newman Society reports that 90% of “Catholic Universities” profess neither Catholic faith nor Christian sexual morality.
The Newman Society notes that of some 200-or-so formerly “Catholic” Universities, only about 20 or so can be recommended as professing Catholic faith and morality.
These 90% were and are led by the mix of apostate and diabolical men who wrote and signed the Land of Lakes Statement, led by the apostate Rev. Hesburg, president of Notre Dame University, and the diabolical “Rev.” McCarrick, president of (if memory serves) the University of Puerto Rico (yes…the very same Theodore McCarrick).
As the late Professor Rice of Notre Dame reluctantly observed, in a quote reported by the Newman Society, for parents inquiring about whether to send their Catholic children to Notre Dame, he replied in words to this effect: “unless your child is already strongly fortified in their faith, if they go to Notre Dame, they will sink like a stone.”
These 90% of non-Christian formerly “Catholic” Universities are on board with the sex revolution and post-Christian ideology. These include the contemporary successors of the original signatories who joined with McCarrick in throwing down with the sex revolution, who now preside at the very same “revolutionary” University regimes, among them: Georgetown (SJ), Boston College, Notre Dame, and Fordham (SJ). They are well-represented by the current president if Fordham, who publicly asserts her commitment to LGBTQ ideology and abortion.
The ideology portrayed by the IOC and the Paris Olympic Committee is the same ideology of Fordham and Georgetown and Notre Dame and Boston College, etc etc etc…
These 90% are members of “the revolution,” and their icon is the Paris Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.
A fantastic reflection/expose’ that should be shared out as much as possible!!!
“Those of us who care about the state of the Catholicity of Catholic universities in America, but who go on pretending that Liberalism’s solution to religious diversity is the right one and that the secular is just the absence of the explicitly religious, have officially become part of the problem.”
The main problem is that these institutions are not Catholic because they now serve primarily the upper classes.
“A preferential option for the poor” should be maintained in our Catholic institutions. If we find that we cannot afford to keep our institutions open to the poor, the Church should be ready to use its resources for something else which can be kept open to the poor. We cannot allow our Church to become a church primarily for the upper classes. The priority should be given to the poor even if we have to let the middle-class and rich fend for themselves.
Practically speaking, the Catholic institutions must give up general education in those countries where the State is providing it. The resources of the Church could then be focused on “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine” and other programs which can be kept open to the poor. These resources could then be used to help society become more human in solidarity with the poor. Remember, the Church managed without Catholic universities for centuries. It can get along without them today. The essential factor from the Christian point of view is to cultivate enough Faith to act in the Gospel Tradition, namely, THE POOR GET PRIORITY. The rich and middle-class are welcome too. But the poor come first.
I just joined the faculty of Boston College, and in apparent recognition of what you are saying, william, BC is opening this fall a new college of the university called Messina College (the first Jesuit college was founded in Messina, Italy by St. Ignatius), with the goal of educating “high financial need students”. I was impressed that they are taking steps to return to the roots of Jesuit higher ed, in helping students (originally all Catholic, but eventually admitting many others) in cities attain a better livelihood through eduation.
And who, pray tell, is going to pay the bills if you have a student body of poor people? The poor are not the priority, and certainly not at the expense of deserving middle class students.
“The poor we will always have with us”, thus we must always take care of the poor, but “man does not live on bread alone, but on every Word that comes forth from The Word Of God”. The Word Of God takes top priority.
Interesting comment from William Horan above.
A general problem is that the Church has lost the working class. See Fr. Paul Mankowski.
Check out the Lumen Christi Institute co-located at the University of Chicago and now with forums at a few other universities: https://www.lumenchristi.org/ (There’s a button for donations, and a mailing address.)
Also, Christopher Dawson is a very good read: “The Crisis of Western Education [1961]” (Catholic University of America Press, 2010), plus the current fourteen-page introduction by Glenn W. Olsen (emeritus University of Utah) which by itself is worth the purchase price. Maybe a gift for a university student in the family…
Wonderful article. The professor makes the point I’ve repeatedly made about the “God v. Caesar” interpretation of Jesus’s Teaching. In speaking of “things of God” versus “things of Caesar,” Jesus did not mean that Caesar was an independent actor with his own piece of Paradise carved off from divine supervision. Caesar has NOTHING that was not God’s first. It’s the Lockean split-level house of natural/supernatural–the product of the heretical theological anthropology of Protestantism–that produces these distortions.