Defeating Modernism – The Catholic Thing

Among the most distressing things about the Catholic Church is her (really, OUR) failure to take advantage of the many opportunities that the “modern world” accidentally offers us. We have made ourselves smaller and more inconsequential by choice, chiefly by assuming that the times are unpropitious. In fact, the times cry out to be rescued. And this, particularly, in an institutional way.

There is a task, quite distinct from that of environmental lunacy, or economic lunacy, or any others of the fashionable lunacies that afflict the world. And this task only occasionally requires a bit of imagination or courage.

Why do we run, when either of these qualities are asked for? For that matter, why do we run when any of the seven “lively virtues” – i.e. the seven holy remedies for the seven deadly sins – present themselves, and as more than novel possibilities?

I am of course referring to humility against pride, generosity against greed, chastity against lust, gratitude against envy, temperance against gluttony, patience against wrath, and diligence against sloth.

All of these come into play in what should be a continuing Catholic project, to meet the challenges of the modern world, and decisively to defeat them. This is a pitched battle, a seven-front war, and yet we do not take it seriously.

My exemplary thought for this morning is on our modern systems of education, specifically post-secondary education, out of whose student pool we find our priests.

The modern universities were, everywhere, designed to be a bureaucratic nightmare, and on almost every point, the opposite of what Saint John Henry Newman prescribed in The Idea of a University.

Newman did not describe an institution that would be absolutely concentrated upon theological studies, but one in which this “queen of the sciences” would enjoy the centrality that we humans of the Catholic faith naturally give to it.

This is not a shallow endeavor, as it has become in most of our university “programs,” and all of the courses, including religion and theology, in our secular schools.

They exist for nothing but the pointless accumulation of credentials. They might claim to make you a better Catholic, as if the study of electrical engineering will make you better with sparks, although maybe it won’t. Perhaps it will improve your theoretical skills, except that theoretical skills have always been worthless.

To be a practitioner requires a much broader understanding of a trade. To make yourself useful, in any other way than as  repairman for hire, or in some other secular activity, is to expose the purpose of university training.

It is equally available, and for much less money, outside of a university campus. The campus, true, is a source of much money, for the teachers and administrators; and it is a source of many other evils, as a bureaucracy will inevitably become.

And true, there is the possibility that some of the teachers, even the full professors, may be sincere in their trades. Yet there is a higher sincerity in which “staff” are called upon to participate in an end exceeding mere instruction.

For instruction, in and of itself, is teaching the monkey how to fetch bananas, and need not include even sharing bananas justly. Moreover, the only relation to cosmic truth is that God has made bananas, and this may not be included in the course.

The instruction in theology may be similarly shallow, and almost certainly will be, unless that sort of deadly seriousness exists which is present in a prayerful life, and towards prayerful purpose.

It is not just that theology and religion are taught, as they are not in any secular university, but that they are conveyed in a way utterly unlike the way things are conveyed in contemporary campus life.

Indeed, it is as means to an end, outside of itself, even in the seminaries. It is a necessary, qualifying, step on the path to becoming a paid religious, and if it is not endured in its season, to the point of getting passing grades, it will have been a complete waste of time.

For one of the standards I would maintain is that a school course is absolutely worthless unless one can look back upon it with at least slight gratitude after one has dropped out. But even failure in our schools today is not a valuable experience.

Or perhaps university only contributes to one’s entertainment, as one might observe in the lives of the frosh and freshies I have encountered, whether their place was secured by scholarship or by daddy’s money.

A fine institution for scholarly learning does not exist anymore, if it ever did. A reading on university life in the Middle Ages will convince one that students have been unsuited to learning for a long time, but prefer instead various forms of violence.

They continue to be, on campuses across America and Europe, and the rioting for various unlearned causes is actually more common the higher one goes up the tree of academic prestige. Politically organized rioting – among students, teachers, and educational administrators – is a feature of urban life today wherever there are universities.

My own belief is that universities were an unfortunate invention, and therefore I am with Donald Trump in his apparent scheme to defund them, and close at least the most elite schools.

The economic argument for this is indisputable; there are trillions of dollars to be saved. But I think the educational advantages are more important.

Training for the trades is best advanced by fully specialized trade schools for which the students will certainly pay.  And there is no need for public subsidies; however, most trades will benefit from traditional apprenticeship arrangements – if the trade is genuinely worth preserving.

The Church should step in by reviving colleges associated with cathedrals and monasteries, placed chiefly at remote locations, or in isolated towns. For large cities will, by nature, only encourage riot and irreligion.