The first tends in itself to a claustrophobic self-consciousness, the latter to a certain free- dom expressed in the natural desire for confession. Newman insisted that the end of the uni-
versity was intellectual, but he also argued that truth had two attributes and that if, with- out the assistance of the Church, it were pursued under the auspices of professional study it would emphasise power, under liberal education it would stress the importance of beauty. In the former case it would tend to mere practical influence, in the latter to mere subjective taste. The Church then was nec- essary for the university by providing an authoritative tradition. This would help order the dynamic relation of the various disciplines. In our own time, universities have largely
restricted religion to the domain of private values. Although Newman insisted on the distinction between the university and the Church, he feared the prospect of their fun- damental separation. But the principal area of the Church’s influence is through the college, for it is here that students should experience that formation of life and character essential to them becoming fully mature. Today that task has often been abandoned and the former emphasis on the moral and intellectual for- mation of young people has been reduced to an emphasis on health and safety.
N
ewman believed that the Church had founded universities “to reunite things which were in the beginning joined together by God and then been put asunder by man”. Although he argued that the Church was not called to impose an ecclesiastical supervision over the university, he did insist that it must be coercive in intervening both to protect the unity of truth and the formation of life of students. In a recent lecture at Blackfriars in Oxford, Alasdair MacIntyre noted that the contem- porary university’s single-minded emphasis on specialised research leaves it incapable of meeting the need for “that kind and degree of understanding that issues in sound practical reasoning”. This need is especially pressing in a time marked by narrow and instrumental approaches to complex social, political and economic problems. He also stressed that Newman’s real question was not the nature of the university but rather the nature of the educated mind, a question either largely neg- lected or significantly reduced in the academy. In this sense, argued MacIntyre, the con- temporary presumption of Newman’s irrelevance is perhaps not so much “an indict- ment of Newman, but of the contemporary university”. In any case, it seems increasingly clear that the current uncertainty about the nature and purpose of higher education pro- vides an opportune moment for a reappraisal of Newman’s educational theory as well as a re-evaluation of the contemporary university’s basic assumptions.
■Don Briel is the director of the Centre for Catholic Studies and holds the Koch Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of St Thomas, St Paul, Minnesota, United States.
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