It's late and I'm preparing to leave town tomorrow, but I did not want to go without commenting on your last postings about Catholic identity at Loras. I was very interested in what you all had to say.
If I could organize some of the topics you raised, I'd probably start by noting that most of you separated Catholic identity into two areas: the impact of Catholicism on society (via the ideas and actions associated with Catholic social teachings) and the influence of the tradition on the way people think. Everyone had something positive to say about the first area; the second met with a mixed response, though most were not happy with what they experienced here on campus.
I share many of your hopes and concerns. Based on my own background (including age), I would add that I have recognized a profound change in the Church during my lifetime and, by extension, in Catholic higher education as well. For example, this is the first time in the 16 years I have been teaching that I find myself looking out at students who are more conservative in their beliefs than I am. Now, I realize that this is a broad statement subject to lots of qualifications: that certainly in not true in all classes (like ours, for instance) and no doubt it isn't true at all Catholic colleges. But, I will say that, among students at Loras who truly are interested in matters related to religion, it is almost universally true.
Of course, I see the college through the classroom, and that is not necessarily the lens students use. I was puzzled about how to make sense of many of the comments I was reading until I hit upon something Tyler wrote. In his blog, he distinguished between the possibility of discussing controversial topics in the classroom but also the difficulty of doing so outside of class within the wider campus community. So, in class you could find yourselves analyzing the position of the Church on women's ordination and discovering that this is a topic that has much more to do with historical choices and theological consistency than with, say, scriptural accuracy. But once class was over, you would not really find forums on campus where you continue that discussion. The reasons for this absence include things many of you mentioned: donors wouldn't like it, the local Church might not be comfortable, administrators may be nervous, and (here's where my earlier point about a more conservative student body comes into play) lots of your peers would be indignant. Extend your list of classroom topics to areas like homosexuality and abortion/contraception, and the indignant attitudes turn angry quickly. Much of this begins to sound like what our narrator faced with Dr. Bledsoe.
I do not have an answer to this dilemma, though I really want to thank all of you for helping me understand it better. I wonder if part of what Loras needs to do is (as Amanda suggested) stop making other faiths invisible. To put it more positively, I wonder if we should begin really looking at others rather than looking for what we think we know already about them. The Socratic approach that Nussbaum writes about is essential for such a goal, but I also think that Catholicism can be extremely helpful too. It sounds like one approach would be to stretch this academic value into other parts of campus life, creating a more informed faith.
I hope we can continue this conversation as the class rolls along. jw
forwhere all of you Still, the Church has taken a decided turn toward a more strict orthodixy
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