AmericanPapist Comments
Let us pray that many of these "Catholic" educators take his words to heart!
Dear Thomas. Please consider running more Quotable Benedict pieces!
Thank you.
He absolutely ROCKED in this speech. I thought a number of the folk were squirming!
Ev,
Squirming is definitely how I would describe it. However, the huge number of people also taking notes like a bunch of Freshmen in college was rather heartening.
"Freedom, is not an opting out, but an opting in." I felt goosebumps, and many of the few faculty/adminsitrators from CUA that were present seemed to be rather heartened by this particular section of the speech.
As for the squirming, I might offer the fact that we had to stay in our seats or near them for over an hour prior to the speech itself, hence the refreshments from earlier in the afternoon were probably heightening the discomfort of many.
I think that reinforcing some aspects of "orthodoxy" (whatever that is...) can be a good thing for "Catholic identity." But, of course, I do foresee some caveats.
Intellectual exploration should not be strangled in the name of orthodoxy. I will take my example from a loaded issue, and deliberately so - abortion. There is no need to squash serious debate on abortion because students should have access to both pro-life and pro-choice arguments. I do not see how this is any different than Christian Apologists reading heretical treatises or Stoics reading the works of Epicureans.
The prescription that all theology professors should be certified by the local bishop needs some leeway in its practice. I attended a Catholic undergraduate institution and had several great professors from the theology department. Except, their classes did not have much to do with the current teachings of the Catholic Church. The material was more geared towards historical and textual analysis of ancient documents, sometimes including parts of what we now call the Tanakh and New Testament. The concern of the bishop and the concern of the theology professors, in this instance, had little to do with one another. This is just one example of how a strict enforcing of that rule could go awry.
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