Camille is often nutty, but here she defends the classic values of the University, now being trashed everywhere. Simon Leys, in similar vein, riveted and outraged the Catholic University of Leuven when, in the speech after receiving his honorary doctorate, he said that a university is essentially its faculty and library; even students are dispensable. (In fact, however, he incorrectly invoked Newman for the latter idea, whereas Newman stresses that a university is primarily a teaching institution.) Harvard, unlike Oxford, is rich enough to buck the dumbing-down PC trends; let it do so!
I posted my piece on NEWMAN ON EDUCATION AND ORIGINAL SIN on my weblog. It is relevant to Camille's concerns and also to the holy season of Lent.
I vouch for O'Leary's piece on NEWMAN ON EDUCATION AND ORIGINAL SIN. For anyone interested in Newman's views in this area, it's an excellent introduction, thoroughly documented and insightful about the subtleties of Newman's view of original sin and the purposes of the education according to his idea of the university.
Camille is often 'nutty' indeed, and that may be in part what endears her to us when she says something sensible. She defies many of the categories of postmodern feminism with her support, as here, for traditional assumptions about the nature of university educatin.
Good find, thanks.
Dr. Blosser not only agreeing with Fr. O'Leary in his assessment of Camille Paglia, but also vouching for something he wrote on his blog? The world has gone mad!
Camille Paglia is amazing. I've been a fan for years, and I shook her hand and talked Star Trek with her once when she came here to lecture.
Fr O is alright too 
Though I wish he would write a very long devotional piece about what Jesus means to modern society.
Thanks, pb. Newman is formidable, and hard to argue with (though of course he needs to be argued with). About that "devotional" piece, Santiago, it struck me in the readings on Monday that "I the Lord am Holy" in Leviticus was appended not to mystical or spiritual utterances but to demands for justice. Holiness, charity, justice go together in Scripture. The trouble with devotion, spirituality etc. is that they often sign off from the basic context of justice and miss the actual brunt of divine holiness. In that regard an essay in The Japan Mission Journal, forthcoming, offers an interesting contrast between Mel Gibson's Passion movie (devotion gone rotten) and Pasolini's truly devout "Gospel of Matthew" (dedicated to the memory of John XXIII), which keeps the Gospel emphasis on justice at the center. Even Johannine mysticism can be dangerous if it is divorced from the total biblical context, with its awareness of social and political realities. I say the same about the Bhagavad Gita in an essay on "Moral Qualms and Mystic Claims" that will be appearing in a volume on the Gita edited by Catherine Cornille. This might be the main topic of one's effort to argue with Newman, too. And the puritanical and clericalist legacy that weighed heavily on students in University College, Dublin, may owe something to Newman as well.
Padre O'Leary:
I agree about the importance of the social dimension of the Gospel. But if the primary question of the meaning of man's existence isn't first answered, then no meaningful politics can come out of a person. Before you have preferential option for the poor, you have GS 22. Or at least that's what I always thought. You risk reducing Christianity to its political dimension, which is just as perilous as reducing it to moral theology or aesthetics. We need the whole thing.
I don't see that I reduce the Bible to justice -- that is not my tendency at all. But I do note how intrinsic concern for justice is to the Law and the Gospel, e.g. Matt 25 fin., the very last section of the teachings of Jesus.
Commenting by HaloScan
