The original task

Relation between faith and reason, service to the common good, the challenge of integral education: these were the issues tackled, in the light of the educational vision of Cardinal John Henry Newman, by the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, is his keynote address opening the European Congress on University Pastoral Care with the title “Formation, Education and the Gospel” now being held in Munich, Bavaria. The Congress – promoted by the CCEE – brings together until 30 January some sixty delegates of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe for university ministry and representatives of church associations and movements. The meeting was opened by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich which is hosting the event. In Europe. “You have come here to Munich from over a dozen European countries, testifying by your presence to the life-giving variety of Europe. You represent a Europe whose identity does not rest solely on gross domestic product or industrial infrastructure, but on its biblical and theological foundations. Seldom has there been in Europe so fertile a terrain for Christian values in the light of European and global challenges”. With these words the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, welcomed the participants to the European congress. “The commitment of the Catholic Church to universities – he said – has a long tradition in Europe. Not only was theology one of the first three faculties to be established, significantly distinguishing the European culture of higher education, but for over the last century a fully-fledged system of university ministry has been developed”. University pastoral care, in the archdiocese of Munich, can boast of a well structured tradition. “The not insignificant resources that the Church of Munich allocates each year to university pastoral care are not a subsidy, but rather an investment – explained Cardinal Marx – in as much as without university pastoral care the Church cannot be present at the side of so many young people, in the places where they spend the larger part of their daily life: in the universities”. In view of what has always been the vocation of universities, Cardinal Marx urged that “the blinkers that restrict the university field to the search of solutions for market regulation, or for campaigns to curb poverty and disease and reverse climate change be removed”, and that we grasp what is “the original task of the university: humanity, spiritual avant-garde and the being the keystone of the network of intellectuals in the interest of the common good”. And he added: “Scientific and academic freedom have a need of guidance in terms of human values. Without the active presence of Catholic university pastoral care and Catholic theology, all this cannot succeed”. The absence of a principle of integration between disciplines. Also in the view of Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the task of the universities should especially be that of fostering the relation between faith and reason, so that the expansion of knowledge be at the “service of the common good”. In this regard, the chairman of the CCEE Commission for Catechesis, Schools and Universities indicated the example of Cardinal John Henry Newman to the European delegates. Newman believed that education should include all the disciplines, ranging from the sciences to the arts, from engineering to theology. “The fundamental principle of his vision – observed Nichols – can be defined as the ‘truth that unifies'”. “Newman – he continued – was deeply concerned by the fragmentation of university education. This was not so much due to the proliferation of disciplines as to the lack of a principle of integration”. These are issues – pointed out the English archbishop – also close to the heart of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, according to both of whom the crisis of the university can be traced “to a crisis of truth and of alienation, and the modern technological society in which the individual is reduced to a mere tool: a cog in the machine. What are expected from the universities today are products useful for production, not the promotion of learning”. A challenge. Commenting on the address given by Benedict XVII in Westminster Hall on the importance of the role of religion in society, Archbishop Nichols said: “If this meeting between faith and reason is fundamental for the well-being of our society, then it is justifiable also to believe that it is equally fundamental also for the well-being of the universities. For the well being of society can depend, at least in part, on this partnership only if it be recognized and respected by the universities”. Archbishop Nichols ended his address by posing a question: “Can our universities understand themselves as places dedicated to the service of truth, and inspired by the conviction that reason, understood as the capacity of every human being to transcend the empirical dimension, can take us beyond it not only in the search of truth, but also in our response of love to that truth? This challenge raises many questions. But I hope these observations may help to stimulate our discussion at the start of this Congress”.