WEEKEND SPECIAL: Doctor of the Church, Doctor of the University 

I entered the world in a devout Episcopal family—a cradle Episcopalian. We were members of a distinguished Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish that might be described (as one of my Catholic friends later on did) as more Roman than the Romans. Theologically and liturgically we were indistinguishable except for denying jurisdiction to the pope. And even in that case there were “Anglo-papalists” who privately did acknowledge his jurisdiction.   

For a long time, I accepted the Anglican view that there were three branches of the Catholic Church: Roman, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican. I also accepted the Anglican claim to being the “via media” between Catholic and Protestant. My preparation for confirmation was academic, theological, and rigorous, and ended with my signing a “rule of life” at age eleven which committed me, among other things, to going to confession three times a year—at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.   

Early in my teens, I developed strong interests in reading church history and theology, and thus I came upon the writings of John Henry Newman, and the Oxford Movement, and the writings of John Keble. My four years at Kenyon College reinforced this as, at the time, Kenyon was still officially an Episcopal college with required chapel and a fair number of faculty who at least occasionally attended chapel services. It was not long after this that the various changes in the Episcopal Church became more and more prominent, including significant alteration in the Book of Common Prayer and other well-known changes. I began reviewing Newman’s critique of the via media, his writing on the development of doctrine, and especially Apologia pro Vita Sua, which more and more seemed analogous to my own intellectual development.   

My graduate school years at Johns Hopkins coincided with the Second Vatican Council. There were many Jesuits doing graduate work at Hopkins, including some in my field of political philosophy. Of course, there were continual discussions of the Council and a division of opinion whether the Council might go too far or not far enough in its effort at revision and renewal. Among Anglo-Catholics there was speculation about the prospects of reunion, especially as the Catholic Church had recognized that the Anglican Communion was not typically Protestant (even though Pope Leo XIII had condemned Anglican orders). Parallel to this was Anglican interest in exchange with the Eastern Orthodox.   

The Episcopal Church generally hoped to see significant liberalization emerge from the Council, a point of debate among the various factions in the Episcopal Church. As we know, the Episcopal Church in the U.S. began to move in a different direction that, despite talks to find positions in common, set aside the prospects of reunion. This was a source of disappointment for many Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians.   

I found myself spending more and more of my time with my Catholic friends. It was my good fortune to enjoy such friendships, especially with Russell and John Hittinger and with the legendary Ralph McInerny. I joined the American Maritain Association. Though I remained an Episcopalian, they basically treated me as Catholic and made me welcome in those circles.   

Later on, my wife and I began moving toward the Catholic Church. I was rereading Apologia pro Vita Sua, which seemed, so to speak, my story. There was no single reason for our move but an increasing desire to profess the fullness of the Apostolic faith. 

All of this is background to my celebration of St. John Henry Newman’s elevation to Doctor of the Church. Implicitly, he was always for me, as I look at it now, a Doctor of the Church. It reminds me that he was a teacher, a defender of liberal learning, a scholar of great significance. He was fully aware of the increasing secularization of modern life, and this is reflected in his defense of the idea of the university. This is important to me, as I have spent my entire life in the world of liberal learning, defending against the widespread forgetting of what liberal learning is (or was).   

In The Idea of a University, Newman argued “that all branches of knowledge are connected together, because the subject-matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, as being the acts and the works of the Creator. … There is no science but tells a different tale, when viewed as a portion of a whole, from what it is likely to suggest when taken by itself, without the safeguard, as I may call it, of others.” 

He acknowledges that each form of inquiry has an integrity of its own, but in the company of the others suggests a continuing conversation inspired by a common search to understand in common. This includes theology as a full partner in this conversation—a vision that is largely denied in today’s universities. The idea of pursuing the unity of knowledge, much less reflecting on the relation of reason and revelation, has largely disappeared from sight. To quote Max Weber, we are committed to science as a vocation. One notes that the idea of “vocation” is adapted from its earlier meaning to a new kind of faith, described as the “religion of humanity,” which sees traditional faith as a barrier to ultimate enlightenment even if such traditional faith fully acknowledges the achievements of the various sciences. 

One might say that this Doctor of the Church is as well Doctor of the University, which is why we should rejoice at the news that the Holy Father is also naming Newman the co-patron saint (alongside St. Thomas Aquinas) of Catholic education. The university—an innovation of the Church—does not acknowledge Newman as its Doctor, which is why, among other consequences, students are exposed to an endless variety of ideas and attitudes but not encouraged to seek the whole in which the parts participate. Newman was aware that this would be a major consequence of separating from the Christian origins of the modern university. We see this in the American context where many of the most prominent colleges and universities, originating as Christian foundations, have separated from those origins, even becoming opponents of those origins. The progressive enlightenment project expresses itself as a kind of alternative religious project, expressed in nontheological terms.    

Newman already saw this change when he gave the lectures that eventually became The Idea of a University. He affirmed that there is an “Idea” of the university, that it is not simply a multiversity, a collection of various projects increasingly structured by expanding bureaucratic regulation. The latter allows for open-ended expression of opinions that are incidental to, not determinative of, procedures and processes.  

St. John Henry Newman is not only Doctor of the Church. At the same time he is a seldom acknowledged Doctor to the intellectual life altogether. 

Image licensed via Adobe Stock.