In the fall of 2016, this writer commenced studies at Newman University in Wichita to obtain a teaching license. After years in the secular courts, it was both exciting and consoling to be, he assumed, back in a Catholic institution. In fact, the school was deeply secularized, as he began to understand when the campus paper published articles supporting the establishment of an LGBT group on campus. Inquires led to the explanation, among others, that the LGBT group was intended to conform with dictates of the Obama Justice Department. Federal money was on the line, in other words. This writer submitted the following obliquely reasoned letter to the editor of the campus paper, but it was not published, and none of his more direct protests within the university and without were successful. Such an obstinate disregard of Catholic doctrine was consistent with his eventual, and painful, realization that the LGBT group was supported from the highest levels of the university and diocese. “No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will stand by the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24.
On the east edge of campus stands a beautiful statute of Jesus. His Hands are outstretched in a gesture of blessing and protection. He appears under the aspect of the Sacred Heart, the former name of this institution.
A walk leads to Sacred Heart Hall, a reminder again of our school’s history. Before the hall is a statute of Blessed Cardinal Newman, to whose intercession the school is now entrusted. A plaque quotes one of the Cardinal’s books, The Idea of a University.
Newman was a distinguished graduate and chaplain of a great university, Oxford. But Oxford was an Anglican school, and when Newman converted to Catholicism, he was obliged to leave. Newman proposed a new university in a Catholic land, Ireland, which could combine the academic rigor and civilizing effect of an Oxford with the grace and truth of the Catholic Church.
Newman did not succeed. Money was scarce and perhaps his dream was too exacting. This is often the case with Catholic universities. Founded by people with dreams of erudition and piety, the forces of the world then intervene. Oxford itself was founded by Catholics, for Catholics, when England was a Catholic land. But a powerful national government secularized the Church, turning it from the Bride of Christ into a department of state. So Oxford, a Catholic university, comported itself to the new state religion. Certain bits of Catholicism remained, as did the buildings and most of the library. But the visible head of the established church in England was now a mere king or queen, and no longer the pope, the Vicar of Christ.
In our land we have no established church. Our government is officially indifferent to religion, on the pretense of respect for it. Religion is too important, people say, for it to become entangled with government.
One could agree if the government would just hand over its power and money so they were dispensed in a Catholic way! But no government hands over its power and money, unless certain conditions are met. In England, those conditions were Anglican. In America, the conditions are indifferentist. Oxford could not withstand Anglicanism, and Newman left upon becoming Catholic. Can a Catholic university in America withstand indifferentism?
A Catholic would not have to leave an indifferent Catholic university, of course. The school would be indifferent to the Faith, not formally hostile to it. But pass beyond the statue of Cardinal Newman, and open the doors to Sacred Heart Hall. Here is another statue of Jesus, again under the aspect of the Sacred Heart. It is less artistically restrained than the statute to the east, and Our Lord appears somewhat pensive. He raises His Hands, showing His wounds, as if to ask us to consider the love He demonstrated on the Cross.
Now walk a few steps up into the chapel. Here is Jesus, not in representation but in fact. His Divine Majesty, hidden under the appearance of the reserved Eucharist, just as it was hidden under the form of His earthly body. Indifference is now impossible. From here His grace radiates out to all who accept it, and who love Him in return.
A university therefore cannot be both indifferent and truly Catholic. If the government requires our indifference as a condition of its power and money, we must choose. With the government’s power and money on the side of indifference, we know in what direction Catholicism lies.