Best of the week entry 1

Comes from Anne Hendershott writing for the Wall Street Journal. Her editorial Another Catholic University Fails A Litmus Test looks at the sad story of Marquette University making a hasty decision to rescind the position of Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences after an uproar over her positions:

The specific nature of the job at issue—as dean Ms. O'Brien would have been charged with helping to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution intended to revitalize Catholic higher education—may have driven Marquette to back off this particular appointment. But the real story here is that in the upside-down world of Catholic higher education, there is more status in hiring a sexuality scholar who denigrates Catholic teachings on sexuality and marriage than in choosing a serious scholar who might actually support Catholic teachings.

Of the three finalists for the position, Ms. O'Brien was the first choice, even though her publication record was minimal in comparison with the others. Though all three had led academic departments, the two male candidates also had grant-writing success and prestigious publication records.

Ms. O'Brien published articles such as "How Big is your God? Queer Christian Social Movements." One of the male finalists wrote a book on the French Revolution that won an award from the American Historical Association. Ms. O'Brien published a "gender switching" article describing online homoerotic behavior entitled "Changing the Subject." One of the other finalists received funding for 17 major research grants and listed dozens of publications on his 19-page vita.

Why would a Catholic school even want to bring in someone who rejects Catholic teaching? This is not restricted to Catholic schools. How many evangelical schools have gone the same way? Many top universities in America used to be confessionally Christian schools but now are entirely secular. Many (perhaps all?) Ivy League schools started out with a mission that was at least church focused but now flaunt their secular identity and do everything they can to reject any vestige of religion.

There is just something seductive about higher education, about surrounding yourself with scholars with tweed jackets and elbow patches that seems seductive. The more separate from the church, i.e. regular Christians without PhD’s, an institution gets, the more it seems to stray away from its roots. Perhaps it is the seduction of being acceptable to the broader secular scholarly world, the desire to fit in with academic peers (who will never accept as a serious scholar a person of serious faith). Perhaps it is the loosening of standards, fudging doctrinal standards to bring in “scholars” who are appealing for whatever reason even if they are completely unacceptable in terms of faith and morals. Whether it is the seemingly inexorable decline of institutions of higher learning into liberalism or Liberty University turning a blind eye to malfeasance in order to retain a rock star, it seems difficult to maintain fealty to the Gospel while striving for academic achievement. Is that perhaps because academic achievement runs contrary to the life of a disciple? Are the two incompatible?