NEWMAN'S IDEA IN THE MINDS OF AMERICAN EDUCATORS
Philip Gleason
Archbishop Gerety Lecture at Seton Hall University, February 5, 1997
Introduction
It is a great honor to be asked to give the Archbishop Gerety Lecture
for 1997, and I thank you for it. At the same time, however, I confess
to some trepidation in coming before you since I propose to speak of
Cardinal Newman and there are people here who know much more about him
than I do. My interest in him grows out of the work I did on the history
of Catholic higher education, for the name of Newman and his classic
Idea of a University came up repeatedly in my research. That suggested a
follow-up study of how that book had been received and what kind of
influence it had on American educators. Surprisingly enough, no one has
made such a study before, so I am emboldened to give it a try, despite
being a novice in the field of Newman scholarship.
For a historian like myself, tracing the resonance of Newman's Idea in
the minds of American educators is worthwhile for its own sake. But does
such a study have anything beyond "merely historical" interest? Does it
have any relevance to our understanding of present-day educational
issues, or of Newman himself? Opinions on that no doubt differ --
although I hope the differences will be less after I have finished
talking. However that may be, the record shows that many Americans have
resorted to Newman for intellectual ammunution in controversy -- or, in
calmer circumstances, to buttress arguments they were advancing. That
means lots of people have thought Newman was relevant to their
situation. And a look at this record, so rich in controversy, can I
believe deepen our understanding of Newman's way of thinking. That will
have to do for the moment; we will return to the question later.
Besides the matter of relevance, there is another preliminary question
we must confront. Is The Idea of a University a "classic" in the sense
of being a book everyone has heard of, but no one really reads? I'm sure
that is not true of this audience, but since since most of you probably
did not re-read it in preparation for this occasion, let me say a few
words about the book by way of background.
The book as we have it dates from 1873 and consists of two parts. Part I
comprises nine "discourses" which set forth the basic theoretical
principles of Newman's "idea" of university education. Two of these
principles stand out: 1)the crucial role of theology in university
studies; and 2) the point that cultivation of the intellect, not mere
acquisition of knowledge or preparation for a career, is the primary
goal of university education. Part II of the Idea gives us ten essays on
various aspects of university study which are intended to illustrate the
general principles expounded in Part I. Some of the essays, such as
those on "Literature" and "Christianity and Scientific Investigation,"
are frequently cited, but the nine discourses of Part I are what people
usually have in mind when they speak of The Idea of a University.
The two parts existed independently and with different titles before
being brought together in 1873 as the Idea. This fact -- along with the
existence of a third book by Newman called The Office and Work of
Universities -- makes for a rather confusing publication history. For
our purposes it will suffice to observe that all three of these works
derive from Newman's role as founding rector of the Catholic University
in Ireland in the years 1851 to 1858. What became Part I of the Idea
were lectures he gave when the university was still in the planning
stage. They were published in Dublin in 1852 under the title, Discourses
on the Scope and Nature of University Education; a revised edition
appeared in London in 1859, and Newman revised them again for the Idea.
The essays that make up Part II of the Idea were composed by Newman for
various academic occasions after the university got under way and were
collected as a book entitled Lectures and Essays on University Subjects.
That book appeared in 1859, the same year as the second edition of the
original discourses. Three years earlier (i.e., 1856), the previously
mentioned Office and Work of Universities came out. Though never part of
The Idea of a University, this collection of Newman's informal sketches
of university history was the first of his educational writings to reach
these shores. And to confuse the picture further, The Office and Work of
Universities was later re-issued as The Rise and Progress of
Universities, and later still as University Sketches.
With these brief remarks for background, we turn now to our subject
proper -- how Newman's Idea was received in America. The story falls
into four chronological phases, the first of which covers the period
1852 to 1890 -- that is, from the delivery of Newman's discourses in
Dublin until the year of his death.
I. Early Impact (1852-1890)
The overall context of this phase of early impact was charged with
controversy. At the most general level, the Revolutions of 1848
heightened already existing tensions between the Church and liberalism
and fueled bitter anti-clericalism on the Continent. In England and the
United States, anti-Catholicism reached almost hysterical levels in the
early 1850s. In Ireland, the university question itself grew out of
religious controversy that centered on education. More precisely, the
issue concerned the so-called "mixed education" that was to be offered
by the newly-created Queen's Colleges, which were designed to be
religiously neutral institutions open to Catholics as well as
Protestants. Although this was an improvement over the existing
discrimination against Catholics in higher education, many Irish
remained deeply suspicious of English intentions -- especially since the
British government seemed indifferent to Irish suffering in the Great
Famine that struck just as the Queens College plan was broached.
But despite their long-standing grievances against England, the Irish
bishops could not present a united front on the question of mixed
education. Several opposed the idea vigorously; others, however, thought
the Queens Colleges were the best they could hope for, and most middle
class lay Catholics agreed with the latter view. Since they couldn't
come to any conclusion among themselves, the bishops referred the
question to Rome for a solution. There Pius IX saw in "mixed education"
an example of the liberalism against which he meant to do battle. The
Irish bishops, he said, should set up their own strictly Catholic
university.
This was the institution to which Newman was called as rector. Although
a stranger to Irish affairs, he knew very well he was stepping into a
potential minefield. He therefore shaped the Discourses he gave to
initiate the project with an eye to the disagreements that existed among
his listeners in Dublin. In stressing the crucial role of theology in
university studies, Newman addressed the concerns of those who rejected
the Queens Colleges. But by referring to his Oxford experience, and
insisting that cultivation of the intellect would be the new
university's primary goal, he reassured lay Catholics that it would not
be a strictly clerical school. This careful attention to the divergent
expectations of his audience helped make Newman's lectures a great hit
in Dublin. However, they were interrupted when he had to rush back to
England to defend himself in a libel suit that grew out of the religious
polemics set off by the restoration of Catholic hierarchy in 1850. The
sensational nature of this affair perhaps obscured Newman's other
activities, for when the Dublin Discourses were published a few months
later, they passed almost completely unnoticed in England.
That was also true of non-Catholics in this country. So far as I have
been able to discover, only two nineteenth-century Protestant educators
even alluded to Newman's work. Among American Catholics, however, the
situation was quite different. They knew about the Irish university
project from the beginning, and the example it furnished, along with
Newman's writings, played a significant role in the establishment of the
Catholic University of America, which opened its doors the year before
Newman died.
We have the very best kind of evidence that American Catholics knew
about the Irish university -- namely, the fact that they gave a lot of
money to help get it started. This came about because the promoters of
the university dispatched two priests who spent well over a year
canvassing for contributions from the eastern seaboard to the
Mississippi River. These "Rev. Delegates," as they were called, appealed
to ethnic feeling as well as to religion by portraying the Queens
Colleges as an English plot to rob the Irish of their nationality, and
proclaiming that the new university would restore "Ireland's ancient
unrivalled fame in letters." They usually preached in churches, but also
appeared before humble groups like the Quarrymen's Union Benevolent
Society of New York. The Quarrymen could afford to give only $110, but
the total amount raised was impressive: about $40,000 by 1853 -- and
this in addition to contributions made to help Newman defray the costs
of his libel suit.
Nationalism entered the picture more disruptively when Newman invited
the great American convert, Orestes A. Brownson, to join the faculty of
the new university. This occurred at the very height of American
nativism and the problem was that Brownson had just published two highly
imprudent articles on that subject. Although critical of Know-Nothing
bigotry, Brownson acknowledged that the behavior of Irish newcomers gave
some cause for complaint, and he agreed with the nativists in urging
immigrants to become Americanized. To Irish Catholics hard-pressed by
external enemies, this was treason most foul. Great was their outrage
and report of it carried across the Atlantic. In Ireland it reinforced
the suspicions of nationalists who had never been enthusiastic about
having an Englishman -- and a recent convert to boot -- at the head of
their university. To defuse the situation, an embarrassed Newman had to
withdraw the invitation to Brownson.
A less dramatic but far more important kind of ideological conflict
shaped the campaign to establish Catholic universities in both Ireland
and the United States. I am referrring to the growing awareness among
Catholics in those days that the real threat to faith came, not from
formal heresy or from traditional Protestant foes, but from the "deep,
plausible skepticism" that permeated thought. Newman himself painted a
dismaying picture the accelerating tendency toward atheism, analyzed its
workings in the learned world with stunning acuity, and devoted
Discourse IX of The Idea of a University to showing that, without the
effective presence of the Church as a counter-influence, higher
education tended inevitably to reinforce the drift toward atheism. In
this context, it is hardly surprising that American Catholics felt that
they too needed a Catholic University, that the Irish initiative served
as an early stimulus, and that Newman's writings figured prominently in
the campaign to bring one into existence.
Brownson, who had long believed Catholic education needed thorough
reform, took note of Newman's writings in the 1850s, and after the Civil
War virtually everyone who promoted the establishment of the Catholic
University of America paid homage to The Idea of a University as a
"classic which [the world] will not willingly let perish." That was
especially the case with Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, whose
persistent agitation was the single most important factor in persuading
his brother bishops to commit themselves to the creation of such an
institution. This was a major commitment, for though it was to begin
with a theological faculty only, the Catholic University of America was
designed from the beginning to be a real graduate-level university --
and that would make it an altogether different kind of institution from
the existing Catholic colleges, which might call themselves
universities, but were essentially high schools.
Like other Catholics, Spalding looked upon a university as the best
means of meeting the threat of infidelity, and he echoed Newman in
asserting that "the great intellectual work of the church in our day is
to show that theology ... is the essential and central point of union of
the whole scientific group [of universities studies]." Yet he did not
want an institution designed to turn out "profound theologians, or
learned exegetes, or skillful metaphysicians or specialists of any
kind." Like Newman, he wanted a university that would "impart not
professional skill but cultivation of mind," that would strengthen and
refine the intellect rather than storing the memory. Not only did
Spalding refer to and quote from Newman to buttress his argument, his
line of reasoning and even his prose itself followed Newman's so closely
as to border occasionally on plagiarism. Consider the following example:
The education of which I speak is expansion and discipline of mind
rather than learning; and its tendency is not so much to form ...
[scholarly specialists] as to cultivate a habit of mind, which, for want
of a better word, may be called philosophical; to enlarge the intellect,
to strengthen and [make] supple its faculties, to enable it to take
connected views of things and their relations, and to see clear amid the
mazes of human error and through the mists of human passion.
Though this Newmanian vision inspired Spalding's drive to bring it into
being, it did not shape the university's functioning once it was
established. On the contrary, the Catholic University of America
accepted the research emphasis sweeping through American higher
education at the time and bent its efforts toward producing the learned
specialists of whom Spalding spoke with near disdain. Even more
ironically, Spalding too was by that time moving away from Newman --
although not in the direction of Germanic Wissenschaft. In his last
major statement on the subject -- an address given at the cornerstone
laying of the university's first building -- Spalding left Newman far
behind in his enthusiasm for modern progress. But while he hailed the
achievements of modern science and scholarship, he still insisted that
the university should "make culture its first aim." Now, however,
Spalding's understanding of "culture" owed more to Matthew Arnold than
to Newman, for he invested it with quasi-religious value. "Mind," he
proclaimed in his loftiest rhetorical flight, "is Heaven's pioneer
making way for faith, hope, and love, for higher aims and nobler
life..." To be human "is to be intelligent and moral, and therefore
religious. ... He who believes in culture must believe in God; for what
but God do we mean when we talk of loving the best thoughts and the
highest beauty."
II The Modernist Interlude (1890-1914)
The Catholic University's developing along conventional
research-university lines, and Spalding's turn toward Arnold, presaged a
period in which Newman's Idea of a University dropped into relative
obscurity. This second chapter in our story, which we can call "The
Modernist Interlude," extends from the 1890s to the First World War.
During that epoch, other aspects of Newman's thought received much more
attention than the Idea, and Catholic educators had their hands full
dealing with practical issues on which Newman's book shed no very useful
light. Both of these shifts involved a great deal of controversy, but
the circumstances had changed greatly since the 1850s.
The most intense controversy centered around the movement called
Modernism, which Pope Pius X condemned as a heresy in 1907. The
condemnation resulted from the Pope's conviction that the liberals were
watering down essential Catholic doctrine in the vain effort to make it
acceptable to modern thinkers. Modernism was really a European
phenomenon, but it bore a clear family resemblance to the Americanism of
the 1890s, and it had faint but audible echoes in the United States at
the time of its condemnnation. In recent years, Catholic scholars have
largely rehabilitated the Modernists. But in the days when it was held
to be an undoubted heresy, anyone who exhibited the least tendency
toward Modernism was suspect. To a certain extent, that happened to
Newman, for though he died before the movement took shape, he was often
called its precursor.
While he never accepted the "liberalism" that emptied religion of its
objective and dogmatic elements, Newman did oppose the extreme rigorism
of "ultramontane" Catholicism as it developed after the proclamation of
papal infallibilty in 1870. In that sense, he was a liberal and the
later Modernists admired him for it. But his writings were even more
important in establishing Newman's stature among the Modernists. Not,
however, his Idea of the University. The key works for them were the
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which accorded with
their historicism and conviction of the need for change, and the Grammar
of Assent, with its subtle analysis of the psychology of religious
belief. The first of these books inspired several articles from Alfred
Loisy, the most important of the Modernists. Another, Henri Bremond,
wrote one of the earliest biographies of Newman as an essay in religious
psychology.
Modernist admiration for Newman was not unqualified, for they knew he
would never have gone as far as they thought necessary. But their
sympathy for his general approach and their many references to his
writings were enough to make the Development of Christian Doctrine and
the Grammar of Assent suspect during the anti-Modernist reaction that
followed condemnation of the movement. On the whole, however, American
Catholic educators did not seem to pay much attention to these matters.
Indeed, I can recall only one cautionary reference to these books, and
that came from a person very favorably disposed toward Newman. As I said
before, Catholic educators were much more concerned with practical
problems. Yet there is a different kind of link with Newman here -- one
associated with what was coming to be known in the those days as "the
Newman movement."
Newman Clubs, as those of a certain age will remember, were
organizations designed to provide pastoral care for, and opportunities
for social interaction among, Catholic students on the campuses of
non-Catholic colleges and universities. In the early days of their
organization, not all of these "Catholic clubs" took Newman's name, but
by World War I it was firmly attached to the movement. The Idea of a
University did not, however, play the same role in inspiring this
movement as it did in the campaign to found the Catholic University of
America. Such Catholic clubs were, in fact, closer in spirit to Newman's
later concern for getting Catholic students admitted to Oxford and
providing for their pastoral needs -- a shift of emphasis one scholar
interprets as showing that, after his disappointments in Dublin, Newman
changed his mind about whether a strictly Catholic university should be
the goal.
Be that as it may, the rapid spread of Newman Clubs in the years after
1900 was extremely disturbing to those in charge of Catholic colleges.
For though they had to admit that students on non-Catholic campuses
needed pastoral care, they didn't want to encourage attendance at such
institutions. Since they feared that elaborate provision for Catholic
centers at state universities and other "secular" schools would do just
that, they regarded the Newman movement with considerable uneasiness. In
fact, they tried to get the bishops to mandate attendance at Catholic
colleges just as they had mandated attendance at parochial schools. That
didn't work, but the whole issue dramatized the fact that Catholic
colleges were losing their clientele and helped to set off
organizational and curricular reforms that dominated the landscape of
Catholic higher education from 1900 to 1920.
The general tendency of these reforms was away from concentration on the
classical languages, the study of which Newman endorsed in the Idea, and
toward the professionalism he deprecated. That explains why the leading
promoters of the reform movement had little to say about Newman. But the
changes they pushed through were highly controversial, and it is
surprising that the conservative opposition failed to enlist Newman in
its defense of the old ways. One reason may have been that the Jesuits
were the most prominent opponents of reform, and they were so married to
their particular version of the classical liberal arts curriculum that
they didn't see the relevance of Newman's book until very late in the
game.
Of course it was not altogether overlooked in those days. On the
contrary, we can safely say that all Catholic educators venerated Newman
in a general way, and quite a few made passing reference to The Idea of
a University. In 1914 a speaker at the Catholic Educational
Association's annual meeting called the book "certainly a standard
work," adding that anyone who dealt with the subject of liberal
education could hardly avoid "fall[ing] into the phraseology of Newman."
The same speaker, incidentally, was the first to make a point echoed by
many later commentators, viz., that Newman's "university" is really what
Americans would call a liberal arts college. But despite this kind of
attention, the Modernist interlude was a period of neglect compared to
the epoch that followed.
III The Golden Age of Newman's Idea
That third epoch, which extends from World War I to 1960, was the golden
age of Newman's Idea. In what follows, I will first sketch the evidence
that justifies calling it that, and then suggest some reasons why The
Idea of a University had such visibility and influence in that era.
One thing that added to its visibility was that non-Catholic educators
finally started paying attention to it. In 1915 the London Times
observed that although Newman had "not been accepted as a great
educational writer, except by Roman Catholics of the intellectual type,"
his work was actually well worth reading. In the 1920s, the earlier
praise of Walter Pater, who called the Idea "the perfect handling of a
theory," and of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who held it up as a model for
writers, reached American audiences. Quiller-Couch added, incidentally,
that its earlier neglect was partly explainable by Newman's association
with "a religion still unpopular in England."
The first significant non-Catholic voice in this country was that of
Charles F. Thwing, the president of Western Reserve University and a
prolific writer on higher education, who called the Idea "that precious
book," and quoted from it at length on the eve of World War I. In the
1930s, Abraham Flexner and Robert M. Hutchins cited it in their
critiques of American higher education, and the president of the
University of Minnesota was said to keep a copy on his desk and dip into
it to "refresh his spirit ...whenever a free moment presented itself."
But the real breakthrough in respect to mainstream academic interest
took place only after World War II. Then -- almost a century late, one
might say -- came three major events: the chapter on the book in the
1945 biography of Newman by Charles F. Harrold of Ohio State University;
the same author's edition of The Idea of a University in 1947; and the
appearance in 1955 of The Imperial Intellect, a brilliant study of
Newman's educational thought by Dwight Culler of Yale.
Among Catholics, there was a veritable explosion of interest. Newman
clubs multiplied on non-Catholic campuses and began to take greater
notice of their patron's educational ideas. On Catholic campuses,
students began to hear that reading The Idea of a University should mark
an "epoch" in one's intellectual life, and a 1924 survey showed that
their teachers gave it first place among the ten best Catholic books in
the English language. The young lay scholar, George N. Shuster had
already devoted three chapters to Newman in his Catholic Spirit in
Modern English Literature (1922), and another lay professor was guiding
the Catholic Literary Club of Pittsburgh in its exploration of Newman's
writings. The Jesuits, however, seized the lead in promoting the great
English cardinal. His most enthusiastic champion was Fr. Daniel
O'Connell of Xavier University in Cincinnati, who wrote a half-dozen
articles urging college study of Newman's writings -- which he rather
strangely characterized as "a veritable eureka" for Catholics. To assist
this program in a practical way, O'Connell edited versions of The Idea
of a University, The Present Position of Catholics in England, and the
Apologia Pro Vita Sua suitable for classroom use. Evidence that it was
catching on is furnished by the following course description, which
appeared in serveral Jesuit college catalogues:
Newman: His commanding position in the religious intellectual life of
the nineteenth century; life and associations at Oxford; Catholic life;
his philosophy of education in The Idea of a University; his
controversial, apologetic and homiletic works; the great Christian
protagonist in the warfare of modern rationalism; the acknowledged
perfection of form in his prose.
By 1930, two teachers' manuals to accompany such courses had already
appeared. Calvert Alexander's book entitled The Catholic Literary
Revival -- a much broader study that came out in 1935 -- greatly
accelerated their development. Alexander portrayed Newman's conversion
as the initial spark of the revival of Catholic intellectual and life
that was still going on. His book inspired scores of college courses on
the revival that featured Newman prominently, and quite a few that were
devoted exclusively to his writings. I myself took one of the latter
sort at the University of Dayton in the late 1940s. It wasn't very
demanding, I'm afraid -- all I can remember reading was The Idea of a
University.
But interest in Newman was not confined to the college classroom. The
centenary of the Oxford Movement in 1933; of Newman's conversion in
1945; and of his Dublin Discourses in 1952 attracted much attention.
Catholics marked these occasions with conferences, symposia, articles,
and books, the most notable of which was Newman's University: Idea and
Reality, by Fergal McGrath, SJ, a major contribution to scholarship. And
of course Catholics who participated in the midcentury discussion of
liberal education made frequent mention of Newman. Two works that
deserve special mention in this connection are Leo R. Ward's Blueprint
for a Catholic University (1949), which devoted an entire chapter to
analayzing the contemporary relevance of the Idea, and Justus George
Lawler's The Catholic Dimension of Higher Education (1959), a book
steeped in Newman's thought and published by a press named after him. By
the end of our third phase in 1960, interest in his educational ideas
was lively enough to justify two new paperback editions of the Idea. One
appeared in Doubleday's Catholic series called Image books; the other,
helpfully introduced and annotated by Loyola University's Martin J.
Svaglic, took its place among the "Rinehart Editions," a series aimed at
the general college market.
So much for the evidence showing that this was the Idea's golden age.
Now we must try to account for the phenomenon. One explanatory factor --
the three centenaries that focussed attention on Newman and his works --
has already been touched upon. Another -- the continuing growth of
American higher education -- was relevant in at least three ways. It
permitted the development of scholarly specialties like Victorian
literature, in which Professors Harrold, Culler, and Svaglic worked. It
enlarged the potential student audience for Newman's writings at the
graduate as well as undergraduate level. And it enhanced the importance
of, and public interest in, questions of educational policy such as
those dealt with in The Idea of a University. The third of these
considerations was especially relevant in the post-World War II years,
in which a revival of religion coincided with a marked renewal of
concern for liberal or (as it was often called) "general " education.
This brings us to ideological factors, for the postwar interest in
religion and liberal arts had a definitely conservative coloration, and
so too did the Newman of the Idea's golden age. In fact, Russell Kirk
included a lengthy discussion of Newman in his Conservative Mind, the
best known work of the so-called New Conservatism of the 1950s. Among
Catholics, the ideological factor was the real key to the Newman
revival, but it emerged in the 1920s and in a way harked back to the
Newman of the 1850s.
The most obvious parallel between the two eras is found in O'Connell's
re-issue of The Present Position of Catholics in England, a masterpiece
of controversy in which Newman excoriated the No-Popery of his day.
O'Connell stressed the relevance of this work to contemporary
anti-Catholicism -- here readers would find that every wild charge
"flung upon the gale" by the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s had already been
demolished by Newman in 1851. But beyond the level of crude prejudice,
there was a deeper parallel -- in both eras, Newman stood forth as the
champion of Catholic truth, Catholic learning, and Catholic culture
against the irreligious spirit of the age. The Idea of a University with
its insistence on theology, its exaltation of intellectual cultivation,
and its serene assurance that faith and knowledge are compatible, was
the classic statement of this ideal of Catholic culture. That explains
why O'Connell put out his classroom edition of the Idea in 1927, and why
the book remained a central feature of the intellectual and cultural
revival that dominated the American Catholic landscape for the next
quarter century.
This consideration also helps us understand why Newman's work found a
wider audience after World War II. Six years of horror and devastation,
followed by the brooding threat of nuclear destruction, confirmed his
insight that mere human knowledge and human reason could never contend
successfully "against those giants, the passion and the pride of man."
In the ensuing "age of anxiety," religious faith regained some of its
former intellectual respectability, and literate readers were drawn to
what one Newman scholar called "the morally serious in literature." In
that spiritual climate, The Idea of a University struck a more resonant
chord among Americans than it ever had before.
But besides the nice fit between its theological emphasis and this broad
cultural conservatism, The Idea of a University stood for a type of
educational conservatism that was making a strong comeback, namely, the
revival of the traditional ideal of liberal education. This revival came
about as a delayed reaction to turn-of-the-century curricular reforms --
especially the widespread introduction of the elective system -- which,
according to devotees of the liberal arts, rendered American higher
education both superficial and incoherent. Robert M. Hutchins, president
of the University of Chicago, who struggled to replace the frivolities
of "athleticism," "collegiatism," and "vocationalism" with the
metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas, led the fight in the 1930s. After
the war, he was joined by a host of others convinced that the crisis of
the age demanded a revitalization of humanistic culture that only the
liberal arts could provide. Catholics, who regarded themselves as the
special champions of liberal education, endorsed the goals of this
movement wholeheartedly, and often invoked "the great name of Newman."
Justifiable as that was, it must also be said that some who did so were
such rigid traditionalists that they helped discredit his authority by
wrongly making it seem that The Idea of a University ruled out higher
educations's serving any kind of practical or vocational purpose.
IV Eclipse and Reappearance
Moving now from the conservatism of the 1950s to the radicalism of the
sixties, we enter upon the final chapter of our story, which I will call
"Eclipse and Reappearance." Since it comes all the way to the present,
we lack the perspective on this epoch that only time can give; what I
have to say about it must therefore be regarded as provisional. Even so,
it seems clear that The Idea of a University lost ground in the
tumultous decade of the sixties; began to regain its cultural standing
as those storms abated; and has very recently been linked once again
with cultural and religious conservatism.
First as to its losing ground in the sixties. Some of you will recall
that those were the days of "campus unrest," as it was euphemistically
called -- protests, strikes, sit-ins, buildings occupied and even
bombed, police busts and bloodied victims. In that febrile atmosphere,
few thought it worthwhile to take up Newman's ancient text. And though
the disturbances sprang in large measure from humanistic idealism, the
students' passion for "relevance," for ideas that could be put to work
immediately to "change the system," was quite alien to Newman's
dedication to knowledge that had no end beyond itself. And how would
Newman's "gentleman" have fared in those days? Is it not pathetic as
well as comical to picture him at the Berkeley of the "filthy speech
movement," utterly out of place with his "cultivated intellect ...
delicate taste ... candid, equitable, dispassionate mind ... noble and
courteous bearing in the conduct of life"?
It is true that some representatives of the hated "establishment," such
as Clark Kerr and Jacques Barzun, alluded to The Idea of a University.
But that did little to redeem it in the eyes of the reformers. Besides,
Kerr cited it primarily to dramatize the contrast between the modern
"multiversity" and what Newman had in mind. It didn't rate a single
mention in a major history of American higher education published in
1965; three years later, an authoritative study of the ongoing Academic
Revolution took passing notice of "Newman Societies," but nothing more.
Even Father Hesburgh of Notre Dame, who venerated Newman and reaffirmed
the crucial role of theology in the university, emphasized the
remoteness of his vision from contemporary realities. Aside from using
the passage about the mind's need for elbow room as a proof-text in the
campaign for academic freedom, Catholics rarely referred to The Idea of
a University in the sixties. I know of only one substantial effort to
relate it to the current scene -- and that was made by George Shuster,
whose admiration for Newman dated back to the 1920s.
But this does not mean that Newman was forgotten by Catholics. What
actually happened was a virtual replay of the Modernist Interlude. For
as the Idea faded into the background, the Newman of the Development of
Doctrine, the Apologia, and theGrammar of Assent took center stage once
more. The catalyst of this "rediscovery of Newman," as a volume
published in 1967 called it, was the Second Vatican Council of which
Newman was often called the spiritual father. And though one may doubt
that very many of the prelates in attendance were directly influenced by
him, the Council certainly moved in directions that Newman had
anticipated, not just in respect to the idea of development, but also
ecclesiology, ecumenism, and the role of the laity.
This opens up many important questions on which much has been written.
But it would be out of place to enter upon these matters, even if I were
competent to discuss them. For our purposes, the main point is simply
that the Newman of the Idea was, for a number of years, quite
overshadowed by a different Newman -- a more liberal, anti-authoritarian
Newman. Indeed, some commentators betrayed a hint of embarrassment about
the Newman hailed in preconciliar days as a hero of Catholic culture --
the Newman who opposed "mixed education" and derided Protestant
prejudice so scornfully. Catholics of the ghetto era had, according to
one writer, taken a very narrow view of Newman, admiring him for the
wrong reasons; another suggested that in later life Newman himself had
come around to favoring mixed education at the university level.
But as we all know, the fervor of the sixties did not last. Things would
never be the same as they had been before, in the Church or in American
society -- and that most definitely included higher education! Yet over
the next two decades, a more conservative spirit reasserted itself. One
of its manifestations was the growing fear that Catholic colleges and
universities were losing -- or had already lost! -- their Catholic
character. In these circumstances, the Newman who steadfastly opposed
religious liberalism and championed the dogmatic principle began to
attract attention once again. On the broader scene of American higher
education, challenges stemming from the 1960s, as well as growth and
change since then, had the effect of revitalizing debate over the kind
of basic issues dealt with in The Idea of a University. These
ideological factors gave added impetus to scholarly interest in Newman,
already reawakened by the Council and given an additional boost by the
centenary of Newman's death in 1890.
Ian T. Ker's authoritarive and fully annotated edition of The Idea of a
University, which appeared in 1976, was a major event on the scholarly
front. Soon thereafter, J. M. Cameron, who had earlier said that modern
educational thinking was little more than "a series of footnotes" to
Newman, used the Idea as his point of departure for reflections on
higher education in the present. The same approach was carried much
further by Jaroslav Pelikan in his The Idea of the University: A
Reconsideration, which came out in 1992. Although far from uncritical,
Pelikan found Newman a rewarding partner in a "dialogue" on the nature
and purpose of higher education, and his must surely be the most
audacious effort on record to use a book more than a century old as the
prism for analyzing the current scene. But Yale professor Frank Turner's
1996 edition of the Idea brings Newman even more directly into
confrontation with the present. Besides supplying "questions for
reflection" and other helps to the reader, Turner's edition includes
five "interpretive essays" by leading scholars who range from an
advocate of religion in higher education, through a representative of
postmodernism, to a visionary of the "electronic university."
Last Fall, Turner's edition was reviewed in a militantly conservative
student publication at Notre Dame, under the heading, "Newman's
Dangerous Idea." Although heartened by its appearance, the reviewer felt
that neither Turner nor the other commentators went far enough in
expounding what he called the book's twofold thesis -- "first, that a
university must serve intellectual truth as its immediate end; and
second that, intellectual truth being a good in itself but not the
highest good, a university must serve the Church as its ultimate end."
This is but one of an increasing number of instances in which the
anti-liberal Newman has been enlisted by conservatives in our currently
raging ideological wars. The earliest example I have come across is a
1988 symposium more or less explicitly dedicated to reclaiming him from
"fashionable Catholic theologians" who "previously made a sport of
setting up Newman as a peritus in theological relativism..." Not all of
the contributors to this collection struck so polemical a note, but the
one who dealt with "Newman's Idea of a Catholic University" was quite
harsh in his treatment of Catholic educational leaders who sold out to
"the senile decrees of a dying liberalism."
In 1993 the conservative trend institutionalized itself in the "Cardinal
Newman Society for the Preservation of Catholic Higher Education." This
body, which held its first annual meeting in Washington last October,
encourages publications like Notre Dame's Right Reason, has its own
web-page, and publishes a newsletter whose title, The Turnaround,
epitomizes the society's understanding of its mission. Indeed, it claims
to have made a difference already by creating a counter-voice to that of
the Catholic educational establishment -- the Association of Catholic
Colleges and Universities -- and thereby helping to prevent the
guidelines for applying Ex Corde Ecclesia to the United States from
being a "total defeat."
Concluding Remarks
On that embattled note we conclude our survey of Newman's Idea in the
minds of American educators -- or, more accurately, Americans concerned
about education. It is, perhaps, disheartening to find it still enmeshed
in ideological controversy. But that has always been the case with
Newman's broader legacy, which opposing factions have claimed and put to
contradictory uses.
To my mind, that confirms the perennial relevance of Newman's thought.
But does it not also raise a question about his intellectual
consistency? If both liberals and conservatives can legitimately claim
him as an ally, may we not infer that he simply vacillated -- couldn't
make up his mind where he stood ? Though misguided, the question is
plausible enough to require an answer. And it can be answered in a way
that not only vindicates Newman's consistency but also illuminates his
educational ideal.
The terms "liberal" and "conservative"are, of course, far too vague,
capacious, and flexible to serve as the criteria for determining
consistency. But even if they designated something more definite, the
same point would apply to them that Newman applied to the "leading
ideas" of "scientific men" -- whatever truth such ideas embody, it is
not the whole truth; they must always be "compared with other truths."
Indeed, the capacity to compare, contrast, and juxtapose ideas, to view
them from different perspectives, is the distinguishing mark of that
"philosophical habit of mind" which Newman holds out as the beau ideal
of liberal education. It is the mark of the mind "which has learned to
leaven the dense mass of facts ... with the elastic force of reason";
which "cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous," but
which has attained a "clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of
all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace them, each in its
place, and each with its own characteristics upon it."
Possessed himself of this balanced and comprehensive vision, Newman
could never be doctrinaire about anything, least of all religion. On the
contrary, he understood that Catholic doctrine was in reality an
ensemble "of separate propositions, each of which, if maintained to the
exclusion of the rest, is a heresy." From this it followed that
circumstance had a great deal to do with what aspect of Catholic
teaching one ought to stress. Under certain conditions, vindicating
papal authority might take priority; in another set of circumstances,
defending the claims of individual conscience could be the need of the
hour.
This consideration in itself suffices to explain what might appear to be
inconsistencies in Newman's stance -- especially when we recall that his
writings span a half-century of rapid and far reaching change. But there
is more, for Newman realized that sincere and intelligent Christian
believers would disagree about what a given situation required, and he
regarded the resulting controversy as natural, necessary, and
beneficial. Speaking precisely of the "awful, never-dying duel" between
authority and "private judgment" within the Catholic Church, he did not
hesitate to call it "warfare" and to pronounce it "necessary for the
very life of religion." Taking into account this conflict theory of
religious truth, as we may call it, along with Newman's appreciation for
the multifaceted nature of religious truth and the role of circumstance
in determining priorities, and remembering that most of his writings
were, as he himself attested, responses to specific occasions -- taking
all this into account, need we wonder that at different times he
stressed different points, or need we be perplexed that both liberals
and conservative lay claim to his heritage?
But none of this was merely opportunistic. For just as Newman discerned
a "continuity of principles" underlying the changes by which Christian
doctrine "developed," we can be confident that an analogous kind of
principle underlay any outward difference in the positions he took at
one time and another. To say what those principles were, and to
speculate on how our grasping them would help us to deal with the
problems of our own time, would require another lecture -- and a
different lecturer! Let me conclude this one by stating my firm belief
our efforts to identify and apply those principles would be amply
repaid, and that it would help us greatly in doing so if we could attain
the philosophical habit of mind Newman describes in The Idea of a
University.
