Education – theology in crisis
The crisis in academic theology is a problem for the Church, not just for Catholic colleges and universities. A leading ecclesiologist calls for the revival of a rigorous theology that is embedded in Scripture, tradition and the life of the Church
A Church without theology – “faith seeking understanding” in the classic definition – is unimaginable. So is theology without a foot in the world of robust academic scrutiny, debate and research. And there can be no Catholic theology without some kind of vital connection with the Church.
The study of theology in Catholic colleges and universities holds a vital social, moral and ethical responsibility. As well as places of scholarship and research, these teaching departments and faculties are central to the cultivation of peaceful coexistence, honest conversation and mutual learning between faith communities in our multi-religious and multi-cultural societies. Yet theology faces an uncertain future in academic institutions in North America and Europe, and, increasingly, around the Catholic world.
The market-oriented model of higher education is steadily encroaching on the Catholic idea of a university as a place of formation of character. Not only is state support for the humanities in publicly owned universities being questioned, impatience with the liberal arts is also growing in private colleges and universities – including Catholic institutions – often egged on by outside consultants beyond either academic or ecclesial accountability. Driven by pragmatism and utilitarianism, this is putting cherished departments of theology and religious studies on the chopping block. At the same time, students are increasingly choosing degree courses they consider most likely to lead to secure and well-paid careers.
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Theology is facing even more severe headwinds, threatening serious consequences not only for Catholic universities but for the Church, which is being impoverished as “faith seeking understanding” disappears from the university curriculum. A completely new vision for the role of theology in and for Catholic colleges and universities is needed. My proposal comes in three parts. First, academic theology must re-engage with the life of the Church. The current pattern of increased detachment and disengagement is neither healthy nor sustainable. It is essential for theologians to engage with the messy reality of the institutional Church: parishes and lay associations and charities; bishops and priests and religious orders. This does not mean that Catholic academic theology should become a thinktank at the service of the bishops, or the voice of the institutional Church, or the defender of religious institutions. Nor does it mean that theologians should be expected to engage in old-style apologetics.
But the failure to cultivate the ecclesial context, nature and mission of theology is self-defeating. It leaves theology increasingly exposed to passing intellectual fashions and cultural trends and vulnerable to being overrun by the technocratic paradigm and displaced by ideological versions of Catholic identity. The current wave of antagonism toward the institutional Church is not the same as the rebellious movements within the Church in the 1970s; today, disenchantment with the institution is part and parcel of the Catholic disruption seen in the daily news feed about the sexual abuse crisis, the relentless financial scandals and the lack of pastoral sensitivity and awareness shown by many church leaders – and bears similarities to the current hostile sentiment towards universities’ administrators.
Both anti-Vatican II Catholics and what I call “non-Vatican II Catholicism” have a narrative and a strategy that is based on an acknowledgement of the necessity of institutions (both in the Church and in higher education). The price of ignoring their disruptive strategies may well be that theology will return to a landscape similar to previous decades, when it was the preserve of a self-interested and self-absorbed clerical clique. The interpretation and continued implementation of Vatican II would be left to the mercy of church bureaucrats and ultra-conservative Catholic colleges, and the seminary system would return to uncritical biblical study and a withdrawal from rigorous scholarship. This is the price Catholic scholars (theologians, philosophers of religion, ethicists, sociologists and church historians) would pay if they were tempted to steer clear of anything that smacked of the “institution” and instead gravitated toward “cultural studies”.
Second, we need a new vision of the place and significance in the life of the Church of the Second Vatican Council, because our old assumptions and presuppositions are gone. There are teachings of Vatican II that clearly still require augmentation and development. Some of that work has been done. Some has not – especially in relation to women and ministry in the Church. But beyond the relatively small anti-Vatican II faction and those who want a return to pre-Vatican II Catholicism, the real problem is “non-conciliar Catholicism”, which denies the living tradition. “Non-Vatican II” Catholics do not ignore Vatican II, but seek to neutralise it, to claim that the trajectories of the Council are concluded and exhausted, that its promises are empty, or that nothing “happened” at Vatican II.
This dismissal of the relevance for the Church today of Vatican II begins in scholarly conversations and in the teaching of theology in lecture theatres, but leads to critical decisions regarding the future of departments and schools of theology. As academics, we are called to distinguish carefully between different forms of criticism and endorsement of Vatican II. Free discussion of the councils of the Church is integral to the academic debate; of course, not all criticism of Vatican II is anti-conciliar; of course, not all endorsement of Vatican II is conciliar. Our study of Vatican II must go deeper than seeing it solely through the lens of either continuity or disruption between “before” and “after” the Council.
Third, we need a new engagement with tradition (of which Vatican II is part, but only a part). If theologians ignore dogmatics, patristics, ecclesiology, philosophical and fundamental theology, and focus on ethnography, cultural studies, and activist political theology, eventually the vacuum is going to be filled by self-appointed “watchdogs” of an ultra-vigilant Catholic triumphalism. We have an opportunity to begin a new, and less highly charged, phase of study of the importance of Vatican II and the post-Vatican II Church within the whole of the Catholic tradition: the “both-and” instead of the “either-or”; the old together with the new; the paradoxical and the fragmented; the universal and the particular; the metaphysical and the historical.
One of theology’s tasks is to “give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for our hope” (1 Peter 3:15). In the twenty-first century, Catholic theology is “done” more and more in different kinds of institutions – pontifical institutes, Catholic adult education centres, Catholic colleges and universities with different orientations, centres for Catholic studies in non-Catholic institutions, and so on – some dismissing or ignoring, some receiving and further developing the vision of theology coming from Pope Francis.
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The central question is, can Catholic theology be rigorous, critical, scientific and at the same time, committedly ecclesial? There is a tension here that can be dynamic and fruitful. Coexistence is possible if we take seriously unfolding Catholic tradition in all its dynamism, its cultural and historical varieties; in a global vision that is committedly ecumenical and does not exclude the study of other religious and philosophical and intellectual traditions; and if we approach tradition as something worth trying to understand, as well as worth passing on. This needs careful, informed and intellectually generous digestion, scrutiny, interrogation, curiosity, appreciation – rather than jumping straight into deconstructive rejection or apologetical application.
It’s important to begin by asking whether Catholic higher education still aspires to be universitas in a way other universities cannot. In this sense, paradoxically, the irrelevance of theology is precisely its relevance. A Church without theology is at risk of becoming exposed to the passing political, social, and economic alliances of the day. A Catholic theology without its roots planted in the real, living Church, without a view to helping the people of God address the pressing spiritual (and not just social and political) issues of our time – academic theologians could have enriched the synodal process if they had played a greater role – is at risk of becoming a subsidised, high-cost, self-referential club.
Theology is evidently no longer at the heart of the contemporary university. But the need for theology hasn’t changed. If anything, it is more important than ever.
Massimo Faggioli is professor in the department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University. His latest book is Theology and Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis (Orbis, £24.99; Tablet price, £22.49).
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