As Catholic higher education goes, so goes the nation.
Too bold a claim for a mere sector of a sector?—a small fraction of the nation’s four thousand colleges and universities, and thus an even smaller portion of the mighty American economy?
Perhaps. Yet, to read this issue of From the Academy is to be persuaded that Catholic institutions of higher learning are punching far above their weight, not only preserving Western civilization’s cultural inheritance, just as monks did in the early Middle Ages, but presenting a unified theory of the human person: men and women in imago Dei, grappling with truth as God has revealed it in nature, in history, in our academic disciplines, and in His Word.
This issue features myriad delights:
- Kyle Washut, president of sponsoring institution Wyoming Catholic College, on the purpose of schools such as his—those that, in the words of Pope Leo XIV, “promot[e] respect … discernment and the development of all the human dimensions”;
- David Deavel on the history of Catholic higher education in America;
- George Leef on Massachusetts’s legal discrimination against Thomas Aquinas College;
- Anthony Jones on Catholic education as an invitation to serve the polis;
- Trey Dimsdale on what Catholic universities can offer Protestant students;
- Andrea Kirk Assaf’s fascinating conversation with Acton Institute co-founder Robert Sirico and Andrew Fowler’s with Catholic philanthropist Frank Hanna;
- Mark Bauerlein’s review of Reimagining the Catholic University with Pieper, Newman, and Dawson;
- Adam Kissel on the future of Catholic-university accreditation;
- and more.
Readers of this issue will not discover that Catholic higher ed is in perfect order. As I write in the issue’s research brief, “we have been having the same argument”—about secularization and the give-and-take between Church and world—“for the last sixty years.” Nevertheless, the education offered by authentic Catholic colleges has endured—must always endure. The staff of From the Academy are honored to present this issue explaining how and why.
Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and of From the Academy.
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