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A Study of Catholicism: An Interdisciplinary Faculty Seminar
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Abstract
This essay describes an intensive eight-month long interdisciplinary faculty seminar which brought together faculty from the social sciences and humanities to explore, with different methodologies, the nature and traditions of Catholicism. It describes the way in which the seminar was organized, the participants selected, the syllabus chosen and how the discussion unfolded. It concludes with an evaluation by the author of what was learned, and then provides a brief description of the research projects undertaken by the seminar participants.
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- Copyright © The College Theology Society 2002
References
1 We had already completed two years before a seminar devoted to the study of ethics and religion in the professions (see “Ethics and Religion in Professional Education: An Interdisciplinary Seminar,” Current Issues in Catholic Higher Education 18/2 [Spring 1998]: 21–50, also as a chapter in Enhancing Religious Identity: Best Practices from Catholic Campuses, ed. John R. Wilcox and Irene King [Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000]). And since the seminar described in this article, we have completed one on “Science and Religion,” and now are returning this year (2000–2001) to a year long sequence of faculty discussion groups, stimulated by readings, national speakers and a two-day symposium, focused on the theme of “Ethics and the Professions.” A shorter version of this article was given as a paper at the annual meeting of the College Theology Society, devoted to the theme of theology and the social sciences and hosted by Villanova University in June of 2000.
2 Proudfoot, Wayne, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 196.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 197.
4 We did not plan the first seminar (see note #1) early enough; consequently, the only time all the participants could meet was 7:30 a.m., an asceticism none liked but all generously practiced.
5 By late November, two months before the seminar was to begin, one of the social scientists decided that the following summer she would retire from the university and move back East to be closer to her children and grandchildren. By then, it was too late to find another person from her department to replace her.
6 Groome, Thomas H., “What Makes a School Catholic?” in The Contemporary Catholic School: Context, Identity and Diversity, ed. McLaughlin, Terence, O'Keefe, Joseph S.J., and O'Keeffe, Bernadette (Washington, DC: Falmer Press, 1996), 107–25Google Scholar; John Haldane, “Catholic Education and Catholic Identity,” Ibid., 126–35; Heft, James S.M., “What Does it Mean to be Catholic?”, St. Anthony Messenger: Youth Update, December 1988Google Scholar; and Terrence Tilley, “Toward a Grammar of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition,” which since has appeared as chapter 4, “The Grammar of a Tradition,” in his Inventing Catholic Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000).
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11 Berger, Peter, “Protestantism and the Quest for Certainty,” Christian Century, 26 August - 2 September 1998), 782–96.Google Scholar See also Steinfels, Peter, “Beliefs,” New York Times, 5 September 1998, p. 9.Google ScholarPubMed For further acknowledgment of the resilience of religion, see Berger, Peter, ed., The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999).Google Scholar For an insightful review of one of Berger's more recent studies, see Robert Wuthnow's review of Berger's, A Far Glory: The Quest for Faith in an Age of Credulity (New York: Free Press, 1992)Google Scholar in Commonweal, 6 November 1992, pp. 35–37. For an excellent study of the public role of religion in modern society, see Casanova, José, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar; see also Coleman's, John review in Commonweal, 23 September 1994, pp. 21–22.Google Scholar
12 Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America's New Quest for Community (New York: Free Press, 1994), chapter 1, “Introduction: The Small-Group Movement.”
13 “Catholic Universities Can Be the Salvation of Pluralism on American Campuses,” 26 February 1999, pp. B6–B7; “The Revival of Moral Inquiry in the Social Sciences,” 3 September 1999, pp. B4–B6.
14 Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), “Introduction: Modernity and Its Discontents,” 1–23; and The Human Difference: Animals, Computers, and the Necessity of Social Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), chapter 6, “Social Science as a Way of Knowing,” 137–63.
15 Swidler, Ann, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51 (April 1986): 273–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Becker, Penny Edgell, “‘Rational Amusement and Sound Instruction’: Constructing the True Catholic Woman in the Ave Maria, 1865–1889,” Religion and American Culture 8 (Winter 1998): 55–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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17 McCarraher, Eugene B., “The Church Irrelevant: Paul Hanly Furfey and the Fortunes of American Catholic Radicalism,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 7/2 (Summer 1997): 163–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 “U.S. Catholicism: Trends in the 90's,” National Catholic Reporter, 8 October 1993: pp. 21–31.
19 Thomas, D.M., The White Hotel (New York: Penguin, 1993).Google Scholar During this time we also looked at an article by Raboteau, Albert, “Praying the ABCs: Reflections on Faith in History,” the prologue to his book, A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), 1–14.Google Scholar The prologue stressed the possibility and importance of entering into the experience of a person different from oneself.
20 Incidentally, the third set of these surveys appeared only after the seminar ended, and may be found in the 29 October 1999 issue of the National Catholic Reporter. The fact that these surveys were taken three times over a 12-year period allows the researchers to establish certain important trends that reveal, among other things, generational differences and the increasing disaffection of women from the life of the church.
21 Members of the seminar pointed out that, contrary to popular opinion and seemingly contrary to the way in which some of the questions of the survey were formulated, the legitimate process of decision making for the individual Catholic requires that finally, after careful discernment of a moral issue in the light of the church's teaching (which teaching is codified over time by the members of the hierarchy who themselves are obliged to discern the sensus fidelium), the individual Catholic must decide for him or herself what is right or wrong. In the last analysis, the individual Catholic alone must make the decision, but ought never to make it alone.
22 Though, of course, faculty in some disciplines pursue sub-specialties so distinctive that even they have trouble conversing with each other. In our seminar, e.g., differences existed between the approaches taken by the two sociologists, a symbolic interactionist who valued empirical studies, and a theorist who found the social criticism grounded in theory most helpful.
23 See my “Have Catholic Colleges Reached an Impasse?” The Chronicle of Higher Education 46/12 (12 November 1999): B6–B7; and, written with five University of Dayton colleagues, “Dear Bishops: Open Letter on Ex corde ecclesiae,” Commonweal 5 November 1999, pp. 16–18.Google Scholar