Franciscan Charism in Higher Education, The

Franciscan Tradition, the LiberalArts College, and Society

Franciscan Tradition, the Liberal Arts College, and Society William E. McConville, O.F.M., Ph.D.* Before providing an overview of the argument of this paper, I would like to make two preliminary remarks. First, I approach this topic as one who does not teach within the context of a liberal arts faculty. I have been involved in theological education, specifically theological education in preparation for ministry. While I have taught at both Franciscan and Jesuit undergraduate colleges and at a state university, my day-to-day world was that of the divinity school. It was a stimulating place to be, although not as exciting as a good liberal arts college. Second, I do not understand that I am responsible to solve the conundrum suggested by the title. [I presume that you do not expect me to do this.] I want to suggest some ways of thinking about the issue and to propose some categories and some historical analogies that may or may not prove helpful. I hope that what I say will be at least stimulating. A colloquium such as this, which is conceived as part of a larger, heuristic process, is better served by a presentation that is interestingly wrong rather than dully right. The paper will first explore the relationship between the liberal arts college and society. To assist us in this task, I will use a model that has been developed to sort out the relationship between the church and society. In the second section I will turn to the Franciscan tradition and ask whether this remarkable movement * This paper was originaly presented at the Symposium Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Neumann College, Aston, Pa., March 17, 1990. 130 Spirit and Life, Volume 2 within Western Christianity continues to provide sources for addressing the college/society issue. 1. The Liberal Arts College and Society Several years ago I attended the Thomas Jefferson Lectures delivered under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The distinguished lecturer was Jaroslav Pelikan, professor of church history at Yale. His topic was the meaning and import of tradition, how it shapes us and how we in turn transform it. [These lectures have subsequently been published as The Vindication of Tradition.] As he spoke, though, it was clear to me what he had done. He had taken the Roman Catholic theology of tradition, as i t might have been articulated by John Newman or Yves Congar, and applied it without its theological trappings to culture and society. I propose to do something similar here. I would like to look at a typical way in which Roman Catholicism interprets the relationship between church and society and then ask whether it holds when one substitutes the word "liberal arts college" for "church." Actually it was not Pelikan's lectures which prompted me to think through the parallelism between church and college. As I reviewed literature such as Warren Bryan Martin's College o f Character and Richard Morrill's Teaching Values in College I was struck by the similarities between church and college. In fact Martin makes it quite explicit when he says that there have traditionally been two institutions which have had "mediatory'' roles in society, the church and the college. These institutions, as he explained it, mediated between the "one and the many," that is to say, they were a force for unity and reconciliation in society. Such a conserving role is complemented, in Martin's view, by a critical role for education and religion in the larger society. This involves the need to provide an alternative force to the culture of control, by bringing criticism and creative alternatives to the ideologies and programs of the state.1 Given this perspective Martin takes an eminently logical step to the role of the church-related (tradition-specific?) college: "The college, particularly the church-related college, provides a fertile setting for what is most needed now—the planting of a metaphysics for higher 1 Warren B. Martin, College of Character (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1982) 187. Franciscan Tradition, the Liberal Arts and Society 131 education that will enable the institution to respond to the ethical crises on campus and in society."2 It is within this framework that I would like to raise some questions and offer some reflections. The questions are the following: 1) Are churches and liberal arts colleges at all analogous institutions? and 2) Can recent...