NEWS & VIEWS
NEWS & VIEWS Scholars and Origins The concept of the American Catholic Church as a dogmatic, authoritarian institution, restricting freedom of thought and hostile to science, is an old one fed...
...Which means that "your freedom operates within fixed boundaries...
...Catholics are belatedly taking taking their place in American higher education and in the near future will be producing their numerical share of the nation's scholars and scientists...
...The Lord's "team," first of all, follows the rules...
...It should be noted," Steinberg observes, "that all but three of the 25 most productive institutions [according to Hardy's rating] are small, private colleges that are not major sources of doctorates in terms of absolute numbers even though they produce large numbers of PhDs relative to their size...
...After recalling some of the better known, if sometimes prejudicial, studies echoing the 1931 assertions, Steinberg challenges figures of Hardy, according to which Catholic institutions show the poorest rate of "productivity" of any denominational group -productivity being defined and measured in the study in terms of PhD production...
...Christenson was speaking before some 30,000 Catholic charismatics gathered for the recent Continental Conference of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a football squad, which is assembled under a Coach who formed it into a team that moved with such order and precision, in startling innovation, that it subdued all its opponents...
...If the team follows orders--"those of the Coach and His delegated authority" -and shows some initiative, then "in Him there is victory...
...Even Hardy's honor roll of merit comes under attack...
...Because institutions are high or low in productivity, he infers that they exemplify a certain set of values...
...Steinberg's position, based on 1969 national surveys of both faculty and students and reflected in his Melting Pot book, is that Catholics are "rapidly improving their representation at all levels of American higher education...
...It goes without saying that the team needs teamwork...
...Hardy's finding that Catholic institutions on the average have low rates of productivity is cast in a quite different light, asserts Steinberg, when it is remembered that these institutions, like their students, are only two or three generations removed from immigrant status, poverty, or both...
...Accordingly, he presumes that Hardy's thesis will go the way of other theories that impute cultural superiority to flie groups on die top of the social heap and inferiority to those on the bottom...
...Secondly, the Lord's team practices fundamentals, and submits to training and discipline...
...His is a pleasant hope . .. but maybe also a sanguine presumption given the very history that Steinberg cites in Change-to say nothing of the historic Catholic proclivity to contribute to the stereotyping of itself as anti-intellectual...
...Stephen Steinberg of the City University of New York, and author of The Academic Melting Pot (McGraw-Hill, 1974), takes on Hardy in the June issue of Change, a magazine concerned with higher education...
...Rev...
...Bishop of Miami would ever be topped...
...Hold That Metmphor...
...No Catholic school made the top-25 list...
...In a final paragraph, Steinberg asserts that social science has grown wary of theories, such as Hardy's, that explain the success of some groups in terms of cultural virtues, and the failure of others in terms of cultural deficiencies...
...The latest example may be that by Kenneth R. Hardy in the August, 1974, Science...
...It seemed unlikely that for pure schmaltz die Superbowl invocation of a few years back by the R.C...
...Whatever, most feats are made to be topped, and that earlier invocation must now be placed second to one by Lutheran pastor Rev...
...Steinberg zeroes in on Hardy's value measurements and most particularly on the tendency to construe a low rate of productivity as evidence of a defective intellectual and cultural ethos...
...Rev...
...NEWS & VIEWS Scholars and Origins The concept of the American Catholic Church as a dogmatic, authoritarian institution, restricting freedom of thought and hostile to science, is an old one fed partly by some historic Catholic blunders (Galileo) and more recently by some debatable sociological studies - the granddaddy of which may be the one in the December, 1931, Scientific Monthly reporting Unitarians to be 1,695 times more likely than Catholics to be listed among the nation's eminent scientists...
...Breaking the rules "does not bring freedom, it disqualifies you...
...Since he has no independent evidence on the value systems of institutions, he has no way of knowing whether differences in values explain differences in productivity...
...Larry Christen-son of San Pedro, Calif., delivered - appropriately - in Notre Dame University's football stadium, South Bend...
...Christenson didn't predict the score...
...Furthermore, Catholics were 25 percent of the nation's graduate students and 29 percent of the nation's undergraduates...
...But he then asserts that these values constitute the principal reason that their productivity is high or low...
...In actuality, the University of California at Berkeley, the City College of New York, the University of Illinois, and Harvard, which produced the largest numbers of PhDs, turned out more future PhDs than all 25 colleges on Hardy's list It is also noteworthy that the Catholic University of America and the University of Notre Dame, in terms of sheer numbers, produced more PhDs than 19 of the institutions on Hardy's list during this same period [1950-1961...
...While the discipline may be strict, "there is freedom in two ways-through the training one develops freedom of proficiency and in the training the Coach recognizes where exceptions are called for...
...it also follows a "strategy," meaning that "both order and freedom play a part in die Lord's masterplan for victory...
...Christenson was off and running...
...The 1931 conclusion - that "the conspicuous dearth of scientists among Catholics suggests that the tenets of the church are not consonant with scientific endeavor"-has been fostered, again perhaps by Catholic faux pas, but also by studies delving since into the social origins of American scientists and scholars...
...The top five of Hardy's 25 institutions are California Institute of Technology, Reed, Bryn Mawr, Swarth-more and the University of Chicago...
...His reasoning is altogether circular," comments Steinberg...
...Says Steinberg: "While Catholics constituted only 15 percent of faculty over 55 years of age, the figure rose to 20 percent among those under 35...
...The data point to the fact that...
...JOHN DEEDY...
...Or was it an Orange Bowl game invocation...
Vol. 103 • July 1976 • No. 14
