Correspondence
MURPHY, PATRICK J. & TURNER, JAMES & HOLLERICH, MICHAEL J. & EMERITUS, PROFESSOR & CONNELLY, TOM & Desmond, John F. & Egan, Robert J. & Schilling, Timothy P. & SAVANT, JOHN J. & McMENAMIN, ELIZABETH
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors No to school vouchers Wrong, wrong, wrong! I am amazed that you have been seduced by voucher propaganda [editorial, April 5]. After all the rhetoric has died down,...
...This attitude proved the one unpleasant aspect of a delightful experience of teaching students, initiating them into original research, and raising research funds for the university-the three secular tasks of a college professor...
...I particularly want to thank you for the April 5 issue on Catholic education, a subject close to my heart...
...PATRICK J. MURPHY Corona, Calif...
...Ironically, by virtue of its very pluralism, the public school is restricted in its service of the pluralistic imperative...
...JOHN F. DESMOND Walla Walla, Wash...
...Should Catholic universities hire only Catholic faculty...
...And there are important signs of a revolt from within the ranks-in the American Literature Association and in the newly formed international association of professors devoted to the humanistic (that is, traditional) approach to the study of literature...
...Scanning them, one would hardly believe the works being discussed had any human beings represented in them...
...Neither do I see how a renewal of Catholic intellectual traditions could possibly happen in quasi-isolation from secular scholarship...
...All my article says is: "A (Continued on page 4) (Continued from page 2) Catholic university, it seems to me, will be a place where a significant number of its faculty and professional staff and of its student body are Catholics and people well-disposed toward Catholicism....Saying this leaves a lot of questions unanswered, I realize, and different universities will work out the details in different ways...
...In it, Muggeridge expressed beautifully the ultimate futility of any search for the "historical" Jesus...
...In a recent California referendum, the voucher proposition was not endorsed by the state's bishops' conference...
...Any person who considers entering the program or applying for one of its open staff positions should take this into serious consideration...
...Author's revision It was a surprise to open your recent education issue [April 5] and discover there an article ("Notes to a Student") I had written some time ago...
...So I welcome Professor Turner's worries, but my own concern is that many teachers-Catholic and otherwise-in many departments at many Catholic colleges and universities now teach their courses on the basis of a secular liberal worldview that has become an established religion in academia and which takes for granted the irrelevance of religion to thought and a serious intellectual life...
...I think it was Aristotle who said that the end of government is not the good life but the good person...
...Or (as I would hope) welcome secular scholars as full partners in a mutually nourishing engagement between Catholic traditions and contemporary secular learning...
...and Thomas N. Maloney's "Job Wanted: Catholic Colleges & the Hiring Dilemma" [April 5]: Half a century ago, I earned the Ph.D...
...Specifically, we recommended that schools accepting vouchers be required to reserve a percentage of their enrollment for economically underprivileged children...
...As for creating a two-tiered educational system, the funding of public schools based on property taxes has already done that, and with increasingly dire consequences for poor communities...
...in chemistry from an Ivy League school and accepted a teaching post in a well-known Catholic university...
...And the prose style...
...It must grow out of those ingrained and cultivated habits of reflection, choice, and response that theologians call "virtue...
...Having taught at many levels in both public and private institutions, I have thought long upon this dilemma...
...neo-Druids believe this...
...PROFESSOR EMERITUS Jesus and history Shortly after reading Robert L. Wilken's thoughtful review [March 8] of Luke Timothy Johnson's The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels, I happened upon a book on the life of Jesus written by the late Malcolm Muggeridge some thirty years ago...
...My concern has to do with the insert focusing on the Channel ministry training program...
...As Carlin so well demonstrates, however, the public school cannot pursue a particular formation (and its attendant behavior) in many areas of value without offense to one or another cultural constituency...
...The author replies: I am grateful for Professor Turner's kind words, and can assure him that I too welcome secular scholars, as well as Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu scholars, as full partners on Catholic campuses...
...It is, rather, that in the face of every moral challenge-be it discrimination, sexism, violence, economic injustice-the answers always, and exclusively, devolve upon structures, upon laws and quotas, upon distributive strategies, and not at all upon formation...
...At present, however, the program is undergoing a major restructuring, and its survival is uncertain...
...His one visit in thirty years is not enough...
...TIMOTHY P. SCHILLING Vancouver, Wash...
...Drums, cymbals, and trumpets...
...I don't understand why this should send a chill up anybody's spine...
...that is to say, in formation...
...Vouchers are a government subsidy for white flight...
...Let's continue the conversation...
...In the eyes of the administrators, we were just hired hands, hired only because the order did not have enough priests to fill all the teaching slots...
...I hope it gets picked up by Harper's, Utne, Reader's Digest, and anthologies and textbooks yet unborn...
...Vouchers are one plausible way both to ameliorate funding inequities and to encourage parental and community involvement in schools...
...What is our obligation to the academy at large...
...its members wisely saw through the veneer of respectability in a measure supported by ultracon-servatives that promoted immigrant bashing and prejudice...
...Well, the good person is not the product of high sentiment and noble ideals, not even of a great understanding of others: The good person is a product of a process deeply embedded in the wisdom, the trial and error, myths and manners of a culture...
...This issue of faculty hiring highlights the big neglected question in current conversations about "Catholic character...
...It's patently untrue that they don't go to sessions to hear papers delivered- attendance ranges from meager to standing-room-only for "hot" sessions...
...But McConnell is wrong in his caricature of the antics of the academic "weenies" at the annual meeting...
...I suspect that few members actually read the journal...
...Can Catholic universities best foster a renewal of Catholic intellectual traditions in quasi-isolation from secular scholarship (the approach inherited from the neo-Thomist era), or in deliberate daily exchange with modern learning...
...If this is true of mortal genius, how much more so when the artist is God Himself, concerned to send us a self-portrait in the lineaments, and using the language of mortality in order to open up for us new vistas of hope and understanding," Muggeridge's book is called Jesus: The Man Who Lives...
...Soon I found out that my lay Catholic colleagues and I were peons...
...It is not that the young and their instructors do not have noble and generous visions...
...Though the article accurately reflects my views at the time of writing, I would say things a bit differently now...
...I am reminded of Peter De Vries's description of the German language as akin to the sound of several trunks rolling down a staircase...
...Or accept non-Catholic faculty as a practical necessity, given a dearth of qualified Catholics (this would seem to be Egan's bent...
...It is also, indirectly, a very strong argument for private education...
...Realistically, vouchers are one way to create a two-tiered educational system whereby the well-to-do will not have to attend school with "those people...
...Channel was for me a positive experience, and I believe it has much in its history to be proud of...
...And not "everyone" gets drunk...
...What is our duty to ourselves...
...And so public education finds itself reduced, in these matters, to the role of pedagogical cataloguer: Here's what the Quakers say...
...james turner Notre Dame, Ind...
...God molds history to His purposes, revealing in it (Continued on page 30) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) the Fearful Symmetry which is His language in conversing with men...
...I have witnessed numerous versions of "values clarification," some more urgent than others-and have left often dispirited and disappointed...
...The real cause for despair is that many do attend...
...Pedagogical experience, however, and the wisdom of such thinkers as Plato insist that valid and enduring education must entail formation...
...ELIZABETH MCMENAMIN Scranton, Pa...
...The Catholic intellectual tradition is a dialogue with Neoplatonism, Stoicism, Aristo-telianism, Arabic philosophies, Renaissance humanism, natural sciences, German Idealism, American pragmatism, Marxism, Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian philosophies, psychoanalysis, social sciences, literary criticism, hermeneutic theory, and many other things...
...Lay teachers as peons Re: Robert J. Egan's "Can Universities be Catholic...
...Often the ambiance is much drearier-sipping white wine or latte, amid numbing conversations about departmental politics, publishers, and-God help us-diets and workouts...
...Partners in academia I appreciated Robert J. Egan's thoughtful and intelligent effort to answer the question "Can universities be Catholic...
...Praise and alleluia...
...The editors reply: Mr...
...here's what Unitarians propose...
...As for Catholicism, we were told that that was the priests' domain...
...ROBERT J. EGAN, SJ...
...Educational on education As a returnee to the fold I want to compliment you on the generally high level of the articles I've read since I re-subscribed about a year ago...
...for Frank McConnell's "Desecrating Literature" [April 5...
...But, like almost all the multiplying responses to this conundrum, the article elided an essential if awkward preliminary issue: What should be the relation of Catholic institutions to the larger scholarly world...
...Our administrators treated us exactly the way the entire pre-John XXIII church treated its laity, insisting that we were to "pray, pay, and obey"-and have many children in order to replenish the ranks of the priesthood and keep the convents full...
...of a discipline reinforced in lore and practice...
...we should stick to our area of secular expertise...
...Murphy identifies what is potentially the most worrisome aspect of any voucher system, but a concern that our editorial addressed in some detail...
...Attributing mere prejudice to those who think vouchers might improve both public and private education is a canard...
...but history is no more than the clay in which He works...
...After all the rhetoric has died down, ask yourselves, "Who will benefit from vouchers...
...JOHN J. SAVANT San Rafael Calif...
...McConnell also rightly skewers the association's journal for its frequent "desecration" of what makes literature engaging, valuable, and lovable...
...TOM CONNELLY Dumont, N.J...
...Without it, all the values clarification in the world is, at best, ineffectual chatter...
...This formation the public school does essay in such areas as skills acquisition, physical training, scientific methodology, participatory citizenship, and the like...
...All hail, McConnell...
...It almost always has been engaged in dialogue and almost everywhere is now...
...Values & virtue David Carlin's "Teaching Values in Schools" [February 9] pinpoints, for public education in a society both pluralistic and democratic, an inherent dilemma regarding the transmission of values...
...As another grunt in the academic trenches, I appreciated his skewering of the outrageous papers delivered at the MLA's annual meetings, papers that often reveal an almost pathological hatred of literature...
...From experience we know that it will not be our poor brothers and sisters, but rather the elitist middle class...
...In some of the most critical areas of moral virtue and transcendent belief, the public school must limit itself to broad and inoffensive generalizations, must shy away from that formation which is at the heart of efficacious instruction...
...The academic job search is a well-worked genre, but Maloney really contributed something new, thanks to his honest appraisal of the hiring conditions which actually obtain at the large majority of Catholic colleges and universities, where indifference and even contempt for religious tradition are more commonly met than sectarian exclusivity...
...Looking for Jesus in history," wrote Muggeridge, "is as futile as trying to invent a yardstick that will measure infinity, or a clock that will tick through eternity...
...If the strength implicit in our national motto-"e pluribus unum"-resides in its pluralism, its multiplicity of customs and gifts and values, then that strength must derive, not from mere encyclopedic information regarding cultural options, but from a deep and abiding formation...
...Who would look for Michelangelo's Pieta in the quarry where the marble to make it was procured...
...But there is hope in this wilderness...
...Thomas N. Maloney's report on his job search should be mailed gratis to the administrative vice-president of every Catholic college and university in the country...
...By reason of its commitment to all constituencies, the public school must limit itself, in critical areas of values education, to information...
...Our priest-administrators had more respect for janitors than for us, far more respect for students whose parents provided the school's income, and great respect for the few Jewish and Chinese faculty in our midst...
...at worst, that pernicious kind of illusion which, in the guise of good intentions, distracts us from the great moral task of becoming godly...
...MICHAEL J. HOLLERICH Saint Paul, Minn...
...Since this experience was not peculiarly mine but the common lot of large numbers of Catholic college teachers of my generation, please withhold my name and location...
...Or for Shakespeare's King Lear in history...
...How do these relate to each other...
...Literature will survive I was pleased, amused, and annoyed by Frank McConnell's essay on the Modern Language Association's annual meeting and its journal, PMLA...
Vol. 123 • May 1996 • No. 9
