Australian Catholic University (ACU) recently hosted the Association of Southeast and East Asian Catholic College and Universities (ASEACCU) conference for the first time, welcoming more than 200 delegates from ASEACCU’s 87 member institutions to its North Sydney campus to reflect on their purpose and identity as Catholic universities.
In an opinion piece published in Catholic Weekly to coincide with this important event, ACU Vice-Chancellor and President Prof Zlatko Skrbis points out that ‘Catholic universities make a remarkable contribution to society and the intellectual life of the Church’, ensuring ‘the link between faith and reason is at the heart of teaching, learning and research.
‘Catholic universities are also built around a commitment to serving the common good, through service learning and community engagement, and by offering opportunities to students from all walks of life,’ he writes, noting that only two of Australia’s many universities—ACU and the University of Notre Dame—are Catholic.
Two sources of inspiration
As Christian institutions, he observes, ‘Catholic universities routinely look to two sources of inspiration’: St Cardinal John Henry Newman’s ‘timeless reflections on Catholic higher education’, as set out in his book Idea of a University (1852), and, more than a century later, Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
For Newman, Prof Skrbis writes, ‘the purpose of university education was to raise “the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age”.’
In such Catholic institutions, ‘religion and the Catholic faith should be accessible to all, but distinguishable from the formation in convents and seminaries,’ Prof Skrbis writes, outlining Newman’s vision for the university. ‘Instead, a true university would offer “direct preparation for this world” and prepare students for a full, engaged and fulfilling life.’
A Catholic university is tasked with integrating faith and reason, academic excellence, and the mission of the Church into its educational framework.
More than 100 years later, in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II argued that a Catholic University ‘is without any doubt one of the best instruments that the Church offers to our age which is searching for certainty and wisdom’.
‘In other words,’ Prof Skrbis writes, ‘Catholic universities exist to serve, through our research and our teaching.
‘These sources of inspiration have become necessary touchstones in an increasingly secular society.’
Integrating faith and reason
Outlining the value of what Catholic universities offer, he writes that ‘Not only do we add colour and vibrancy to Australia’s higher education sector; we offer a deeper mission and purpose that stem from Catholic social teaching: the pursuit of knowledge, the dignity of the human person and the common good.’
Elaborating on this, Prof Skrbis points out that ACU is one of the first Australian universities to receive the new Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, recognising its commitment to ‘addressing real-world challenges in the community’ and ‘serving people who have historically experienced disadvantage or marginalisation’.
‘At its core, … a Catholic university is tasked with integrating faith and reason, academic excellence, and the mission of the Church into its educational framework,’ Prof Skrbis concludes, giving students ‘purpose and direction for what lies before them’ and ‘a hope for the future to all’.
An ethic of caring
While in Australia for the ASEACCU Conference, Vincentian priest and respected Catholic higher education leader Fr Dennis Holtschneider CM also reflected on the purpose of the Catholic university as he accepted an honorary doctorate from ACU.
The immediate past president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, and former president of DePaul University, the largest Catholic university in the United States, was awarded the degree of Doctor of the University (Honoris Causa)—his twelfth—in recognition of his leadership in contemporary Catholic higher education in North America and beyond, as well as his academic reputation in the field of higher education.
Fr Holtschneider played a pivotal role in the merging of seven colleges to establish ACU in 1991 and continues to be a mentor to the university’s leadership.
During the official awarding ceremony in North Sydney last week, attended by more than 200 students and university leaders from across Asia and Australia, Fr Holtschneider said, ‘The work that your institutions do across this part of the world is spectacular and important and noble. To be with you in this moment is a little bit humbling, I must say.’
Speaking on the gift of a Christian education, Fr Holtschneider said St Augustine, in his autobiographical work Confessions, admitted to having regrets about his own education.
You want an education for yourself and for a world to follow after you that deeply cares about good deeds of the world, that has the heart of Jesus Christ at the heart of it, guiding it and guiding all of us as our north star.
While studying the canon of classical literature, particularly great stories of Roman and Greek gods, Augustine realised that he had also absorbed their ethics, much of which touted violence, power and using people for selfish gains.
‘He told the story in The Confessions of having to re-educate himself for a new ethic, one that he picked up from his Christianity, as he learnt his Christianity from his mother and then from others,’ Fr Holtschneider said.
“And eventually he adopted Christianity for himself, for he began to find an ethic of caring for the poorest, caring for those who had no power in society, whether it was women in his time or those from other cultures, and he learnt to follow an ethic of Jesus and the way Jesus lived his own life, and it changed his life.’
This ethic of Jesus is what distinguishes a Catholic university, Fr Holtschneider said, and was the ‘north star’ for those who commit to the mission of Catholic higher education.
‘You want an education for yourself and for a world to follow after you that deeply cares about good deeds of the world, that has the heart of Jesus Christ at the heart of it, guiding it and guiding all of us as our north star,’ he said.
‘I’m honoured to be here and to be celebrating Catholic education in all its many forms with all of you because I admire your commitments. I admire what you want for the world and for the difference you want to make in that world in whatever field you will prepare yourself for.’
Banner image: (from left) ACU Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Zlatko Skrbis, Honorary Doctorate recipient Fr Dennis Holtschneider CM, Chancellor Martin Daubney AM KC and Provost Professor Julie Cogin. (Photo courtesy of ACU.)
