….aka The Catholic University

While an open marketplace of ideas is ideal for a secular university, such a marketplace is detrimental to a traditional Catholic university. From the first inception of Catholic education, the goals have been twofold — to educate the mind and sharpen the sword. If a Catholic university places the key tenets of its faith in a common marketplace of ideas, it is succumbing to the very relativism it has been battling all these years. Ask yourself this: What future Catholic warrior will sacrifice his livelihood, family, worldly belongings, or life for a faith that is being peddled in an open air marketplace? While it is true the marketplace may permit the university to win the mind of the student, the marketplace will never win that student’s heart.

Doubt the severity of this indictment? Just look at Georgetown University, one of America’s oldest Jesuit schools. Just last year, faculty and students walked out of the graduation ceremony when Cardinal Francis Arinze merely stated that the family unit is “mocked by homosexuality,” a moral truth taught by the Church for thousands of years. Faculty went ballistic and demanded apologies for the “offensive” remarks of the Cardinal. Yes, professors of a Catholic university called an absolute Catholic truth offensive. They still, however, cashed their paychecks.