Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1958, Page 16

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

16 Proceedings of the Forty-fifth Convention

later Cardinal, Newman became a Catholic convert, his new church
tried to make good use of him by appointing him rector of the
new Catholic university in Dublin. Now Newman, as an excel-
lently trained Oxford man, loved the contemplative mode of life.
For him a university meant a place where the quest of knowledge
was to be pursued for its own sake, not for utilitarian ends. He
promptly began to model the new institution after his ideals, in-
troducing courses in the humanities, in philosophy, in science,
and in theology, which to him was the queen of all sciences. But
he soon found that he had to defend his views against two types
of enemies.

There were the utilitarians who could see no “use” in such
an impractical education as he advocated. They wanted only
professional and vocational courses taught at the university. On
the other side were the intense — not to say bigoted — church peo-
ple, spurred on by their priests, who were alarmed by anything
like knowledge for its own sake. Let such things as science,
philosophy, literature, and the humanities go by the board, and
concentrate on religious subjects, especially on those which are
practical and can immediately be put into use to make the church
dominant.

In answer to these ebjectors Newman delivered and published
his wonderful Discourses on the Scope and Nature of a University
Education, in which he contended that the pure endeavor after
truth, not immediate tangible results, should be the watchword
in higher education. The battle lines were thus sharply drawn
between him and his opponents. The contemplative mode of life
suffered a defeat in this instance, since Newman soon retired from
his position. But in the long view it gained prestige by what he
said about it. He put the matter most clearly when he spoke
about theology. “If,” he said,

theology instead of being cultivated as a contemplation be limited

to the purposes of the pulpit or be represented by the catechism,

it loses — not its usefulness, not its divine character, not its meri-

toriousness (rather it gains a claim upon these titles by such

charitable condescension), but it does lose the particular attri-
bute which I am illustrating ... for theology thus exercised is
not simply knowledge, but rather an art or business making use

of theology.

And what applies to theology for its own sake applies to every
other branch of learning — philosophy, literature, languages, his-
tory, and sciences. But you may ask: If we are to study these
subjects merely as contemplations without any reference to the
practical world—in a vacuum, so to say—then of what good
are they? Have they no practical effect at all? Ah, but they do,
Newman answers. Just as on the physical side, when we exercise,
we have what we call health, and on the moral side, when we
try to live according to God’s law, we have virtue, so on the
intellectual side, when we contemplate knowledge for its own sake,
we acquire “enlargement of the mind” or “illumination.” This
enlargement is the true product of education—and in the long
run the most practical thing in the world. It is the man with the
enlarged mind who has the surest grip on affairs, who sets the
standards for practical men. In science it is the Newtons and the
Einsteins who make the inventions of the gadgeteers possible, even