The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of DublinNewman, John Henry
Religion
The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin
Newman, John Henry
Education, Higher; Universities and colleges
This Intellectualism first and chiefly comes into collision with precept,
then with doctrine, then with the very principle of dogmatism;—a
perception of the Beautiful becomes the substitute for faith. In a country
which does not profess the faith, it at once runs, if allowed, into
scepticism or infidelity; but even within the pale of the Church, and with
the most unqualified profession of her Creed, it acts, if left to itself,
as an element of corruption and debility. Catholicism, as it has come down
to us from the first, seems to be mean and illiberal; it is a mere popular
religion; it is the religion of illiterate ages or servile populations or
barbarian warriors; it must be treated with discrimination and delicacy,
corrected, softened, improved, if it is to satisfy an enlightened
generation. It must be stereotyped as the patron of arts, or the pupil of
speculation, or the protégé of science; it must play the literary
academician, or the empirical philanthropist, or the political partisan;
it must keep up with the age; some or other expedient it must devise, in
order to explain away, or to hide, tenets under which the intellect
labours and of which it is ashamed—its doctrine, for instance, of grace,
its mystery of the Godhead, its preaching of the Cross, its devotion to
the Queen of Saints, or its loyalty to the Apostolic See. Let this spirit
be freely evolved out of that philosophical condition of mind, which in
former Discourses I have so highly, so justly extolled, and it is
impossible but, first indifference, then laxity of belief, then even
heresy will be the successive results.
Here then are two injuries which Revelation is likely to sustain at the
hands of the Masters of human reason unless the Church, as in duty bound,
protects the sacred treasure which is in jeopardy. The first is a simple
ignoring of Theological Truth altogether, under the pretence of not
recognising differences of religious opinion;—which will only take place
in countries or under governments which have abjured Catholicism. The
second, which is of a more subtle character, is a recognition indeed of
Catholicism, but (as if in pretended mercy to it) an adulteration of its
spirit. I will now proceed to describe the dangers I speak of more
distinctly, by a reference to the general subject-matter of instruction
which a University undertakes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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