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March
5, 2007
VOL.
45, NO. 5Oakland,
CA
U.S. Catholic
colleges urged to form
partnerships in poorer countries
 |
| Jesuit Father Tim Godfrey, center, former pastor
of St. Patrick Parish in Oakland and current director of campus ministry
at Georgetown University, listens to Rabbi Harold S. White, senior
Jewish chaplain at Georgetown during an inter-faith conference last
November at the Washington D.C. university. Other panelists were Imam
Yahya Hendi, far left, who is the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown, and
the Rev. Elizabeth Orens, senior chaplain at the National Cathedral
School. CNS PHOTO/BOB ROLLER |
WASHINGTON
(CNS) -- One of the Vatican’s top education officials has urged
U.S. Catholic college and university presidents to examine how they can
provide “creative and effective support” to Catholic academic
institutions in the developing world that are struggling with inadequate
resources.
“The inequality in resources available to Catholic higher education
institutions worldwide is a matter of grave concern,” said Archbishop
J. Michael Miller, secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic
Education.
The archbishop gave the keynote address at the annual meeting of the Association
of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Washington. More than 200 presidents
and other top officials of the nation’s Catholic institutions of
higher learning attended.
Canadian-born Archbishop Miller, a Basilian priest who was president of
St. Thomas University in Houston before he was called into Vatican service,
cited “globalization, information technology and the commodification
of education” as three megatrends that are affecting Catholic higher
education around the world.
“In itself globalization is neither good nor bad,” he said,
but as it transforms economic systems, bringing new prosperity to many,
it also pushes many others off to the margins. “Indeed, the gap
between the world’s wealthiest and poorest nations is widening,”
he added.
“Also of concern to the Holy See is a cultural globalization which
is drawing all societies into a worldwide consumer culture significantly
influenced by secularism and just plain old-fashioned materialism,”
he said.
“In many places this cultural homogeneity is leading to the erosion
of traditional family and social values which have sustained peoples and
societies for centuries. It is particularly the destructive cultural and
social effects of globalization that preoccupy the Vatican.”
He said Catholic universities can have “an indispensable role in
the critical analysis of globalization,” including critical understanding
of its impact on the traditional understanding of higher education’s
roles of teaching, research and service.
Among questions Catholic scholars should be asking, he said, are: “What
is the image of the human person that globalization proposes and even
imposes? What kind of culture does it favor? Does it leave room for the
experience of faith and the interior life?”
Archbishop Miller said the Holy See is also concerned about “the
opening of a new digital divide between tertiary education institutions
in the developed and developing countries.”
“The developments in communication technology are leading to the
emergence of an information-based economy on a worldwide scale,”
he said.
“This, in turn, has an enormous influence on the curricula offered
by centers of higher learning ... but it also reinforces existing inequalities
among Catholic institutions of higher learning. The universities that
are reaping the lion’s share of the benefits of an information-based
economy are those in the developed countries.”
Like globalization, advancing technology “is widening the gap between
‘have’ and ‘have-not’ academic institutions,”
he said.
Explaining the “commodification” of education, Archbishop
Miller said the Vatican is concerned about “the decreasing attention
to students -- to the integral human development of students. Many tertiary-level
institutions are abandoning the goal of forming the whole person as part
of their mission.”
“A market-dominated approach to learning emphasizes technical and
professional training over the formation of the whole person, replacing
the dispassionate search for truth with the cult of competency. ... As
a result, learning skills and competencies for the marketplace is replacing
the role of a general education curriculum, which has traditionally enshrined
a humanistic thrust,” he said. “Catholic education is everywhere
suffering from this onslaught.”
In the face of the growing specialization and fragmentation of knowledge,
he said Catholic institutions should put “a renewed emphasis on
collaboration among the disciplines. ... Cooperation and dialogue among
specialists in different fields are a mark of genuine catholicity.”
The challenges of globalization and the widening gap in information technology
show a need for “a new culture of educational solidarity among Catholic
institutions,” Archbishop Miller said. “The asymmetry between
‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in Catholic higher education
worldwide calls for radically increased cooperation.”
“The Holy See is asking Catholic institutions in the developed world
to rethink their efforts to date, and to work aggressively to rectify
this imbalance with a decisive commitment to academic solidarity,”
he said.
He suggested U.S. institutions partner in joint research projects with
institutions that lack resources.
