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Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2008 /  Cd. Arinze: Catholic colleges, universities need to be 'unambiguously Catholic'

by Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published April 25, 2008

Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic Cardinal Francis Arinze talks about what is expected of Catholic colleges and universities. He gave the keynote address for the SS. Peter & Paul Educational Foundation April 16 at the Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth Township.

Plymouth Twp. — You can't have a college or university that "happens to be" Catholic — the institution's Catholic identity ought to unmistakably permeate every discipline, and its graduates ought to be willing to stand up for the Church.

This was part of the message delivered by Cardinal Francis Arinze, who spoke at a fundraising dinner April 16 for the SS. Peter & Paul Educational Foundation. Nigerian Cardinal Arinze is the head of the Holy See's Congregation of Divine Worship, has been a bishop since 1965, and is renown the world over for his teachings about the Catholic faith.

During his speech at the Inn at St. John's, he outlined what the Catholic faith community ought to expect of their institutions of higher learning.

Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic Cardinal Francis Arinze talks with a woman in the hallway at the Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth Township.

"Not only should it be a community of scholars and students, representing different branches of human knowledge," Cardinal Arinze said to a gathering of about 200 people. "But at the same time it should be an academic institution in which Catholicism is vitally present and operative."

The cardinal explained that a Catholic college or university should explain its Christian mission in a mission statement, and adhere to it by hiring Catholic educators who are experienced in living and teaching the faith as well as their respective disciplines.

"If a high number of its intellectual leaders are, indeed, not Catholic — how can they be expected to live and share what they do not have?" the cardinal asked. "It is particularly important that the Catholic intellectual leaders not just happen to be Catholic, but that they be scholars who have matured in their studies by years of studies in a university that is already known to be unambiguously Catholic."

Cardinal Arinze spoke philosophically about the confluence of faith and reason, and how natural revelation leads to a greater understanding of faith. All truth comes from the Holy Spirit, he said, citing St. Thomas Aquinas — so naturally all truth will lead back to God.

Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic Henry Russell, Ph.D., president of the SS. Peter & Paul Educational Foundation, announces that College of SS. Peter & Paul will be housed in the Scripps Mansion in Lake Orion.

To acknowledge the connections between academic truths and divine reality, he added, a Catholic institution requires a higher level of education than its secular counterparts.

"A Catholic university demands more — not less — intelligence than another university which has no special link with the Catholic faith," he said.

Cardinal Arinze spoke of students and almuni of such universities as having to be "dynamic" people who embrace their faith and are able to defend it.

"… And sometimes, Reverend Problem Child," he added, to laughs from the gathering.

SS. Peter & Paul Educational Foundation, headed by president Henry Russell, Ph.D., is trying to raise money to begin a Catholic college in Lake Orion. While they've found a location — the Scripps Mansion, which formerly housed the Guest House rehabilitation center for priests and religious — they still need to raise about $3 million for the college.

Their fundraising needs were not lost on their guest speaker, either.

"Our prayer is that Dr. Russell and his council will receive checks with so many digits," the cardinal said jokingly at the end of his talk, "that they will say, 'Look — it's enough now! Don't give more until we finish using what you have already heaped up!'"