Thomas V. Gourlay

Luigi Giussani’s teaching on the religious sense of man is one of his most unique and enduring contributions. For him, the religious sense is best understood within the context of its relationship to, and contradistinction from faith. Although on a simplistic and superficial reading it may seem that the two concepts simply coincide, this is not the content of Giussani’s teaching. The aim of this paper is to explore how Giussani marked the difference between man’s religious sense and faith, demonstrating that these two distinct realities exist in a complementary and reciprocal enriching, yet essentially asymmetrical relationship. Through analysing Giussani’s presentation of these two phenomena, we observe that the religious sense is understood not as something that must simply be demonstrated rationally prior to the assent of faith, a sort of praeambulum fidei, but rather as a praeparatio fidei, a preparation— which is not merely a preceding activity, occurring chronologically prior the encounter with Christ and the arrival of faith, but which coexists with the experience of faith and also, in a specific sense, arises as the fruit of that experience.

Drawing an analogy to the 5th century heresy of Nestorianism, this paper argues that the separation of life from faith in the modern era constitutes a kind of functional Nestorianism, that negates the universality of the Christian claim and renders such a claim. The paper argues that, in their form and function, many Catholic educational institutions unwittingly adopt this functional Nestorianism by means of a structural compartmentalisation of the faith into confined spaces within the curriculum and within the institutional imagination and that in doing so, such institutions risk mirroring—at the level of educational practice—and thus perpetuating, what Pope Paul VI referred to as ‘the drama of our time’, that being, ‘the split between the Gospel and culture’. The paper concludes by offering six Christocentric principles to guide curriculum development and implementation in Catholic educational institutions.

This paper explores the apparent identity crisis faced by Catholic schools in anglophone contexts amidst the secularisation of culture and increasing diversity among staff and students. Drawing on philosophical and theological critiques of modern liberal culture, the paper posits that the philosophical principles which undergird liberal pluralism are inadequate to the task of fostering a genuine Catholic identity within a school as they are unable to account for and tolerate genuine diversity, undermining both genuine difference as well the core doctrinal principles of Catholicism. Instead, utilising the teaching of Saint Benedict, the paper advocates for the Christian virtue of hospitality as a means to foster authentic dialogue and community, emphasising the need for a robust, articulated Catholic identity that recognises and affirms differences while promoting unity.

One defining element of life in any Catholic educational institution, whether it be primary, secondary, or tertiary, is the focus on pastoral care for staff and students. This paper provides a distinctly Catholic definition of the term ‘pastoral care’ and briefly examines the theological foundations that underpin this concept, particularly, in relation to its application in the Catholic university. The paper traces the motif of pastoral care through the Scriptures and, building on insights from St. Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (1990) and the broader theological anthropology of the Vatican II Council. The paper highlights that pastoral care is not something of an extrinsically added offering to students in a Catholic educational institution, but rather something intrinsically built into its fabric.

Since at least the 1960s, responding to changes both in the world and in the Church the project of Catholic university education in the United States and elsewhere has undergone a significant alteration in structure, and subsequently of its own sense of identity, purpose, and mission. Concerns about the integrity of Catholic universities both as Catholic and as university abound and have done for some time. Providing a brief review of some of the existing literature, this paper argues that the contemporary discussion regarding identity and mission for Catholic colleges and universities suffers from a decidedly modern inability to the address first order questions. This failure to properly treat questions pertaining to metaphysics render Catholic institutions of higher learning locked within the superficial plane in terms of how they address their own sense of identity and mission. In response to this, this paper argues that there exists within the Catholic tradition adequate metaphysical richness that can and should more faithfully ground the essence of the Catholic college or university. Drawing on the metaphysical work of such figures as David L. Schindler and others, the author argues that a relational ontology, characterized by an understanding of the metaphysics of gift can not only save the project of Catholic university education but is in fact central to its mission.