Where the Rubber Hits the Road

" Inside Higher Ed " presents an interview with Rev. John C. Haughey, a senior fellow at Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University, and the author of the book Where is Knowing Going? in which he explores what it means to be "Catholic" as a college or university. His insights are worthy of consideration, as are the comments that follow the posting. We have entered a time in which we as a Church will no longer be afforded the "benefit" of our good intentions (as slim as these blessings are today) and we will have to clearly identify our "brand" if we intend to effectively compete in the marketplace of today's value systems. Pure, unfettered self-autonomy is the zenith to which the majority aspire. The prescripts and teachings of Catholic morality will literally need to to be "sold" to citizens in today's consumer culture. Thankfully we've faced this same challenge before. In fact, this desire to be our own god i...

  R.J. Rushdoony is not an unblemished voice in the concert of Christian social values: the conclusions that he held as orthodox and proper views would today result in his universal condemnation... and rightly so. But in at least this snippet of text he captures the essence of something very important. If you can free yourself from his misapplied labels of "conservative"  or "radical humanists" (think of them as little more than algebraic expressions, "A" or "B") we can see an insightful piece of societal analysis in the ongoing cultural and religious exchanges between Islamic and Christian faiths and the importance of defending creedal values. "Every social order has an implicit creed, and this creed defines and informs it. When a social order begins to crumble, it is because the basic faith, its creed has been undermined. But the political defense of that order is usually made the first line of defense; it becomes the conservative positi...