What Makes a University Catholic?

As a participant in a summer workshop on the "Idea of the Catholic University, " I have been given this opportunity to record my own thoughts on exactly what distinguishes a Catholic university from the many other kinds of universities there are. This question has received much attention lately, including from the president and the dean of the University of St. Thomas, both of whom chose, in the first week of this academic year, to address it publicly. But before going to the heart of the question, let me preface with a few remarks. It is not my purpose to comment on, to praise or disparage, the general condition of Catholic higher education or, more particularly, of St. Thomas. Nor do I want to propose a set of practical correctives for this or any other university. These sorts of tasks can only be managed through a collective effort from every level of an institution and only after a blueprint or paradigm of a Catholic university has been articulated. I am more interested in discovering what that blueprint is and trying to determine what a Catholic university ought to look like in ideal circumstances. If an organization chooses to adopt, and to consistently describe itself by, a label, then it should be able to explain what the labe