ARTICLES THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY IN MODERN ACADEME: CHALLENGE AND DILEMMA

How can the Catholic university reconstruct itself to bring the resources of Catholic tradition to bear on our common task of rebuilding the house of learning? The Catholic university needs to inhabit the domains of secular learning and Christian knowledge. The participation of Catholic intellectu-als and universities in the postmodern dialogue will benefit the entire intel-lectual community. One hundred and fifty years ago Edward Sorin founded his tiny college onthe American frontier. One decade later John Henry Newman did the same thing on a slightly grander scale in Dublin. In that primitive era, uni-versity development offices had not yet been invented. So both Father Sorin and Father Newman had to figure out how to work up support for their insti-tutions. Lacking a football team, Father Newman chose a method that would make any development officer cringe. He gave a series of lectures. Those lectures eventually became a book called The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (Newman, 1873). Father Newman's book was the keenest statement of the aims and ideals of a university education by an