Recent months have seen renewed interest by the British Government in developing a long-term policy for Universities, especially in England and Wales. The proposed changes to the structures of the universities, although recognising the need for diversity of provision and for a striving for excellence in academic achievement at all levels, nevertheless do not open the question of the role of the universities in the shaping of national life, in the formation and understanding of what it is to be human, and in the preservation and study of what is most precious in our history. If there is a strong emphasis on what it means to strive to extend the frontiers and boundaries of knowledge, nowhere to be found is the asking of the questions â?? what is knowledge, what is wisdom, what is truth, and how are we to live in truth?
In 1997 the Bishops of England and Wales reminded us that â??the basic understanding of education [is] human development . . . at the heart of it is a human being within whom as far as human willfulness allows, the creator will perfect the image of his divine Sonâ??
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The Bishops have already noted that the radical dissolution of a sense of the human person as standing at the centre of the practices of formation in pedagogy is co-extensive with the â??development of postmodernist thoughtâ??. The intellectual tendencies named by this term all in different but related ways represent, as the Bishops acknowledge, a dissolution of an understanding of the truth, and by this very fact, indicate (albeit negatively) the fundamental relation between an understanding of truth and the enquiry into the human person. In bringing to light the very shape of the human person not only in his or her capacity for economic and technical success but also to live a moral life, concerned with and for what it means to dwell with and seek the good of others, the question of the origin and final end of this person who emerges as the holder of human wisdom is posed. Here it is that theology engages with all the turmoil and questioning of human life and enquiry, and here even more that theology is shown to have a place â?? a central one at that â?? in the home of the sciences, the university itself.
The Society of St. Catherine of Siena – The Vocation and Formation of Theologians and the Teaching Office of the Bishop in the British Context
