Ideas and Their Consequences — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Thirty years before the fall of communism, Karol Wojtyła began to see that if a successful defense of the “metaphysical sense and mystery” of the human person were not mounted and then embodied in the institutions of society and culture, the results would be terrible indeed: Bad ideas would have awful consequences. And the result would not be George Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia, described in the novel 1984; the result would be the soft-totalitarian dystopia of manufactured and genetically manipulated humanity described in the other great mid-20th-century dystopian novel, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Huxley saw how this new power would lead to a culture of manufactured, chemically induced “happiness.”












Huxley, it must be admitted, was not a very distinguished novelist; no one reads Brave New World for its literary elegance, the depth of its characterizations, or the subtleties of its plot. But Aldous Huxley was a genius at seeing into the darker possibilities of a dystopian future created by a science unhinged from the “metaphysical sense and mystery” of the human person—a science that would be guided by a distorted morality derived from the collapse of metaphysics.

This, then, is the cultural—indeed civilizational—crisis to which Catholic higher education must respond.












Thus, Huxley’s genius was not just that, in the late 1920s, he foresaw the possibility of a new and dehumanizing biotechnology, three decades before the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA by James Watson, Francis Crick, and Rosalind Franklin made modern genetics possible. Huxley also saw how this new power, detached from the deep truths about the dignity of the human person—including those deep moral truths embedded in the world and in us, and accessible to reason—would inevitably lead to a culture of manufactured, chemically induced “happiness,” manipulated socially by a seemingly benign but in fact totalitarian political system.

In that respect, the key passage in Brave New World is not that remarkably prescient opening chapter where Huxley describes the workings of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The key passage occurs a little over halfway through the novel, when one of the totalitarian World Controllers, a man named Mustapha Mond, is deciding whether a new academic paper can be published:

“A New Theory of Biology” was the title of the paper which Mustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: “The author’s mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published.” He underlined the words. “The author will be kept under supervision. His transference to the Marine Biological Station at St. Helena may become necessary.” A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose—well, you didn’t know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes—make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstances, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words “Not to be published” drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed. “What fun it would be,” he thought, “if one didn’t have to think about happiness!”

This, then, is the cultural—indeed civilizational—crisis to which Catholic higher education must respond, according to the vision of John Paul II and the teaching of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

It is a crisis in metaphysics: a denial that there are deep and abiding truths built into the human condition.

It is a crisis in epistemology: collapse of confidence that human beings can know the truth with a degree of certainty.












It is a crisis in epistemology: collapse of confidence that human beings can know those truths with a degree of certainty.

It is a crisis in the moral life: for absent those deep truths as a stable framework for moral reflection, we are left with Jeremy Bentham and his dehumanizing calculus of utility.

And it is a crisis in social and political life: for the just society—the free and virtuous society envisioned by Catholic social doctrine—cannot be built on the shaky foundations of a utilitarian public ethic, in which the question, Should we do this? is effectively banned from public life, and the only publicly admissible question is, Can we do this?

Catholic universities will address the metaphysical crisis by demonstrating the intimate relationship between faith and reason.












At the intersection of forming Christian character and honing Christian intellects, the Catholic colleges and universities of the 21st century must prepare their students to grapple with these three facets of the civilizational crisis that is the dominant cultural fact of the Western world today: the metaphysical-epistemological crisis, the moral crisis, and the social crisis.

Catholic colleges and universities will address the metaphysical crisis by demonstrating the intimate relationship between faith and reason—which, as the encyclical Fides et Ratio teaches, are the “two wings” on which the human spirit reaches out and grasps the truth of things. Catholic institutions of higher learning will not be paralyzed by skepticism; recognizing that there are limits to the reach of reason, Catholic colleges and universities will nonetheless conduct the intellectual life on the premise that human beings can know things with a high degree of certainty. Moreover, Catholic colleges and universities will challenge the hegemony of the scientific method as the sole epistemological paradigm of human knowing and will demonstrate to their students that there is real knowledge to be gained from an encounter with literature, with the arts, with speculative philosophical thought—and with revelation.

Catholic colleges and universities will address the moral crisis by steeping their students in the virtue ethics of authentic Thomism. Thus, they will foster what Father Servais Pinckaers, O.P., has described as “freedom for excellence,” which consists in forming the habit of choosing the right thing, for the right reason, such that freedom is tethered to truth and ordered to genuine human flourishing. Catholic institutions of higher learning will thereby challenge the cultural hegemony of freedom misconstrued as a function of the will and will relocate the moral life within the ambit of human reason. This, in turn, will empower the students of Catholic institutions of higher education to be agents of reform in society, rebuilding a public understanding of the intimate relationship between freedom and virtue.

Catholic colleges and universities will address the social crisis by introducing their students to the riches of the social doctrine of the Church, as an intellectually serious option for building the free and virtuous societies of the future. This introduction to Catholic social thought will emphasize the Thomistic intellectual architecture of the social doctrine tradition as articulated by Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, and John Paul II in Centesimus Annus. In doing so, it will stress the Church’s role as the builder of the culture that makes free politics and free economics possible and will stress the importance of moral reason in tempering and guiding democracy and the free market.

Catholic higher education faced many challenges in the 20th century, including the assaults mounted by radically secularist political systems. Today’s challenge is, arguably, even greater. For the very notion of “truth” is held in contempt by much of early 21st-century high culture, and the public result of that cultural contempt, as Pope Benedict XVI warned, is the attempt to impose a dictatorship of relativism—an attempt that is well advanced in Europe, in parts of the Western hemisphere, and in international organizations. Thus, the difference the Catholic colleges and universities of the 21st century can and must make is to reaffirm the human capacity to know the truth of things. In knowing and being grasped by the Truth of the Trinitarian God, and in developing a genuine humanism that relates all truth to the divine Truth, 21st-century Catholic institutions of higher learning, taking seriously the teaching of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and the responsibilities of the New Evangelization, will make a unique contribution to securing the cultural foundations of liberty and justice for all.

George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center and the New York Times bestselling author of more than two dozen books.