Catholic colleges offer gifts to students, world

Judith A. Dwyer, 55, took over the presidency of St. Xavier University on the Southwest Side Oct. 1, A theologian whose academic credentials include a Sacred Theology Licentiate from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and a doctorate from Catholic University of America, she has served in university teaching and administrative posts at the Weston school as well as Villanova and St. John’s universities. Most recently, she served for five years as a theology professor and executive vice president and chief operating officer at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. She sat down with staff writer Michelle Martin to discuss the role of Catholic higher education and how St. Xavier, the oldest Catholic learning institution in Chicago, fulfills it.

The Catholic New World: What special gifts does a Catholic institution of higher education bring to its students and the community at large?

Judith A. Dwyer: There are those who talk about the three publics a Catholic university serves. It serves the church itself, it serves the academy and it serves the broader public enterprise.

I think that today, when you think of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and the quest for providing an atmosphere in which truth can be pursued in an unfettered way, that all the major issues of our time can be examined critically and within a context of history and within the context of all the variable disciplines that impact these critical issues, including theology, philosophy, ethics, but many more—political science, economics, maybe the natural sciences. It could be biology. You could go on and on. But to have the freedom to pursue these critical issues within a context of faith, within a context that is not afraid to ask the theological and ethical questions, so that no discipline, no area, is beyond the ability of the Catholic community to evaluate it.

TCNW: How does Ex Corde Ecclesiae promote the freedom to search for truth?

JAD: I think Ex Corde Ecclesiae clearly points to the inherent relationship between the quest to understand God and the quest to understand truth. These both relate to mystery. They both explore something that is transcendent to us, and so Ex Corde Ecclesiae points to the interrelatedness of those quests. Not only are they not mutually exclusive, they are very much related.

TCNW: How does the quest for truth at a Catholic university affect the culture at large?

JAD: We create a critical engagement with culture. Catholic theology has always talked about a theology that transforms culture. We’re not against culture; we don’t simply observe culture uncritically. We try to transform it and to humanize the cultures in which we find ourselves. That’s an important role of all the disciplines within a Catholic university, the liberal arts disciplines as well as the sciences as well as the professional schools, whether it’s nursing or education or business.

Then there’s the context of respect for human life, respect for the dignity of the human person, respect for the common good, respect for engaging those who are marginalized, those who are voiceless, what is called the “preferential option for the poor,” in making sure outreach efforts by the students—in their service learning opportunities, in the clinics that we have here with our nursing faculty, as well as all the outreach that our school of education does, the outreach that the business school does, the outreach that the school of arts and sciences would do—are helping our students see that the world is interconnected and interrelated. We have to learn to live together on this fragile planet as sisters and brothers in a world in peace based on justice.

So if we can get our students thinking about how to serve the broader community, how to serve the church if they are Catholic or Christian—or whatever religious denomination, becoming vital members of that community—if we can encourage that engagement within this context, I think we’ve done an important service to the church, to the academy and to the broader world.

TCNW: How does the academy benefit from Catholic institutions?

JAD: Some of the greatest theologians and philosophers have been from Catholic institutions. I think what we need to do is continue to pursue excellence within Catholic higher education, to assure the broader academic community that all the rigors that you would assume are indicative of different disciplines, and the rigor of scholarship, and the rigor of engaged teaching, promotion and tenure issues, those principles are adhered to and respected and part of the fabric in which we work. We have a responsibility to provide that kind of scholarship and research and do it rigorously.

We at St. Xavier want to be part of that, that scholarly community that advances knowledge.

TCNW: How does St. Xavier express its Catholic identity?

JAD: People should feel welcome at a Catholic university. We worship, we pray, we have religious symbols, we profess the sacramentality of the Catholic faith, that God communicates in many ways—through art, through relationships, through liturgy—and we try to promote that as an environment in which students work and live and study.

TCNW: St. Xavier has a long history, but it’s not the highest profile Catholic institution in Chicago or the largest. Does that work to its advantage, or is that something you want to change?

JAD: I think we do have to bring up the profile. We have some marvelous endeavors that are happening at this university: the numbers of first-generation students that are here, and the number of minority students that are part of our student body, and the outreach that our professional schools do. These are marvelous stories that I think have been somewhat hidden. It will be my responsibility and the responsibility of all of us to raise that profile in the wider Chicago metropolitan area. To me, there is no reason St. Xavier ought not to be one of the best universities in the Midwest. It has that potential. Part of that movement into the circles of more widely recognized universities will be academic reputation and visibility.

We have an excellent faculty. Our student profile for the undergraduates continues to improve. We just have to get that profile more widely known in the metropolitan area and throughout the Midwest.