By IHE Grad Fellow Joe Gazaille
A puzzle arose during the Newman session of the Art and Modernity reading group last semester: a liberal arts education involves reading great literature, but great literature often exposes one to immoral lifestyles. This conundrum might make one think of St. Augustine’s lament of classical studies from Book I, Chapter XVI of the Confessions: “how woeful are you, O torrent of established custom. Who can resist you or when will you run dry? How long will you continue to roll the sons of Eve into that vast and terrible sea in which even those who mount the cross scarcely escape drowning?” The same literature that educates one about the great tradition of mankind is the very literature that can lead one into moral peril. How does Newman solve this puzzle?
Clearly seeing the danger that is bound up with reading secular literature, Newman considers one possible solution—censorship. Rid the University of Homer and Hesiod, Molière and Marx. In their stead, “we will have a Christian Literature of our own.” But adopting such a proposal will backfire, Newman thinks: “cut out from your class books all broad manifestations of the natural man; and those manifestations are waiting for your pupil’s benefit at the very doors of your lecture room in living and breathing substance.” Newman realizes that if one does not encounter dangerous ideas in the classroom, one will encounter those ideas in one’s peers. And this situation is certainly exacerbated with the advent of the internet and smartphones. Censoring a student’s studies means that a student will leave University “without any rule given him for discriminating ‘the precious from the vile,’ beauty from sin, the truth from the sophistry of nature, what is innocent from what is poison.” Thus, censorship will succeed in all but this: “in making the world his University.”
Instead of censorship, Newman suggests that a true liberal University education should embrace all manner of literature with open arms. And Newman says that this mode is especially important for a Catholic University. Newman is not fearful in exposing University students to dangerous literature because of his confidence in the Church and Her teachings. While the Church sees “that no doctrines pass under the name of Truth but those which claim it rightfully,” at the same time, “She fears no knowledge, but she purifies all; she represses no element of our nature, but cultivates the whole.” The Church engages with all beliefs, both sweetening the good they contain and unveiling the bad.
Newman seems to credit his thought on education to the example of his spiritual father, St. Philip Neri. “He preferred,” Newman says, “to yield to the stream, and direct the current, which he could not stop, of science, literature, art, and fashion, and to sweeten and to sanctify what God had made very good and man had spoilt.” One can clearly see the connections between St. Philip Neri’s approach and Newman’s thoughts about education. Though science, literature, art, and fashion may have had occasion to lead souls astray, St. Philip Neri did not censor those subjects. To stop the stream would be impossible. But to redirect the current—to show clearly what is and is not of God in all manner of things—was his mode of approach. It is this same approach that Newman embraced, and it is one that continues to bear great fruit.
