{"id":18030,"date":"2017-05-17T22:16:09","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T03:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jh.southloophvac.com\/?p=18030"},"modified":"2017-05-17T22:16:09","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T03:16:09","slug":"thomistic-phd-program-threat-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonhaines.com\/philosophy\/thomistic-phd-program-threat-closure\/","title":{"rendered":"North America’s Only Thomistic PhD Program is Under Threat of Closure (UPDATED)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two years ago I posted that I would be leaving Chicago for Houston to attend this program. Now the broader university to which it belongs \"\"<\/a>wants to close North America’s only center for Thomistic studies<\/a>, basically because it wants to\u00a0spend money elsewhere.\u00a0Each year, fewer and fewer students are accepted – not because of lack of interest – but because funding is being repurposed.<\/p>\n

The school is moving\u00a0in the direction that most other Catholic colleges did in the 1980\u2019s, a direction which CTS was trying to counteract at the time. Now, financial support for an integrated Catholic liberal arts curriculum is drying up at the University of St. Thomas in favor of a new primary goal: employing students. The evidence is found in the recent decision to reconsider, for financial reasons, the contracts of tenured philosophy and English professors subsequent to constructing a multi-million dollar STEM facility last year.<\/p>\n

Faculty usually receive and return their renewal contracts for the following academic year by May 15th. That date has passed and not a single one of the 11 members of the\u00a0Department of Philosophy<\/a> has received their contract (the same is true of the English department). Instead, a note was distributed that the philosophy program could be eliminated.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that, in general, religious orders of priests used to be a principle of unity at Catholic universities. They were individuals naturally disposed to value theology and philosophy because of their seminary training and spiritual outlook for souls. At the same time they had responsibility for fundraising and administration. But now the orders struggle to support and govern Catholic education because they have fewer members. Lay faithful have stepped up, but appear more inclined to value honor or even mere profit because they do not have the integrated and broad perspective that the priests had, but only the practical side. This results in conceding to over-specialization and technocracy producing immediate and visible results rather than the long-term and virtue-oriented results tht was the hallmark of Catholic education.<\/p>\n

There is little I can do for CTS besides hope and pray for the sake of the church that it is not starved or sterilized. I will get-on in life alright after $30,000.00 out-of-pocket and leaving a [ironically] comfortable\u00a0career, but the church around the world, I believe, will suffer more if CTS is allowed to collapse. Pope Benedict\u2019s Regensburg address<\/a>, for example, explains why this particular type of philosophy is important for Christianity.<\/p>\n


\nHere’s a few facts about the Center<\/span><\/p>\n