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[Expositions 9.1 (2015) 31–32]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 
 

Editor’s Introduction: Seven Papers from the King’s College Conference 

“The Idea of a Catholic College” 

 
BERNARD G. PRUSAK 

King’s College (PA) 

 

 

The complementarity of faith and reason; a commitment to philosophy and theology as “sapiential” 

and “architectonic” disciplines; the belief that all reality is suffused with the presence of God such 

that God may be found in all things; an understanding of education as a work of sanctification if 

not even resurrection; and an ambition to educate hearts as well as to instruct minds—these are, 

among others, the ideas that have animated and animate yet today Catholic colleges and 

universities in the United States. But how do these ideas fare, and how can they best be expressed, 

in today’s undergraduate colleges? Are philosophy and theology up to the charge? How should 

courses in these disciplines be conceived and structured in general education curricula? Further, 

how do the other disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences serve and 

express the basic mission of Catholic higher education? Do professional programs in business, 

education, engineering, or nursing have distinctive vocations within the context of Catholic higher 

education? And just what is the warrant for an institution of higher learning to seek to transform 

students’ hearts? 

The conference “The Idea of a Catholic College: Charism, Curricula, and Community,” hosted 

by King’s College in fall 2014, examined questions of just this kind. Proceedings of the conference 

have been split between the Journal of Catholic Higher Education and Expositions. Here 

Expositions publishes seven papers concerning curriculum, academic life more generally, and 

pedagogy. 

Alexander Eodice, Professor of Philosophy at Iona College and Dean of the College’s School 

of Arts and Sciences from 2001 to 2008, considers the relevance to present-day Catholic 

institutions of John Tracy Ellis’s “scathing critique of Catholic intellectual life in America” 

published in 1955. Jonathan Sanford, Professor of Philosophy and Associate Vice President of 

Academic Affairs at Franciscan University of Steubenville, makes a case for the relevance of a 

critique of higher education published a century earlier, namely, John Henry Newman’s reflections 

on the idea of the university. Ilia Delio, O.S.F., Director of the Catholic Studies Program at 

Georgetown University, argues for breaking new ground: according to her, the curricula at 

Catholic institutions ought to reflect a distinctive “epistemology,” rooted at once in the ancient 

Catholic aspiration to “wholemaking” and insights from the contemporary natural philosophy of 

Teilhard de Chardin, among others. 



Editor’s Introduction  32 
 

The papers by Karen Eifler and Charles Gordon, C.S.C., Co-Directors of the Garaventa Center 

for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture at the University of Portland, and Cornelius 

Plantinga, Jr., Senior Research Fellow at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, change the 

focus from curriculum to collegiality and student life, respectively. Plantinga asks what is involved 

in educating for shalom—“universal flourishing and delight, each created thing a wonder, each 

created person a source of joy”—and comes to focus on practices within the so-called co-

curriculum, the non-academic side of student life. Eifler and Gordon focus, instead, on faculty life. 

Using the work of the Garaventa Center as a case study, they discuss methods of engaging faculty 

more deeply in the mission of the institution. 

Finally, Kim Paffenroth, Professor of Religious Studies at Iona College, presents some personal 

reflections on how best to think about teaching the pre-Christian classics within the setting of a 

Catholic institution. Stephen Laumakis, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Saint Thomas, 

Minnesota, discusses how philosophy and theology courses may serve as “‘bridge’ or linking 

courses unifying the students’ experience of the core curriculum at a Catholic university.” His 

proposal is that linking these courses may help to overcome what he takes to be “two of the major 

obstacles in a typical undergraduate experience: namely, prematurely focused specialization and 

an inability to see the ‘big picture.’”