In the March 23rd issue of Origins, Father James Heft, SM, Chancellor of the University of Dayton, has a suggestive and lucid discussion of "Catholic Universities as Open Circles: Academic Freedom."

Heft does not minimize the challenge posed by the ambition to be both a first rank university and to be distinctively Catholic. He writes:

"Universities that wish to be truly Catholic need to take very seriously the enormity of the challenge before them lest they confuse the purpose of a Catholic university with mainly pastoral concerns, important as they are, and the defense of Catholic morality, often reduced to matters of sexuality. At a Catholic university, no significant development in knowledge or culture should remain unexplored nor should philosophy and theology be prevented from playing a central role in that conversation."

Heft offers the metaphor of an "open circle" for the sort of university he envisions: one that both privileges the Catholic intellectual tradition and values the enriching contribution of other traditions. And he sees the incarnation as providing "a theological focal point" for this endeavor.

This last affirmation needs, I think, much greater articulation and development. I believe we have been too reticent, in Catholic colleges and universities, about forthrightly confessing the Name that lies at the very heart of Catholic faith and the intellectual tradition it has engendered. We risk being too anonymously Christian.

Reading articles, listening to addresses concerning a university's Catholic identity, I too often experience what Augustine describes in Book Seven of his Confessions. Reading "the books of the Platonists," Augustine found intellectual illumination in them. But he did not find Jesus Christ who is the very face of God.

Too often, in my view, Catholic colleges and universities seem content to display merely generic labels: "forming men and women for others," "being open to the Spirit." But unless these well-intentioned terms are anchored in the concrete particularity of the Lord Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, they remain shapeless, lacking form and content.

I am not advocating mindless invocation, but mindful and faith-filled exploration of the Christic center that captivated and inspired Augustine and Aquinas, Teresa and Teilhard. If this Center holds and allures, then the circle can indeed embrace discerningly: "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious" (Philippians 4:8 ).