Fides Quaerens Intellectum

If our universities are to become more than professional schools, their rationalism needs to be in dialogue with other “traditions of inquiry.” For the most important matters in life include such matters as hope, depression, trust, purpose, and wisdom.  If secularism purges such concerns from the curriculum for lack of a way to address them, the public may conclude that the football team really is the most important part of the university.  But if they are taken up, we will find ourselves using terms that seem to belong in a religious discourse.  We have dodged this issue by saying that true, good, just, are all political, meaning that they can’t be discussed but only voted on.  But in fact they could be discussed if our discussions were to recognize a dimension of ultimacy.  It will do wonders in drawing attention and respect to our universities.  And it ought to make religion itself a less frivolous thing than it has become.

~C. John Sommerville, The Decline of the Secular University (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2006):  22.