Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, discussed the crisis of the university in “Recovering the University’s Soul,” a lecture published by First Things.
“The university must recover the capacity to address students in a language of hope,” Bishop Barron said. “The point of such language is not to evade the reality of suffering or injustice, but to refuse the pedagogy of despair.”
“A truly humane education affirms that truth is not a mere construct, that beauty is not reducible to private sentiment or self-expression, and that goodness is not simply a function of power or consensus,” he added. “It assures students that their desire to understand is both real and just, and that to take this desire seriously is not naivete but the beginning of wisdom.”