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In the forty-fifth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Monsignor James P. Shea, President of the University of Mary. Shea begins by offering a few details concerning the history of the University of Mary, focusing on the role the Benedictine Sisters of the Annunciation played in the university’s founding and in the cultivation of the university’s distinct charisms. While the Sisters may not recognize many physical features defining today’s campus, Shea contends they would see a continuity in mission to form leaders in the service of truth. Such a commitment, Shea believes, reflects the best of the Benedictine charisms that animated the efforts offered by the Sisters as well as the efforts offered by today’s students, staff, and faculty. Shea discusses his own vocational formation as a diocesan priest, his education in Washington, DC and in Rome, and the confirmation of that calling that Shea experiences when he steps into the classroom. Shea thus understands that his commitment to serving as the university’s president is an expression of commitment to his colleagues and students, offering a vision for the campus and making sure resources are aligned with that vision. Two tangible expressions of that commitment that Shea has stewarded during his tenure as president include the publication of The Vocation of the Catholic University Professor and the development and implementation of Vision 2030. Shea then closes by discussing the virtues that define the academic vocation as well as the vices that can undercut the dignity of such an expression of service.
- James P. Shea, The Vocation of the Catholic University Professor (University of Mary Press, 2021)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Monsignor James P. Shea, President of the University of Mary. Thank you for joining us.
Msgr. James P. Shea: It’s good to be here with you. Thank you.
Todd Ream: With its main campus situated above the Missouri in Bismarck, the University of Mary was established by Benedictine Sisters of Annunciation in 1959. By that time, the sisters residing in the monastery had been of service to Bismarck and what was once the Dakota Territory for 81 years. Approaching its 1500th anniversary, the sisters live under The Rule of Saint Benedict. For the individuals unfamiliar with the rule, would you please describe its core commitments?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Well, sure. So the Benedictine order is the oldest religious order, so to speak in the Catholic Church. And so, as you said, it goes back 1500 years. Rome is oftentimes considered to have fallen in 476 AD.
And so four years after that in 480 Benedict was born in a little town called Nursia which is now Norcia in Central Italy. He was sent as a young man, he was a young Roman nobleman. He was sent to the city of Rome for his higher studies, and he found the city, which was then a Christian city, not a pagan city anymore. He found it in, in shambles, morally deeply scandalous, so soon after the age of the martyrs.
And so he was so discouraged he left his books in a pile on his desk and he walked out into the countryside, got refuge in a cave in Subiaco, where he spent three years in study of Scripture, meditation, and communion with God. He emerged from that and then founded monasteries first in Subiaco and then down in Southern Italy. Monte Cassino was his great monastery, which then became the fountain head of all the Benedictine monasteries that eventually moved all across Europe, and really they saved civilization in the wake of the fall of Rome.
They preserved learning. They cultivated the land. They composed music for the, for the ornamentation of the sacred liturgy, which gave Europe a kind of soundscape, which Mozart and Beethoven later would build upon. They had economic methods. They, they just were amazing civilizers. And so that’s the basis for the Benedictines.
And it all comes out of this small Rule, which you referenced, which is a very simple, psychologically astute guide for people living together, seeking God together. Benedict calls it the School of the Lord’s Service. And so the cultural benefaction of the Benedictines through the centuries, which includes the university I serve, the University of Mary, arises out of this small rule of life.
Todd Ream: Yep. Thank you. What compelled the sisters to establish what was then Mary College?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Yeah, so the sisters, these sisters had originally Benedictine life for women religious was born in St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania. Actually it was brought by a woman named Benedicta Riepp, who came from Bavaria in southern Germany. Eventually, this mother Benedicta found her way to St. Joseph, Minnesota, where she found, she died at the age of 37 of tuberculosis, but she found she founded a monastery in Minnesota, from which our first sisters came in 1878, before North Dakota was a state. It was Dakota Territory.
They established schools here, and then they established the first hospital between Minneapolis and Seattle on the northern corridor, which is today, St. Alexius Medical Center. And it was in 1959 that they established Mary College. And they established us because they themselves had thriving ministries in education and healthcare. And there was no four-year institution of learning and that was the time when bachelor’s degrees, both in education and in nursing, were becoming more and more prominent and needed in the staffing of hospitals and schools. And so that’s when they started Mary College, in 1959.
We’ve grown spectacularly since then. Now we have nearly 4,000 students, 60 undergraduate majors, I think 14, 15 master’s programs and five doctorates. And so the university really has flourished.
Todd Ream: Yeah. In what ways, if any, was that compulsion to found the college a reflection of the commitment to the Rule that the sisters shared?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Well, it’s interesting in the Benedictine women in Europe and historically, over the course of 1500 years, had primarily not been involved in a lot of active apostates. They were oftentimes what, what’s called in the Catholic tradition, cloistered sisters who like from The Sound of Music, you know, where they’re behind a cloister and they pray and, they live a monastic life.
Benedictine women in this country are monastics, but they also have been entrusted with lots of apostolic ministries. And so the sisters from the place of the stability of their life, which is what the rule establishes, the official motto of the Benedictines is Omnibus Glorificetur Deus—that in all things, God may be glorified, but their unofficial motto is Ora et Labora. That’s what the Benedictines are famous for, prayer and work.
And the work of these sisters was the establishment of institutions of learning and healing for the pioneer settlers of Dakota Territory. And so they were inspired. Our sisters were inspired because there was a need, no one else was filling it, and they felt called and indeed invited by God to establish these ministries. And so, I think that that’s what it was, the call of God really that was the origin or the genesis of their service.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. You mentioned a minute or two ago, the rapid growth the university has experienced since its founding. In what ways is the University of Mary today a fulfillment of the vision that the sisters had for that college?
Msgr. James P. Shea: We’ve reflected upon this often because I think that we’ve grown into a place that our founding sisters, in some ways would not recognize at all, beyond the dreams of what they had originally envisioned, for sure, for sure.
At the same time, the sisters were very responsive to the needs of the people all around them. They said, and our mission has never changed, that they, they, they were to be of service to the religious, the cultural, and the educational needs of the people of our region. And that they wanted to form leaders in the service of truth. We’re still doing that today.
But you know, one of the great champions of Christian education is John Henry Newman, who of course wrote The Idea of a University. And Newman in his work On the Development of Doctrine, do you remember, he talks about how a thing is not most itself at its origin, but it’s most itself at its flourishing. And so an acorn is one thing, but a great massive oak tree is another which is more true to itself. The massive oak tree, is that things develop over time and to change is to, to, to grow, to be alive is to change and to change frequently.
And so the change in the growth that we’ve experienced are true to our origins. And we think that that’s very important to stay true to the charism of our founding. At the same time when new opportunities for service arise we really discern them carefully and then if God’s calling us to that, we seize upon them.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. In what ways would you describe the relationship that the sisters share with the university today?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Well, that’s a sad story and a happy story at the same time. Our sisters, like many religious communities in this country today, don’t have as many members as they used to. And some of their members, their median age is a little higher than it used to be. They do get some vocations, some new sisters joining, which is a great consolation and happiness for them and for us. But as a result, the sister’s direct day-to-day involvement in the university has diminished somewhat through the years.
My predecessor Sister Thomas Welder, who served as president of the University of Mary for 31 years at her retirement, was the longest serving female college president in the United States. My predecessor went upon her, her ultimate retirement because she stayed on for about a decade after I came. When she finally retired, she was the last sister who is working here.
Sisters still serve on our governance board. We have six sisters on our governance board, and then they have a ministry of sponsorship as well, by which they help, help and assist in forming and shaping all the employees of the University of Mary, so there’s an active and treasured relationship but it’s not as completely integrated as it used to be when there were many of them working here.
Todd Ream: Yeah. The University of Mary today refers to itself as faithfully Christian, joyfully Catholic, and gratefully Benedictine. Would you unpack please how you understand each one of those commitments serve as charisms, that animate the university today?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Absolutely. In articulating our mission, which has always been Christian, Catholic, and Benedictine, we wanted to add those adjectives to the beginning of them because it would clarify what we mean when we say each of those.
So let’s start with Christian. Do you remember at the beginning of Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis says that he wants to do his best to articulate a kind of mere Christianity so that the word Christian isn’t ruined. Like he says, the word gentleman had been ruined. In other words, there was a time when the word gentleman meant part of the landed gentry and it had a very specific meaning.
And then that meaning got sort of diluted down to something else, something different because people said, well, you have to own land. You have to come from a noble or a semi noble family in order to be a gentleman. Surely not a person can be a gentleman just by their demeanor. And Lewis says, that’s fine. It’s good to have a word like that, but it’s ruined. It ruined the meaning of the other words, so now we don’t have it anymore.
He said the same kind of thing can happen with the word Christian, in which the fundamental faith commitment of an individual or an institution can be boiled down not to doctrinal commitments. Remember Dorothy Sayers said the dogma is the drama. Not to doctrinal commitments or to a particular kind of fidelity or adherence to Christian teaching, not just principles, but it can be reduced down to a motive of behavior, a Christian ethos, a Christian history, which is emptied of its fundamental content.
James Burtchaell remember in his magisterial work on the dissociation of Christian colleges and universities from their religious origins, The dying of the Light, which is this massive 900-page study not of Christian universities of kinds of different denominations, notes, that there can be a kind of flattening out of Christian identity. We didn’t want that to happen here. And so we kind of spell it out carefully.
And then we added the moniker faithful that our Christian commitment is not just sort of vapid values of Christianity. The sort of veneer or what you might find if you picked up an old bottle of whiskey on the beach and you smell it and, oh, you can still smell some of the good stuff. But it’s living and vibrant, which is drawn from the depths of Christian teaching and commitment and the transformative power of the Gospel and the encounter with the risen Christ. And so that’s why we say that we’re faithfully Christian.
Joyfully Catholic is super important because lots of people would never put those two words together. There is an understanding, I think, that Catholicism is this drab and joyless kind of existence. Again, C.S. Lewis at one point, who wasn’t a Catholic, but Lewis said that he asked a little boy, who is God? And the little boy said, God’s the One who’s looking down to see if anyone’s having any fun.
And so that’s how I think people can understand. People talk about Catholic guilt, those types of things. But we really find the Catholic tradition not to be confining or constricting, but a broad capacious tradition in which all kinds of people—James Joyce one time was asked, James Joyce had, of course, a tortured relationship with the Catholic faith, but he was asked once, could you define the Catholic Church? And he said, oh, I would define it like this, here comes everybody, you know what I mean? In other words, here comes everybody’s universal character to it.
And when we think about the founding of universities in the high Middle Ages, universities were founded as projects of Catholic intellectual searching and exploration. That’s the origin story of the Western university so too we find ourselves deeply enamored with and happy about our Catholic commitment as a source of true joy and holiness in life.
And we think that a robust Catholic identity is something which can inform the lives of students, whether they’re Catholic or not, and invigorate the minds not just of students, but of our faculty. Again, whether they’re Catholic or not.
Here we’re with Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the Apostolic Constitution of John Paul II for Catholic universities, that universities arose originally out of the heart of the Church and that and that we joyfully carry on that tradition today.
And then gratefully Benedictine, you know, we’ve spoken about that just a little bit, I think that the worst thing that we could do is to disregard the origin of the University of Mary and the Benedictine women and their commitment, because it’s fundamental to who we are as an institution. And so we want to stay close not just to the idea of Benedictine-ness or to the Benedictine values, which are part of who we are, but to the sisters themselves.
I always say to our faculty that the Benedictine values are not like, they’re not like cut flowers that you sort of cut and put into a vase and then suddenly they die. They’re like blossoms on a tree. How? Because the blossoms on a tree are deeply connected to the branch, and then to the trunk, and then to the root. In other words you have to understand that they’re part of a living reality. And so that’s why we’re gratefully Benedictine.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. I want to transition now to asking you about your own story and your own calling to the priesthood.
You began by studying philosophy and English at the University of Jamestown, but then transferred to Catholic University of America where you were in a bachelor’s in philosophy in your licentiate through the university’s Basselin Scholars Program. At what point did you know the study and teaching of philosophy would prove to be important components of how you understood your vocation?
Msgr. James P. Shea: I grew up a farm boy in the middle of nowhere in the last days before the internet, and so I didn’t know nothing about nothing really. I didn’t know what the life of the mind could be. My parents were simple farmers, but they were also readers.
And my dad in particular was a person who read a lot and was dialed into, okay, this is happening or that’s happening. He was engaged in those kinds of questions and so. And just growing up in a devout Catholic family, the life of the mind is, is really treasured even in rural places when the Catholic faith is lived out in that way.
And so I went to Jamestown College, which now, as you said, is the University of Jamestown. That’s a Presbyterian school, and I really loved it. Oh, it was amazing. Of course, the Presbyterians are extraordinary in terms of their intellectual ballast and, and tradition too. And so I had some of the best teachers of my life there at Jamestown and really came alive to the life of the mind.
But I think, you know, I knew even in high school that I would want to give seminary a shot at some point. And so it is true that after my sophomore year, midway through my sophomore year, it was clear that it was time for me to go to seminary and study for the priesthood. And so that’s the clearest answer to your question.
I knew that I would need to study philosophy because in order to be a priest, I needed a degree in philosophy. That’s how seminary studies for the Catholic Church are set up. And so, that’s sort of how I knew it.
Now, when I got to Catholic University and, sort of earnestly engaged in the study of philosophy, that was revolutionary for my mind. It was really amazing. I had extraordinary teachers, people like Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, who’s probably the greatest living phenomenologist in the world. And my thesis director was Dr. John McCarthy, who for a long time served as Dean of the School of Philosophy. That was after my time that he was dean, but he had the makings of it already as a young scholar.
And, Russell Hittinger Kevin White, um all, all kinds of amazing people. Msgr. John Whipple, who’s a famous metaphysician, was provost there at the time. And so I wasn’t able to study under him, but I just came alive to the life of the mind at Catholic U in magnificent ways. I was really grateful.
I have to say one of the great gifts of my life, and this is, this has given me what I’ve needed in order to do the work here at the University of Mary, despite, you know, any number of struggles and setbacks, is that I was given this great gift, one of the greatest gifts in the history of any human life, which is the gift of a good education. And so that gratitude, the storehouse of it has been for me, the place where I can go to draw out treasure in every moment, in every decision. It’s really amazing. And so I was transformed.
Again, I was a farm kid from the middle of nowhere in the last days before the internet. And my mind is not the best of all minds, but my university education did prepare me as, as good as anything could have for the ministry that the Lord has given me. I’m really grateful.
Todd Ream: So that farm kid that you mentioned after being sent, sent to D.C., then was sent to Rome. And you studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Lateran University. In what ways did the time spent in Rome impact you?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Well, we don’t have time for, for me to say that, but to say a full answer, but let me try and encapsulate a few different things.
Rome is a city and recently, you know, we had the election of Pope Leo the XIV. In those days the whole of, all the eyes of the world, not just Christian and not just Catholic eyes, but all the eyes of the world were on the Vatican, waiting for the white smoke. That’s super interesting.
Rome is a kind of crossroads and there’s electric energy in it. It’s a city, you know, probably—you or many of our listeners have been to Jerusalem, which the Scripture’s called the true pole of the Earth, remember? And so if, if you go to Jerusalem, there’s a kind of frantic energy there, a kind of pent up tension, a kind of religious fervor and a latent thrill almost in the air at all times and electricity. And it’s, it’s engaging, but it’s also unnerving and a little worrisome.
If you then, you know, get into a little bus and go up Galilee, everything changes. The air clears. It’s just run. And the contrast is very remarkable. And all of a sudden you begin to get a sense for both the drama and the gospels and the, the contours of the life of Christ.
Very similar thing in Rome. Rome is a city, which is, it’s, it’s been on the main stage of history for millennia. And so to be a young man and to live in a city like that, the city of Augustus, the city of Cicero, the city of Virgil, and then the city of Peter and Paul, and all of the early martyrs who were, who died there. And many of them, buried in the catacombs just outside the city.
And then the saints of the ages who have been in Rome. Gregory the Great, Leo the Great, Benedict, who we talked about earlier Philip Neri on and on. It’s to be plugged into a great historical tapestry. And so I have to say that just the life there itself, and during the time of John Paul II, I was there in his final years he was a great intellectual, but also an historical figure who had lived under both the Communists and the Nazis. Wow. It made a deep impact on me.
I have to say that the European model of education which is exemplified in a particular way there in Rome wasn’t particularly transformative. They have a particular way there where it’s very lecture heavy and then you just do these 10-minute oral exams at the very end. And yet, despite that, despite the method being kind of foreign to our American sensibilities, there was a method to that madness too.
And I ended up learning a lot in spite of myself. It was really something. So I was there ’98 to 2002.
Todd Ream: Yeah. You mentioned mentors who were significant in your formation particularly during your time at Catholic University of America. And you mentioned authors such as C.S. Lewis. Are there any other authors that approved formative in terms of how you came to understand your vocation?
Msgr. James P. Shea: The English authors, people like C.S. Lewis, but also G. K. Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, George MacDonald, and others really did have a deep impact on me. Also, you know, fiction writers too. I think that literature is a great entry point. And there, you know, you, you’ve got people like Graham Greene, T.S. Elliot, Evelyn Waugh, all kinds of different people. I mean, we could talk at length.
Of course in theological study people like St. Thomas Aquinas, of course a Catholic seminarian, sort of immerses his mind in Thomas but Augustine too, Saint Augustine. Not just the Confessions, but his theological works as well. A little bit of Hans Urs Balthasar. I was at the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and family, while I was at the Lateran and, and Balthasar was, big there. And gosh, there are just so many. I was really the recipient, I had great guides along the way who helped me.
Devotional writers like Caryll Houselander, have been very instructive and helpful for me. Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, well, and then Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict the XVI, one of the great theological minds of our time. And John Paul II himself. Those two together were deeply formative.
Johann Christoph Arnold, who was one of the founders of the Bruderhof movement, is Anabaptist, I think they’re Anabaptist, a group out of Germany. They were resistors during the regime of the Nazis and eventually found their way to rural Pennsylvania. And I think his son, Christoph Arnold has written two. But their work and scholarship has been very interesting and helpful to me as well. That’s kind of a movement of Christian concern. Yeah, lots of different people.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You were ordained in 2002 and have served in a variety of parish and educational settings. Would you please describe which expressions of your calling as a priest and educator you find most fulfilling?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Oh, sure. I was ordained, as you said in 2002. For those who have any manner of historical, 2002 was the year that the clergy sexual abuse scandal broke out in a very serious way in this country. So it started in Boston. The movie Spotlight kind of showcases that, and then it blazed all the way to Dallas, where the bishops, I think in March had an emergency meeting. That was the year I was ordained a priest.
And I was supposed to stay in Rome for higher studies, but in Dallas, the bishops made a decision, one strike and you’re out kind of policy and adopted this new policy, which meant that there were a couple of priests in my diocese who had historical allegations against them going back decades, and they were suddenly removed from ministry. And so that created a shuffle.
And I was home and that was halfway through my second licentiate and I remember thinking, well, that’s the end of education for me. Then the bishop told me that I would be assigned to teach at a Catholic high school, St. Mary’s High School, which is the largest high school in our diocese. And I thought, wow, I didn’t like high school when I was there, really. You know? So this isn’t going to be great.
Plus, I was really scared because I was living a world away across the Atlantic, and I had been hearing all of these news stories and I thought, wow, the students are going to think I’m a, you know, that priests are bad people, very evil. And I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to teach. So I was really self-conscious and nervous about that.
All of that melted, like a snowball thrown into the mouth of a volcano. The instant I got into the classroom, it was of deeply transformative experience for me. I realized that the education that I had been given, I was dying to share it. I’d been waiting all my life to share it, and I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it. And so, that experience of teaching those high school students and being of some service to them in the midst of their lives, in the sort of trenches of, of their hearts, that was very, very amazing to me.
And I did it for seven years. I was at two schools before I was called to the University of Mary. And still today, you know, I teach a class for freshmen who are newly arrived here at the university. And that experience for me, being able to teach, is a great experience.
And indeed, it’s important for me for this reason in that most of my administrative work entails relatively reptilian tasks like, you know, HR and snow removal and budgets. But I, and so I have to make a daily act of faith that the work that I’m doing is making possible what I deeply believe in for others.
In other words, my professors are teaching on this campus every day. My job is to facilitate that, to make sure the trains run on time and that the heating kicks in February. And that the air conditioning kicks in in August. And you know, all, all of these kinds of things. And it’s a noble thing to do that, and sometimes you can forget about that when you’re not doing what you love, and so.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You mentioned your appointment as the sixth president of the University of Mary. Would you describe the discernment process that led you to embrace service as an educational leader? And what you went through at that time, you know, prior to assuming this role?
Msgr. James P. Shea: My story I think is pretty unusual. I was 31, 32 when this possibility came onto my radar. My predecessor, who I mentioned earlier, Sister Thomas, had served for a long time and she had hereditary kidney disease, such that her kidneys were failing. She needed a transplant. She got a transplant, and it failed. So she was trying to run the University of Mary going to dialysis like three times a week, and that was hard for travel, fundraising, all these things, and it was clear that it wasn’t sustainable.
At the same time, the trustees of the university were gazing at the future. And really, and you gotta hand it to these sisters and those who work with them, they’re, they have a prophetic mindset. And the Spirit is clearly with them, because they looked around and they said, you know, we’re not going to be able to make it if we’re just a really good private regional university. We’re going to need to branch out. Our demographic is Catholic, and so how can we tap more deeply into that market?
And so they looked around and they saw that I was a young, energetic, energetic priest who was teaching and loved education, at least at the secondary level. And so I was approached to see if I might have an interest in being the next president of the university. And I said, no I said no two or three times because I didn’t have any of the requisite qualifications. I didn’t have anything that would commend me to doing that work.
At a certain point, the sisters went to see the bishop, and of course, as a diocesan priest, the bishop is responsible for where I am and how I serve and all of that. They presented him with a case, for a diocesan priest being the president of the University of Mary. Then the bishop called me and said that I should go talk to the sisters, and I did. And that’s still a very memorable conversation for me today. It was, well, life-changing really.
The prioress at the time, Sister Susan Berger was dying of cancer, and she just expressed that she thought that God had always provided for the sisters and that now God might be providing this, that I should apply. And so then I did, you know, there was a national search. I don’t remember how many finalists there were, but then I was selected as president.
And I have to say that the morning that that was announced, I was 33 at the time, there were a lot of coffee cups that kind of broke, you know, people reading the paper and dropping their coffee cup. You know, I think everybody was shocked, not least of all me because it was just very unexpected. I was the youngest college president in America for at least a decade then after that.
Todd Ream: Oh wow.
Msgr. James P. Shea: And so that’s something, I mean, there’s much more to that story, but, I don’t think it’s interesting to, to our listeners, it’s interesting to me only because it’s my life. But I don’t know. It was quite a ride. And I wasn’t qualified, in some ways I still am, but boy have I learned a lot.
And, you know, I will say this for all of the recklessness of that decision it is an awfully good thing for a young man to be thrown into the deep end of the pool and to have to grapple with being in way over his head, because then I don’t have to live with the illusion that any of this is about me fundamentally. Or that I’m capable of rising to the occasion in the midst of my call.
Instead, I’m simply able to say to God, look, I didn’t get myself into this. You had a lot to do with it. And so I’m not responsible all by myself. You are responsible too. And so what are we going to do? Because I’m not willing to bear the full weight of this craziness of my life. And that, of course, has allowed me to meet the pretty stiff and difficult challenges of leadership that come with this role.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In 2015, the University of Mary announced Vision 2030, a three-phase strategic plan defined by the values of distinction, service, and relationships. Would you please describe how those three values came to animate this vision for the University of Mary and especially during this season?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Yeah, so distinction first of all, we wanted to make sure that we weren’t just a bland copy of the place down the road that whatever we were doing really was making a distinct contribution. The watch word of the day is diversity, you know. And there are all kinds of diversity initiatives, and sometimes they’re quite boring because they don’t really foster an authentic kind of diversity but really a monoculture in higher education, which becomes an echo chamber in which not too many different voices are really heard.
And we think that our contribution to the diversity of the landscape of higher education is to be more and more who we were founded to be, that a faithful, vibrant, devoted Catholic university has something to offer on the landscape of Catholic, or the landscape of higher education writ large in our country.
And so we thought, what are ways in which we can serve that we’re not replicating others, but really distinctly serving, which goes into the second question, which is that it is about service. We live in a highly individualistic time in which self-concern is deeply valued and sought after. And we just don’t believe in any of that.
We think that the Christian life is a life that’s meant to be given away in love. And that in indeed the law of the gift that we increase in being, in so far as we give ourselves away, is the real key to human happiness. And if we want to contribute to the happiness of our students and the surrounding community, we need to exemplify that.
And so the University of Mary isn’t inflating ourselves. You know, I see other places, even really great places, oftentimes in their marketing, they’re just a little bit pompous and trumpety. Sometimes I suppose you need to do that in marketing and in public relations, but it’s kind of distasteful for us. We want to be known as a place which serves and which forms servant hearts, servant leaders.
And then the question of relationships, of course, from the very beginning, that’s what it’s all been about here. Cardinal Francis George was known for two different sayings. He said that the only things we take with us when we die are what we have given away. And the only things that endure are our relationships with God and with each other. And so relationships have this enduring quality beyond the grave. To quote C.S. Lewis so often, you know, remember in the Weight of Glory, he speaks about how those whom we interact with are immortal beings with eternal destinies.
And if we bear that in mind, it changes everything about the way in which we talk to each other and see each other and know each other and all that. And so that’s where those sort of load stars come from in our strategic plan.
Todd Ream: Yeah. As you approach the dawn of phase three then, what are your hopes for the University of Mary moving forward?
Msgr. James P. Shea: So we have developed into something of a national university. About 60% of our incoming class, at the traditional undergraduate level, come from the wide world, from beyond North Dakota. And those numbers are growing and growing. And so we’re really grateful for that, especially in a time when a lot of places really are facing some stern challenges, relative to enrollment.
I think that we want to make sure that our programs really are serving the religious, cultural, and educational needs of the people of our region and beyond. We want to stay true to our The third phase of Vision 2030 does call for a medical school. That’s an interesting prospect for us. We haven’t sharpened our pencils a lot around that, but we do have a very highly ranked nursing program. Then we have all of the other allied health programs, you know, OT and PT. We have doctorates and we have a master’s in speech language pathology. We have programs in kinesiology and exercise science and athletic training and respiratory care and radiologic technology and pre-med and all of those things.
And so it does make sense that at a certain point, we might want to launch a medical school, but that’s you know, swinging for the fence to use a baseball analogy. So I need to get my arms warmed up.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Before we close, I’d like to ask you to unpack some of the details you offered in your 2021 title, The Vocation of the Catholic University Professor. To start, how do you define the characteristics and/or qualities of the academic vocation?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Yeah, well, so first of all, I can’t tell you what this question means to me, in that nobody reads that book. I’m just so happy about it. We not happy that nobody reads it, but happy that you yourself have somehow come upon it.
There it is, wow.
Todd Ream: I have read it and highly recommend it.
Msgr. James P. Shea: Isn’t that something? So we’ve done a couple of pieces here that have kind of been surprising bestsellers. One is called From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Strategies for an Apostolic Age and the other one is called The Religion of the Day. And those, you know, speak kind of our, to our cultural context and those, even though we’ve never marketed them, have, have sold really huge numbers of copies.
The little one that you have on The Vocation of the Catholic University Professor, no one ever buys that. We wrote it as an internal piece, like the other two but then we gave it to all of our professors and those were the only people who really ever wanted it.
But the academic vocation, I think is fundamentally a, a vocation of service, because the vision of, or the idea of a university has in a certain sense become so corrupted, by some of the, the temptations of academic life, that vocation of service has atrophied as well. And I wanted to, to just speak into that and, and to encourage those who teach here to metanoia, you know, to have their minds changed about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
What I mean by that, I think, is that we live in a time where academic work is highly specialized. That’s partly a result of the German model of the PhD, which is modern. You know, that the ancient or medieval university professors were all masters. You know, the masters of their topics and their subjects, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, and others.
And so there there’s this high, high level of specialization where it, it’s easy to find a little scrap of territory and then guard it fiercely as your area of expertise and the source really of your self-worth as a scholar and your ability to, to contribute in the marketplace of ideas, to use a really unfortunate phrase. And I just think that that’s not the point at all. To become an expert in, in some small area to earn a PhD, is helpful insofar as it is, it exercises and trains the mind. It activates the critical capacity and all of those things.
But we have to remember that the intellect is the highest power in the human soul. It’s the highest of the human faculties in classical and Christian anthropology. And so pride of mind then becomes the great temptation for the scholar. And it can really be corrosive. And insulating it can make the capacious broad adventure of learning and the mind that Cardinal Newman says the university exists to form, which is able to make fundamental, to form a philosophical habit of mind whereby connections are made and all of reality is knit together in the exploration of reality using the different, and the various disciplines. All of what, including theology, including theology, all of which are complimentary and look at reality from different aspects and facets is through examining a precious diamond.
That’s the way to go. The corruption of the ancients used to say that the corruption of the best is the worst. And so when something is so noble as the intellectual life, Sertillanges here, is a great commenter on the intellectual life. When something is that noble and worthy, when it’s corrupted, it becomes absolutely the worst.
And so you have this strange phenomenon in which, you know, universities used to be the place where the culture and the Church did their thinking. And whole civilizations would look for guidance. In the Middle Ages, it was the crown, the Church, and the university. Those were the three poles upon which the whole of society and civilization depended. And when the Church was, for instance, locked in the great schism, it was to the universities that she turned to resolve some of these questions.
Who would think of turning to universities in that way today—that seems very foreign. It’s because our abdication of our fundamental vocation to explore with rigor, the whole of reality, and to be interested not in every thing, but in everything that, that, that abdication has, has left us increasingly irrelevant, such that as one of the former presidents of the University of Chicago said that universities are a series of buildings connected and united by a central heating system. Well that’s that, that’s very drab and unexciting.
So I think that with that small piece, what we were trying to do is, and what I wanted, what my intention was to awaken. Leo the Great in one of his Christmas sermons has this famous phrase, Christian, remember your dignity. And I wanted to say that, professor, remember your dignity. Remember that your calling to teach, to have young, immortal souls, so supple and so ready to be shaped and formed by you. To have such souls entrusted to your care is a great honor and privilege. And it’s meant to be taken seriously.
And that happens when your own vocation is approached from the vantage of service and humility and a deep energy and joy for good in communion with God and His purposes for you and for our students. So that’s what that book’s all about. But nobody’s ever read it. And so, I am, you know, wow, I’m impressed by you.
Todd Ream: Thank you. As we close, I want to ask, in what ways is the health of the academic vocation, as you’ve described it, dependent upon and reflective of the health of the relationship that the university shares with the Church?
Msgr. James P. Shea: Oh yeah, absolutely. So going back to the, the image of, of, of an old whiskey bottle on the beach, there’s a kind of tragedy in that. It still bears maybe the scent, but the good stuff is all gone.
Our values at a Christian university are not to cut flowers, they’re blossoms on a tree. And the Church is deeply rooted in the living God, in the, the Holy Spirit, who is both the consoler and the advocate who guards the mind from error and falsehood. And the fundamental and integral relationship then between the Church and the academy is meant to be complimentary and kind of like booster rockets, on the search for truth and goodness and beauty.
This idea, which is modern and also wrong, not everything that’s modern is wrong, but there are some things that are both modern and wrong. One of them is the idea that the mind is most free when it’s untroubled by authority. This is a very terrible idea, and it’s not borne out at all, historically, intellectually, philosophically, theologically in literature. The mind is not at its best when it is untroubled by authority.
And indeed, what that involves is a kind of colossal pride, which brings with it blindness because we are, for all of our creativity and promise and all of our uniqueness, each of us and our generation itself, for all of that, we are bearers of a tradition which we pass on from—Chesterton said this, that education is the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to the next.
In the same way we bear a great and and worthy tradition. We’re the custodians of it. And the world is counting on us. God is counting on us to pass it down to the next generation because we received it. This goes back to my gratitude for my own education. I would be just a hapless jerk and a deeply ungrateful oaf if I wasn’t giving all of my energy to providing an arena in which the same thing which happened to me can happen for others in a yet deeper and more beautiful way, such that the, the truth and the desire for the truth grows and doesn’t atrophy with the passage of time.
And so I think that the idea that somehow the Church is going to interfere with the vital work of the academy, that’s a spirit of fear, which is not justified. And of course you can count, you can point to occasions in which Church authority has overstepped its bounds or meddled in areas that didn’t respect the proper autonomy of the arts and the sciences and professions. But in our day, the tendency is toward the opposite, and it’s left us impoverished.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our guest has been Monsignor James P. Shea, President of the University of Mary. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Msgr. James P. Shea: I’m so very grateful to be with you and God bless you. God bless the amazing work of Christian Scholar’s Review. Very grateful.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
