This article addresses apparent impasses between "Mercy" and "Catholic" identities in our colleges and universities. Each of the contributors represents a unique voice arising from her or his role and experience within the university community. All are grappling with the tension generated by the university's efforts to…

This article explores the current and historical importance of business to the Mercy ministries, and the ways in which business programs at Mercy colleges and universities exemplify and promote their charism. Mission statements, faculty and staff development activities, research, curricular and extracurricular initiatives, community service, and…

"Born from the heart of the church," a Catholic university that educates nurses is engaged in the "formation of the heart"; that is, in forming students who have a heart that "sees where love is needed and acts accordingly." Precisely because the identity and mission of the Catholic university make public its…

This article builds on an essay the author published twenty years ago in "Current Issues in Catholic Higher Education" that examined the viability of John Henry Newman's "Idea of a University" against Catholic campus life and the just-released "Ex corde Ecclesiae". The current essay briefly notes those earlier key points made in the first article,…

This article uses the work of Anthony J. Gittins to reframe our understanding of Catholic higher education as mission. The broad adoption of this framework would require a common intellectual foundation, the possibility of which is dismissed by many. An accessible ontology is implied, however, in the existential analysis and theology of Karl…

By virtue of its divine vocation, Catholic business education must be mission driven. In reality, however, mission drift and failure to maintain distinctiveness are widespread among Catholic business schools (CBS). Many believe that a trade-off between academic quality and Catholicity is unavoidable, and opt for accommodating the expectations of…

According to many analysts, after the dot-com, housing and financial bubbles, the next bubble to burst may be that of higher education and especially business education schools. Given this possible scenario, there are two ways one might interpret the current crisis in education, accompanied by two proposals for addressing the problems. According…

This article, originally presented as a plenary address at the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities 2011 Annual Meeting, addresses a bottom-up methodology for infusing the spirit of Catholic identity more deeply throughout a campus community. The author begins with an exploration of some theoretical underpinnings of this approach and…

In this article, the author maintains that a Catholic university does not need to be established as a separate juridic person to be subject to rights and obligations in canon law. The Church's law allows a group or persons or things to join together as a juridic person to be recognized by the Church to have rights and obligations in the Church.…

The challenges facing Catholic higher education today offer the Church an opportunity to rethink the conceptual framework within which it operates. The educational vision found in the relevant writings of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI offer possibilities for an educational project centered on the role…

This article reports a case study of seventeen faculty leaders teaching at a Catholic university who responded to a questionnaire concerning academic freedom and its practice in classroom speech. Situating the responses within a heuristic model, this article offers a portrait that provides insight into how these faculty leaders define academic…

Modern Catholic doctrine clearly states that education for justice is constitutive of a Catholic university. However, the Catholic university had a long history of educating for justice even before the advent of the Church's social teaching in the late nineteenth century. What are the warrants or precedents, if any, for the contemporary focus on…

This article describes one Catholic university's efforts to strengthen its mission commitment to social justice by providing quality faculty development to a large cross-section of full-time faculty. The purpose of this initiative is to provide faculty with the tools and knowledge necessary to embed Catholic Social Teaching in their course…

College students are in a key developmental stage for cultivating their civic identities. This article draws on a case example to show how courses focused on educating students for democratic citizenship--courses on leadership, community organizing, social movements, or other related topics--prove to be excellent venues for integrating Catholic…

This study examines emerging trends among those members of the Millennial generation who have dedicated a significant portion of their young-adult lives to the study of philosophy and theology at Catholic colleges and universities. Our analyses suggest that the number and percentage of Millennial undergraduates who earned degrees in philosophy or…