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 of truth and authority in education. Benedict XVI's recent comments on a perceived "educational emergency" are the latest articulation of a broader concern for the direction in which contemporary education is heading. Within this context, Catholic higher education can act as a spur for the renewal of higher education today by clearly focusing on the role of the liberal arts as the medium for learning what it is to be human and by challenging those whose vision of education is influence by utilitarianism.