description:
Nov. 20,1963 THE SKYSCRAPER Page Three Advisory Board Introduces Phase 3 Sittler Redefines Grace, Examines 'Self in Society Dr. Joseph Sittler Dr. George Shuster Faculty Airs Opinions/ Committees Comment by Janice Jearas and Eileen Schaefer We met the members of the Institutional Analysis Advisory Com mittee ... we attended the meetings ... we took copious notes. Furthermore, we were amazed that faculty members, just as students, have diverse opinions but are articulate in airing them to the Advisory Board. This was the stimulating part of the Analysis listening to the board and faculty exchange academic experiences and then relating them to the growth of the College. The Advisory Board met with the arts education. He added, Edu- Institutional Analysis committees cation must be a life affair. It for three hours Nov. 2. frees the mind to go on and on. One member, Dr. Joseph Sittler, conferred with the Committee on (Continued on Page 4) Pounding his drum loudly as a Roman Catholic supporter once ad vised him to do, Reverend Joseph Sittler, Lutheran theologian at the University of Chicago, speaking at Back to College Day, Nov. 3 dis cussed The Place of Grace in the Scientific Culture. Faculty committees met with the five members of the Institutional Analysis Advisory Board Nov. 3, to begin the third phase of the Insti tutional Analysis. Phase three will continue until the end of the school year; each committee will then of fer a set of recommendations per taining to the special aspect it has been studying. The Committee on Organization of the College met with Dr. George Shuster; Reverend William Dunne, S.J., spoke with the Library Com mittee and the Faculty Benefits Committee; the Counseling Com mittee and Student Affairs Commit tee met with Dr. Bernice Cronkhite; Dr. Joseph Sittler advised the Quality of Instruction Committee and Professor H. Marston Morse met with the Committee on Curri culum. As a Protestant theologian. Dr. Sittler finds himself thrust into to day's world with its impersonal, commercial, mechanized character istics. I have had my mind per meated by the 'desacralizing' of hu man life, he remarked. In this milieu, much of the holy, the godly and the significance of man's exist ence and end is undergoing deep erosion or being violently thrust out of mind. In such an atmosphere the pro vocative question arises, how shall the ancient concept of life as 'a holy enterprise' be restated for the present generation? A correct understanding of grace and nature will reveal the integra tion and relationship of the secular and divine elements of society. Dr. Sittler defined grace as a proposal of Christian faith that God is a gracious God. The doctor has tened to banish illusions of God as an impersonal energizing force. God in his loving providence turns himself toward his creation in or- the Quality of Instruction. Ques tioned about the relation of the quality of an institution to the quality of instruction, Sittler an swered: An institution does not have the freedom to decide what kind of an institution to be. The function is determined by those instructed . . . The hypothetical 'quality of instruction' then, takes on its meaning from the aim of the college and its context. When some faculty members asked if there was a need for change in the Mundelein aim, Dr. Sittler's reply was in keeping with his earlier statement. Keep doing what you have been doing better. There is a need for someone to light the fires as well as to tend them. Teach a text in such a way that the sub stance can become the possibility of a vicarious enjoyment of life. Discussing the role of church- related colleges, the theologian pointed out that Mundelein must not only see its place in relation to the past and present but must see how world affairs will affect faith and culture in the future. Looking introspectively at its col lective self, the faculty showed con cern on objective rating of teachers. According to Sittler, it is hard to determine objective guidelines for measuring teaching effectiveness. The quality of instruction should be seen in the communica tion of love of knowledge through the person ... is the student able to bring back facts and relate them to another situation? The committee on curriculum, advised by Professor H. Marston Morse, centralized its discussion on the concept of a liberal arts college. Mundelein's liberal arts program offers a core of subjects from which students may choose 60-64 hours. Lower-division courses are usually general, while upper -division courses are specialized. But it is not special courses that make a college liberal; it is the fact that they are in some way based upon philosophy. Professor Morse therefore sug gested that philosophy should be made the binding core of a liberal Shuster Evaluates 'The Deputy'; Relates European Conflicts, Unity Doctor George Shuster unobtrusively offered some insights into the problems posed by a controversial drama, Der Stellvertreter ( The Deputy ) and a controversial political riddle, West Germany, in an address given at Back to College Day, Nov. 3. Assistant to the president of Notre Dame Univer sity and a member of Mundelein's Institutional Analy sis Advisory Committee, Doctor Shuster introduced the West German Federal Republic as the scene of moral crises and debates of the most fundamental significance. One of our key allies, West Germany, is the state in which relations with the Russian world reach a point of focus. CDU Bolsters Unity Recalling Konrad Adenauer's career, Dr. Shuster acclaimed the former chancellor for establishing Ger many's Protestant-Catholic party, the CDU, and for giving birth to the concept of a united Europe. Holding Adenauer largely responsible for Franco- American reconciliation, emergence of patterns of inter-European cooperation, entry of Germany into the Atlantic Alliance and formation of the anatomy of a new West German government, Shuster main tained that der Alte is most likely to be remembered for his effort to make restitution to the Jewish peo ple for the injury they suffered during the Nazi regime. Refers to 'Deputy' Never referring to ''The Deputy by name, Dr. Shuster was, nevertheless, adamant in his remarks about the position of the Church and the Jew in Nazi Europe. When the Nazis came into power it was decided that you would do what you could to assist the Jew in terms of charity . . . but not in the realms of justice. Which means that you did not protest against the persecution of the Jews except in terms of your own group. Within the framework of the concordat of Canon Law, this seemed to be about all that could be done. Dr. Shuster calls this drive of Catholic agen cies to defend the rights of Jewish fellow citizens one of the bright pages in Catholic history, an opinion sharply contrasted with that conveyed by The Deputy. Shifting emphasis to the CDU, Dr. Shuster re marked that its trend toward ecumenism gave im petus to the movement toward Vatican II. By 1947, nine million people from the east had settled in West Germany to constitute the strongest anti-communist group in the world. The economy of West Germany, Shuster continued, thrived on a miracle compound made of the American dollar, the Marshall Plan and the magnificent labor force re cruited along the route of exile. The quality of this labor force was such that by reasons of ability and motivation it became one of the singular sources of riches on the contemporary scene. U.S. Urges Rearmament On the politico-military surface, the rearmament of Germany in 1950 seemed wise. In the winter of that year the U.S. told Germany to prepare 14 trained and equipped divisions; Eisenhower later reversed the number to 41. But Europe had misgivings about an armed Ger many and the Germans themselves, who had not held a pistol since the war, shrank from armed defense of the Vaterland. Today, Adenauer's chair is empty. National con science and national purpose are in the hands of Lud- wig Erhard, patron saint of West Germany's well- being. Dr. Shuster spoke authoritatively of the new chancellor, a simple, wholesome man. Erhard speaks a language the people understand, is a proponent of Germany's economic recovery, and, said Shuster, is a man of perfectly extraordinary ability. Erhard himself dismisses suggestions that he will prove incompetent as a diplomat as stupid chatter, but West Germany's diplomatic headaches are growing increasingly painful. Western defense policy has entered a new phase and the recent test ban has sorely divided German opinion. Shuster charged the Washington govern ment with failure to communicate a point of view at sufficiently varied levels of German government. To many, the test ban signals the first great fall to the arms of the reprehensible Reds. Seeds of another devastating controversy are planted in the common market debate. This debate, said Shuster, has driven Germany more than any other single thing since the war. Erhard will have no part of France's technocratic economy. His is a struggle for free economy, labor-management coop eration, and the consolidation of the whole Europe into the common market. But West Germany is no Utopia. Rudolph Leon- hardt, a writer of the new generation holds that there is no national purpose beyond the maintenance of prosperity. West Germany's is a healthy, material istic society. Conscious of the moral failures of its ancestors, Germany is weak in spiritual insights and moral convictions, Dr. Shuster concluded. der to restore it, thus closing the gap between the Supreme Being and his creatures. Nature, for the theologian, con stitutes, the world . . . the theater in which man has his self-conscious existence. Dr. Sittler pointed out a problem in this regard, common to both Catholics and Protestants. Tradi tions of the Church are patterned on the teachings of St. Augustine which were completely appropriate for the world, nature and man in his own time. But the world has evolved since the fifth century and the relation of nature and grace must be re-analyzed in terms of the 20th century. The concept must be adjusted so that today's 'desacral- ized' man can discover that grace is something actual, powerful, available and work performing. The idea of self requires re defining in this area. Augustine ex plained it in terms of the isolated self. But according to Dr. Sittler, men today must recognize the in sights which psychology, sociology and introspection contribute. With overtones of existentialism, Dr. Sittler insisted that self is always a self among selves. The idea of community must predominate for we postulate one another into self hood by our relationships. Dr. Sittler paralleled this idea with what he thinks James Baldwin is trying to say in The Fire Next Time. In the theologian's opinion, Baldwin acknowledges that if one does not acknowledge the other in his selfhood, he has somehow mur dered the unacknowledged man. For all men are searching for ac knowledgement and there is a kind of annihilation when acknowledge ment is refused. Grace, then, if it is to be a re storative power must operate not in isolation, but among persons. If I live unforgiven or unforgiving or relate self vertically to grace, but don't permit grace to become a grace whereby I understand the real self horizontally as a self among selves, I have repudiated the grace of God, said the theologian. Dr. Sittler thrust his point home with the pertinent query, if you do not acknowledge others who would, by looking at you, ever sus pect that God is gracious? In this case, you aren't a help to God. You're an opacity, he added. You have to move out of the way so God can be God to people. Summing up his discussion of the integral relationship of nature and grace, the theologian described the world as not a substantial thing . . . but a bundle of highly complex relationships. Modern scientific discoveries catapult man into a position of dominance over nature which he has never before possessed. With the world at his command, man wields a terrifying authority. Dr. Sittler outlined simply, but force fully, the jolting possibility that unless man beholds the world of nature as the realm of grace, it will surely become an enormously multiplied potency for damnation. The present generation, then, shoulders an unequalled responsi bility. Challenged with the task of gracifying the world, man must seriously accept his obligation to pull the world and our relations to it within the realm of grace.
title:
1963-11-20 (3)
publisher:
Women and Leadership Archives http://www.luc.edu/wla
creator:
Mundelein College
description:
Student newspaper for Mundelein College
subject:
Newspapers
subject:
Religious communities--Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
subject:
Students
subject:
Universities and colleges
subject:
Women's education
relation:
Mundelein College Records
type:
Text
language:
English
rights:
This image is issued by the Women and Leadership Archives. Use of the image requires written permission from the Director of the Women and Leadership Archives. It may not be sold or redistributed, copied or distributed as a photograph, electronic file, or any other media. The image should not be significantly altered through conventional or electronic means. Images altered beyond standard cropping and resizing require further negotiation with the Director. The user is responsible for all issues of copyright. Please Credit: Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University Chicago. wlarchives@luc.edu
coverage:
Chicago, Illinois
coverage:
Mundelein College