Academic Freedom and the Telos of the Catholic University

This book presents a theologically-grounded understanding of academic freedom that builds on, completes, and transforms the prevailing secular understanding. Academic freedom in the secular university, while rightly protecting scholars from external interference by ecclesiastical and political authorities, is constricting in practice because it tends to prohibit most scholars from exploring the relation of the finite world to the infinite, or God. In the Catholic university, true academic freedom means both the freedom of the scholar to pursue studies unencumbered by external interference, and freedom to pursue knowledge beyond the boundaries of specific academic disciplines toward an infinite horizon.