Bad ideas spread by our colleges and universities are a danger to our civilization. Communism, collectivism, and other ruinous “isms” are pushed by many professors. Few stand up for the values that support western civilization.

In today’s Martin Center article, George Weigel argues that Catholic colleges need to take the lead in countering those bad ideas. We are facing crises:

It is a crisis in epistemology: collapse of confidence that human beings can know those truths with a degree of certainty.

It is a crisis in the moral life: for absent those deep truths as a stable framework for moral reflection, we are left with Jeremy Bentham and his dehumanizing calculus of utility.

Catholic colleges can reintroduce the moral question “should we do this?” as opposed to the statist question “can we do this?”

Weigel continues:

Catholic colleges and universities will address the metaphysical crisis by demonstrating the intimate relationship between faith and reason — which, as the encyclical Fides et Ratio teaches, are the ‘two wings’ on which the human spirit reaches out and grasps the truth of things.

Weigel has written a new book to make his case.  Good luck.