(OSV News) — The Catholic imagination needs to be reawakened in academic life to nurture leaders who can become “voices for the Catholic Church,” a Catholic scientist advised the nation’s bishops.

Mathematical biologist Santiago Schnell, provost of Dartmouth University, addressed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops during their annual spring plenary, taking place June 10-12 in Orlando.

Schnell was invited to speak June 10 by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, USCCB secretary and chair of its Committee on Priorities and Plans.

The talk anticipated the bishops’ discussion of the 25th anniversary of the USCCB’s  implementation of “Ex Corde Ecclesiae,” St. John Paul II’s apostolic constitution on Catholic universities.

During his presentation, Schnell — formerly dean of the University of Notre Dame’s College of Science — warned that Catholics were, as his presentation title asserted, “educated, yet absent” from American intellectual life.

‘We’re not educating Catholics to become leaders’

“The Catholic paradox is that we have a massive infrastructure of higher education with average outcomes,” said Schnell. “We are not educating sufficient Catholics in our Catholic higher educational system. And we’re not educating them, actually, to become leaders.”

Catholics have had a “political arrival,” Schnell explained, noting that while about 20% of the U.S. population self-identifies as Catholic, six of the nine (67%) current Supreme Court justices are Catholic.

But, said Schnell, only 35% of U.S. Catholic adults have attained a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to data from the Pew Research Center.

That figure is despite the existence of some 230 Catholic colleges in the U.S., with approximately 675,000 students enrolled in Catholic higher education as of the fall 2023 term, Schnell noted in his talk.

And, said Schnell, just 28% of the 119th U.S. Congress is Catholic, according to Pew data posted in January 2025.

Secularization and shift away from formation 

Schnell identified secularization, higher education rankings and a shift to training, rather than education and formation, as key factors driving Catholic universities to “imitate” their secular peers, rather than embody their distinctive identity.

Secularization has seen a dilution of mission at many Catholic colleges and universities, he said.

“Everyone wants to be a force for good. Everyone wants to help the poor. Everyone wants to support democracy,” said Schnell. “But we’re doing that in a way that is devoid of religion, of the connection with God.”

He described the nation’s higher education rankings system as a kind of “rival magisterium.”

Such ratings, curated by U.S. News and World Report, Forbes and other organizations, have retained significant influence in the U.S., helping to drive applications and admissions — and, significantly, the bottom line for college and university budgets.

“Our Catholic universities, to be ranked, have chosen the same path of becoming indifferent and indistinguishable from somebody else,” Schnell said.

Focus on ranking detracts from ‘training human person’

The focus on rankings detracts from Catholic higher education’s role in “training the human person, for the betterment of the human condition,” he said.

Even the academic vocabulary has shifted, he said, with words such as “hope,” “heaven,” “soul” and “joy” — the “language of human flourishing” — fading from the lexicon, said Schnell, pointing to statistical analyses of usage.

Citing Pew data, he added that 43% of U.S. adults raised Catholic no longer identify as such currently.

Schnell — whose work emphasizes the “unity of knowledge,” with several disciplines contributing to the understanding of a given issue — lamented the “fundamental problem” of separating “faith from reason,” which prevents an understanding of truth.

At the same time, Schnell also underscored the problem of “scholars deviating” from their field of inquiry “because they don’t know how to distinguish between their personal beliefs and their academic work.”

‘Ordered to truth, not indifference’

Academic freedom must be “ordered to truth, not indifference,” he noted in one of his presentation slides.

In one slide, Schnell also cautioned that institutional awards, such as honorary degrees and invitations to deliver commencement addresses, are “never neutral,” since they reflect a higher educational institution’s values — as do senior appointments and a school’s “public speech.”

In what he described as his “most controversial statement,” Schnell said that the mission of Catholic higher education “shouldn’t be creating individuals who go to the workplace,” although “that’s a good thing.”

Nor is the mission to “imitate” research at other institutions, he said.

Rather, the goal is “actually creating the scholars who are going to become, potentially, the doctors of the church,” along with the next “poets” and “scientists” who are “going to inspire theology.

Such scholars are needed by the Church now and “for centuries to come,” he said.

What makes academic institutions great

A reputation for “exceptional” quality, rather than rankings, are what “makes academic institutions great,” Schnell said.

He invoked St. John Henry Newman’s concept of the “genius loci,” or “spirit of the place,” in describing what makes a given university or college Catholic.

“It’s the conversation the students have while they’re walking to the dorms or walking to the chapel,” he said. “It’s the conversation about their heart and about their faith. It’s an organization around not only the academic norms, but the spiritual norms they have.”

Schnell concluded his presentation with “three questions” for the bishops to explore in their discussions of “Ex Corde Ecclesiae” — how to form Catholic higher education to move from imitation to imagination, how to ensure bishops are “more vocal” in clarifying the “participation of the mission,” and how to form both individuals and the “genius loci” of Catholic colleges and universities.

Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.

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