Academic Freedom and the Telos of the Catholic University

There are currently no books on Catholic higher education that offer a theological foundation for academic freedom. Academic freedom and its role in the mission of the Catholic university has been a contentious issue in Catholic higher education for the past forty years. Although most Catholic colleges and universities have accepted academic freedom as a core principle, Garcia argues that it is the secular version that they have adopted. He proposes a specifically theological understanding of academic freedom that does not undermine the secular version, but builds on, extends, and completes it. Such a theological understanding provides scholars the freedom to explore beyond their disciplinary domains to an ultimate horizon, or God. This understanding can be found implicitly throughout the Christian tradition, in ancient, medieval, and modern Christian writers, and Garcia seeks to recover that implicit tradition and formulate it explicitly for the modern Catholic university.