Hospitality and Mount Saint Mary’s University

As we at The Inner Room blog, spend some time with Henri Nouwen’s book Reaching Out, news just broke about the President Simon Newman of Mount Saint Mary’s University resigned in a controversy about Catholic University identity and the mission of Catholic Universities.  In this time, I think Nouwen’s words about community and hospitality are important for all involved in Catholic education to remember:

“But is it possible to become hospitable to each other in a classroom?  it is far from easy since both teachers and students are part of a demanding, pushing and often exploitative society in which personal growth and development have become secondary to the ability to produce and earn not only credits but a living.  In such a production-oriented society even schools no longer have the time or space where the questions about why we live and love, work, die can be raised without fear of competition, rivalry or concerns about punishment or rewards….And still teaching, from the point of view of a Christian spirituality, means the commitment to provide the fearless space where such questions can come to consciousness and can be responded to, not by prefabricated answers, but by an articulate encouragement to enter them seriously and personally.  When we look at teaching in terms of hospitality, we can say that the teacher is called upon to create for his students a free and fearless space where mental and emotional development can take place.”

Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen

We pray for God’s blessings and grace to continue to guide Mount Saint Mary’s University, its former president, its board of trustees, its faculty, staff, students, and all the families of the students as they discern the best way of offering a Catholic education in the 21st century.  We pray that the above words of Henri Nouwen, grounded in the deeply contemplative aspects of the faith, as well as the fullest sense of Catholic education, can offer some inspiration on what a truly Roman Catholic educational space should look like.  May it always be a space of hospitality where one is called out from the narrow darkness into the wide open light, in imitation of Christ who beckons us all forward in mercy, wisdom, and love.