Magdalen College understands itself to be a steward of the Catholic intellectual tradition and a participant in the greater mission of the Church through its unique liberal education. Through our immersion in and cultivation of the best of Catholic intellectual and liturgical culture, integration of faith and reason, and a collegiate ethos that is oriented to growth in Wisdom, the college seeks to grow ever more faithful to its mission. Neither triumphalist nor defensive in our posture, we–like our patron Pope Saint John Paul II–embrace the call to fidelity with joy, hope, and humility. Together, these enable us to bring light and the call to authentic communion to the world. We “go out into the deep” both in search of wisdom and to bring what Benedict XVI called “intellectual charity” to those most in need.
Four documents, among others, are key to our identity and self-understanding as a college:
Pope Saint John Paul II’s Encyclical Fides et ratio
Pope Saint John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Ex corde ecclesiae
Pope Benedict XVI’s “Address to Catholic Educators” (2008)
Saint John Henry Newman’s Idea of a University
Institutionally, the college has established several practices and norms that have helped it sustain its Catholicity over time. Though Catholic culture in part springs from the spiritual lives and practices of those who inhabit that culture at a given moment, these practices and norms offer a public witness to those both within and beyond the college of the institution’s fundamental orientation over time.
Each of our theologians seeks the mandatum from our bishop, Peter A. Libasci, and the college is governed according to its own legal documents by Pope Saint John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (On Catholic Universities).
At the beginning of each academic year, in the presence of the Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, the Catholic faculty and staff of the college freely take the following “Oath of Fidelity” along with the president and local trustees.
Furthermore, according to the college’s governing documents, the president of the college and all of the members of the board of trustees must be Catholic and committed to the integrity of the Church’s teaching.
Finally, speakers at the college are chosen according to the principles outlined by Pope Saint John Paul II in Ex corde ecclesiae with due respect accorded to the proper understanding of academic freedom.
The creation of a Catholic culture that is conducive to the spiritual life is a complex process–one outlined in another essential document for the college, Josef Pieper’s Leisure the Basis of Culture–but these practices and norms provide the “guard rails” that stand beyond any particular person or moment in the college’s history. Within the space these provide, the college invites its members to embrace without reservation the journey toward Wisdom, the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition, and the education of the integrated person that we offer.
