By Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB
The B.C. Catholic

This is an excerpt from a speech given for the installation of Msgr. Mark Hagemoen Sept. 18.

Undoubtedly St. Mark's College, precisely as a theological college which grants graduate degrees, has a unique role in the life of our local church and enjoys our whole-hearted and enthusiastic support. Through its various programs and diplomas it enriches the intellectual and pastoral capital of the archdiocese with the soundness of its teaching faithful to the Church's magisterium.

I am particularly pleased with the college's outreach to assist our teachers in the Catholic Independent Schools of the Vancouver Archdiocese grow in their knowledge of the faith and look forward to a new partnership in our program for the formation of permanent deacons.

As you know, from its inception, the college, through its campus ministry programs, has also provided for the sacramental life and pastoral care of all the students, faculty, and staff who live or work on the UBC campus. This pastoral ministry, which is integral to the Church's mission, complements academic learning with numerous opportunities to integrate faith with life, and I am very grateful for its zealous service to the whole university community.

As for the importance of Corpus Christi College, I would say that if the college did not already exist, the establishment of a Catholic liberal arts college would rank at the top of the list of pastoral priorities for the archdiocese.

The Church has a mission, indeed it is her primary vocation, to evangelize - to make known in every sector of social, political, economic, cultural, and educational life our salvation in Jesus Christ. Corpus Christi is one such centre - and an irreplaceable one - where this mission of evangelization is being accomplished.

In his writings, especially The Idea of a University, Blessed John Henry Newman, a figure much venerated at the colleges, offered a view of the purpose of higher education. His vision, I believe, underlies what Corpus Christi strives to achieve.

The aim of higher education is not, he wrote, primarily to fit students for this or that particular profession or career, although it prepares them for all. Rather, its purpose is decidedly intellectual: it is to transform the mind.

Catholic Christianity is the bearer of a great intellectual tradition. Immersed in this tradition and guided by professors who engage their students in personal and lively dialogue, graduates of Corpus Christi are able to engage fruitfully in conversation and debate, to exercise judgement, to bring to bear on complex issues insights and arguments from both reason and faith.

Cardinal Newman spelled out just what happens at Corpus Christi College for its teachers and students alike when he wrote about what he wanted a Catholic college to do: "I wish the intellect to range with the utmost freedom, and religion to enjoy an equal freedom, but what I am stipulating is that they should be found in one and the same place, and exemplified in the same persons."

"I wish the same spots and the same individuals to be at once oracles of philosophy [reason] and shrines of devotion."

The harmony of faith and reason is not just a slogan to be invoked but is a reality lived in the mission and curriculum of Corpus Christi College. Here the world of reason and the world of faith - the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief - enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of the Church and society.

More than ever we need lay women and men, graduates of Catholic institutions of higher learning, who can enrich both our ecclesial and social life with this vision of harmony.

The specifically Catholic identity of Corpus College, with all that entails, is what makes it unique and why it plays such a vital role in the life of the archdiocese and is so closely linked to it. This identity is a commitment of intellect and will, of mind and heart, to the conviction that Catholic teaching, ideals, attitudes, and principles must imbue all the college's activities.

Without the contribution of Corpus Christi and other Catholic post-secondary institutions, not only would the ecclesial community be impoverished because of its lack of knowledge of the great Catholic intellectual, moral, scientific, and artistic tradition, but society as a whole would suffer, sliding into a noxious secularism which would cut us from our cultural and religious roots.

Because of their solid formation, the graduates of both Corpus Christi and St. Mark's Colleges, each in their own ways, will neither passively submit to the dominant cultural influences nor become marginal in relation to them. They are equipped to engage them.

We are proud of them and their contributions, and earnestly hope that their numbers will increase.