– Marco Carvalho
What distinguishes a Catholic university from other higher educational institutions? The question was at the heart of the lecture with which Father Peter Stilwell closed, Monday evening, the cycle of lectures that the Faculty of Religious Studies of the University of Saint Joseph (USJ) dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Maximum Illud, the apostolic letter that is considered a milestone in the evolution of the Church’s missionary work.
Before a full auditorium, the University of Saint Joseph’s rector argued that the most insightful difference between Catholic universities and the remaining tertiary education institutions does not lie in the academic programs they offer, but mainly in the values they convey: “We seek to educate our students in the broadest sense of the word, by transmitting them values with an ethical dimension that, we believe, will make a difference, one day in the future, when there will be decisions to be made,” Father Peter Stilwell affirmed. “With the academic preparation that we provide them with, we are confident that they are prepared to make the right decisions and we believe that it is exactly what they will do,” he concluded.
During an intervention that lasted just over an hour, Peter Stilwell recalled that the role of the universities is not at all addressed in the evangelization strategy outlined one hundred years ago by Pope Benedict XV in his most revolutionary apostolic letter. The rector of the University of Saint Joseph and former director of the Faculty of Theology of the Portuguese Catholic University argues, nevertheless, that Catholic universities today have an essential role in the difficult task of proposing the Catholic Church to the world and of evangelizing without proselytizing: “We must be cautious in the way we use the term ‘Catholic university.’ It is not enough to have a chapel on our campus or crucifixes in our classrooms. We must stand out at the level of human relations: we cannot wait for someone to be right all the time, but everything we do must be done correctly,” Peter Stilwell claims. “A Catholic university must have room for everyone who is willing to search for the truth, whether they are Catholics or not. We are a community and a community should act like a family,” concluded the rector of the University of Saint Joseph.
In Stephen Morgan’s opinion, the lecture conducted by Father Peter Stilwell had the power to end in a blaze of glory a cycle of conferences that excelled for their quality. The dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies at the University of Saint Joseph argues that the initiative fulfilled the purpose of bringing USJ closer to the city: “I am delighted that we have had this series of seven lectures. I am delighted that we have been able to speak about a whole range of things, from the history of the document through its scriptural foundations, examples of how the Church’s missionary activity has become grounded in various culture,” the Welsh deacon says. “This is exactly the sort of thing that a Catholic university should be doing. It should be proposing the Church’s view of the world, the Church’s unique insights as widely as possible. When I first arrived here I said that one of my aims – and it was not an aim that that I came up with, but an aim that I was given by the Bishop and the rector – was to ensure that the Faculty and the Seminary were open to the city of Macau. And this has been a concrete way of expressing that to the city and to the Church in Macau,” Mr Morgan said.
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