Theology for the Drastic Changes Coming in Catholic Higher Education
Catholic higher education is entering a period of profound change. The pressures are well known: declining enrollments, rising costs, shifting cultural attitudes toward Catholicism, and an increasingly transactional view of education that treats college primarily as job preparation. These forces challenge Catholic colleges and universities to clarify their identity and purpose. Among the many dimensions of this identity crisis, one question is particularly pressing: What is the role of theology in Catholic higher education?
Massimo Faggioli, in his recent work Theology and Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis, takes up this very question. He correctly observes that Catholic universities shaped by market logic increasingly leave no space for theology. Faggioli argues for an ecclesiologically oriented theology as a way to resist secular pressures. While I agree with his concerns, I believe his solution leans too heavily on what one might call “guild theology.” In my view, Catholic higher education must instead prioritize what I will call “core theology”—a theology aimed directly at the formation of students: at their search for meaning, their understanding of the Catholic tradition, and their engagement with the world.
Why Guild Theology Falls Short
Guild theology refers to theology as an academic discipline practiced by specialized scholars. It is rigorous, highly specialized, and undeniably valuable for advancing theological thought. However, this kind of theology is largely inaccessible to most students at Catholic universities. Guild theology lives in conversations among theologians—full of technical language, scholarly debates, and professional standards that can easily sail over the heads of undergraduates.
Faggioli views guild theology as a bulwark against the encroachment of market logic, a way to ensure theology remains a serious intellectual presence on campus. But if guild theology becomes the primary mode of theological engagement, it risks isolating theology from the broader university community. After all, Catholic higher education does not exist primarily to train theologians. Its mission is to educate students, the vast majority of whom will not pursue theology in graduate school.
Furthermore, guild theology struggles to address the broader crisis of meaning that many students experience today. Young people face a fragmented world—one marked by digital saturation, political polarization, and social dislocation—that leaves them struggling to find coherence. They encounter competing narratives about identity, purpose, and the nature of the good life, often without any framework to integrate these questions. Many feel the weight of societal expectations about career success, financial security, and personal achievement without understanding why any of it truly matters.
College is often treated primarily as job training. In this environment, theology cannot afford to remain a niche subject reserved for specialists. It needs to be central to students’ intellectual and personal formation, helping them ask—and answer—the deepest questions of their lives. The future of theology in Catholic higher education will not be secured by simply doubling down on its disciplinary prestige. Rather, it depends on making theology indispensable to student development and their search for meaning and truth.
The Limits of Public Theology
If guild theology is too insular, the opposite danger is public theology that becomes too reactive. Public theology engages theological reflection with contemporary social, political, and cultural issues. This engagement is crucial for the Church’s witness in the world and certainly has a place in Catholic universities. However, making public theology the primary focus of theological education brings its own limitations.
Public theology is often driven by the urgent concerns of the moment. It responds to crises, injustices, and the shifting currents of public discourse. Such responsiveness has great value, but it can come at the cost of something deeper. If students encounter theology only through the lens of current events and debates, they might appreciate its immediate relevance but lack a sense of its deeper foundations. They may come to see theology as mere commentary on the latest headlines rather than as a tradition that offers enduring wisdom for engaging profound human questions—whether in the context of faith or a broader search for meaning.
Compounding this issue is the fact that today’s public square is deeply polarized. When theology is constantly pulled into partisan cultural battles, it risks becoming ideological and overly enmeshed in political camps. It can start to mirror the very divisions it seeks to heal. Catholic universities should certainly train students to think theologically about contemporary issues, but that engagement should be built on a well-grounded theological formation. For Catholic students, this means deepening their understanding of their own tradition. For students from other religious or secular backgrounds, it offers a structured encounter with a theological framework that can sharpen their own beliefs and perspectives on enduring human questions.
The Priority of Core Theology
In light of the shortcomings of both guild and public approaches, Catholic universities must reclaim theology as central to their identity by prioritizing what I call core theology. Core theology refers to the theological formation that every student at a Catholic institution should experience, regardless of their major. It is not defined by narrow academic specialization (as guild theology is) nor by constant commentary on current events (as public theology is). Instead, core theology introduces students to a way of seeing the world that is deeply rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition and attentive to the fundamental questions of human existence. In essence, core theology emphasizes a formation and understanding that will endure long beyond students’ college years.
At its heart, core theology emerges from scripture and tradition. It offers students an encounter with the biblical narratives and the great theological insights that have shaped Catholic thought over the centuries. This is not just about gaining historical knowledge. It is about seeing these sources as alive and still speaking to today’s questions of human purpose and destiny. Alongside scripture and historical tradition, core theology also introduces students to the systematic dimensions of theology, wrestling with fundamental questions about God, humanity, sin, and salvation. Students engage classic Christian doctrines, not as dry, abstract concepts, but as the Church’s earnest attempts to articulate the deepest truths about our existence.
Core theology is also historically conscious. It shows how the faith has developed within particular contexts, how it has confronted new challenges, and how it has helped shape cultures. This perspective helps students see theology not as a static inheritance but as a dynamic, living conversation between the Church and the world across time. And because theology is always lived out, core theology guides students to engage moral and social questions through a theological lens. Rather than simply inserting a “Catholic viewpoint” into contemporary debates, it gives them a framework for thinking about human dignity, justice, and the common good.
Finally, core theology cannot be separated from spirituality and personal meaning. Studying theology in a Catholic context should not be a purely intellectual exercise. It should cultivate a deeper sense of purpose, vocation, and engagement with fundamental human questions. For Catholic students, this may involve reflecting on their faith and relationship with God. For students from other religious traditions—or no religious tradition at all—core theology provides a framework for grappling with questions about existence, justice, human dignity, and the search for meaning. In core theology courses, students are invited to explore these questions in dialogue with the Catholic intellectual tradition, sharpening their own perspectives while engaging a tradition that has wrestled with these concerns for centuries. In this way, theology in the classroom connects with their lived experience, shaping not only what they know but also how they think and who they are becoming.
Core Theology in Action: Two Examples
Core theology is not just a theoretical ideal. It must be lived out in the classroom. The principles of core theology should shape how courses are designed and taught so that students engage theology in ways that are intellectually serious, personally meaningful, and relevant to their lives. What might this look like in practice? I offer two of my own courses as examples.
In God, Work, and Money, the students and I explore Catholic Social Teaching (CST) on economics and work. Rather than treating theology as an abstract field removed from daily life, this course invites students to wrestle with the theological significance of their future careers, financial decisions, and social responsibilities. In an educational culture where undergraduates are often encouraged to think about work and money in purely pragmatic terms—maximize income, secure stability, achieve success—this class poses deeper questions. What is work for? What does economic justice look like? How should faith shape one’s approach to labor, wealth, and human dignity?
We engage with concepts like the dignity of work, solidarity, subsidiarity, the rights of workers, the universal destination of goods, and the common good. Yet these are not presented as dry ideas to be memorized. Instead, they are lenses through which students examine their own aspirations and the economic realities around them. The class is structured to reflect this integrated approach. It begins by looking at real-world economic situations and the lived experiences of workers (from Appalachian coal miners to migrant laborers) and then brings in Catholic theological perspectives. Students study scripture and papal encyclicals and encounter figures such as Dorothy Day, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and Oscar Romero who bridge faith and economic justice.
Assignments are crafted not just to test knowledge but to foster personal theological reflection. I have the students write about “How does money affect your family and community?” or “What kind of work do you feel called to and why?” These prompts require them to connect class discussions, their beliefs, CST, personal experiences, and future ambitions. Such assignments go beyond superficial reflection. They demand a critical synthesis of material and an application to their lives and cultural-economic contexts.
Students come away not only with knowledge of CST but with a newfound ability to reflect theologically on their personal economic choices, career goals, and participation in society. Crucially, the class does not reduce theology to a set of rules for living or a list of social doctrines. Instead, it offers a theological vision that helps shape how students understand themselves and the world around them.
My second class is Aliens, Monsters, Heroes, and Jesus. In it, the students and I explore science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative fiction stories as ways of imagining the world, and it places those imaginative narratives in dialogue with Christian theological frameworks. While God, Work, and Money centers on theology’s engagement with economic and social realities, Aliens, Monsters, Heroes, and Jesus emphasizes the power of narrative and imagination in shaping what we believe and how we see the world. It asks students to consider theology not just as an academic subject but as a form of world-building—one that offers its own vision of reality, meaning, and human purpose.
In practice, the course juxtaposes contemporary speculative fiction with the Christian tradition. Students might analyze a post-apocalyptic story like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road alongside the Gospel of Mark written in a time of persecution to reflect on “How do we live in a broken world?” Or Nnedi Okorafor’s Afrofuturism Binti with the Gospel of John written by an exiled community to think about “How do we restore relationships?” Or the magical realism of Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories in comparison with Jesus and his parables in the Gospel of Luke to reflect on overcoming evil. The approach is not just literary analysis of fantasy worlds. It is raising core theological questions, so students can see theology and stories as powerful ways of making sense of reality.
These two courses illustrate that core theology is neither a rigid, doctrinal exercise nor a flimsy engagement with trendy issues. Rather, it is an integrative approach to education—one that brings together scripture, the Catholic theological tradition, and the lived experiences (and even imaginations) of students themselves. God, Work, and Money shows how theology can engage concrete economic and social realities, while Aliens, Monsters, Heroes, and Jesus demonstrates how theology can dialogue with culture and imaginative storytelling. Together, these examples reinforce that core theology is not about rote intellectual mastery but personal and spiritual formation. In these classes, students do more than memorize doctrines or recount Bible stories. They learn to engage theological ideas in ways that shape their understanding of themselves, their relationships, and their world.
As an educator, I have witnessed firsthand how transformative this approach can be. Some students enroll in the Aliens, Monsters, Heroes, and Jesus class simply because they enjoy science fiction and fantasy, with little expectation that it will connect to their faith. By the end of the term, those same students often find themselves drawing connections between their favorite fictional stories and the Gospel, grasped by how relevant theology can be for their own questions and struggles. Year after year, students enter my courses expecting theology to be abstract dogma or a dry historical overview of the Church. But what captivates and changes them is discovering that theology engages meaning, identity, and purpose. When students realize that the questions stirring in their hearts—about who they are, why they exist, how they should live—are the very questions theology addresses, a light turns on. Core theology makes that connection explicit. It gives students a way to see the world theologically, not only during their college years but long after they graduate.
Theology for the Future of Catholic Higher Education
The coming changes in Catholic higher education will demand a theology that is both foundational and accessible to students. If theology is to survive the pressures of market-driven educational models, it cannot do so by retreating into a specialized academic guild nor by making itself relevant only through reactive engagement in public debates. Instead, theology must be woven into the very fabric of student formation, speaking to students’ search for meaning, guiding their intellectual development, and equipping them to think theologically about their lives and future.
Ultimately, Catholic colleges and universities exist not merely to propagate themselves as institutions but to form students in ways that will shape their entire lives. Re-centering on core theology is not about preserving a Catholic identity or saving a theology department. It is about truly serving students.
The future of Catholic higher education will hinge on a renewal of theology at its core. A robust commitment to core theology can help Catholic institutions navigate the turbulent changes ahead. It ensures that young people receive more than professional training. They graduate with an education that engages their whole person, including the moral and spiritual dimensions of life. For Catholic students, this can mean a deepening engagement with Catholicism. For students of other traditions or no religious background, it provides an intellectual framework for grappling with meaning, ethics, and human purpose in a way that challenges and sharpens their own perspectives. In doing so, Catholic higher education remains true to its distinctive mission and offers something deeply needed in our time.