BOOK REVIEWS Blueprint for a Catholic University. By LEO R. WARD, C. S.C. St. Louis: Herder, 1949. Pp. 376 with index. $5.00. General Education and the Liberal College. By WILLIAM F. CuNNINGHAM, C. S.C. St. Louis, Herder, 1953. Pp. 9l:78 with index. $4.00. Theology-A Course for College Students, Vol. I. By JoHN J. FERNAN, S. J. Syracuse: LeMoyne College, 1952. Pp. 309. $3.50. However antiquated it may be, the notion that the chief purpose of schools is to teach is still incontrovertible, and consequently, the chief purpose of the directors of schools should be to promote whatever will improve teaching and discourage whatever will hinder or impede it. The variety of schools that faces us today springs from a further problem of what to teach, since "teach" is a transitive verb. A scho~-forestry differs from a school of theology not by the fact that "in-~ne learning is imparted and in the other not, but by reason of the emphasis on what sort. of learning. Hence all school administrators have certain problems in common, as well as those that are peculiarly their own. Among the most peculiar problems are those of the heads of Catholic colleges, who must strive to maintain a presentable college and to be uncompromisingly Catholic as well. The increasing welter of secularistic courses introduced in shameless subservience to accrediting agencies, the Graduate Record Examinations, the N. E. A. and non-Catholic professional schools is suffocating distinctively Catholic disciplines. Many of the voiceless " hands " in Catholic mills have come to see that the collegiate preparation , through the courtesy of General Hershey, of a Catholic student to live a supernatural life is bounded by the College Entrance Board on the one hand and the Graduate Record Exam on the other, and thus must consist of exposure to courses carefully scaled down to the lowest tuitionpaying denominator, which are arranged chiefly according to the demands of the R. 0. T. C., but also according to the teaching load of the instructors and the quantitative credit hour requirements of the great non-Catholic Graduate schools which are also prone to require or suggest undergraduate texts embodying materialistic, Freudian, and evolutionistic doctrines, supplemented by recommended reading lists nearly always inclusive of books officially stigmatized as dangerous to faith and morals. Finally the class itself is conducted, more often than not, by a layman in a classroom from which crucifix and prayers may have been banished as lacking educational 388 BOOK REVIEWS 389 " value." Let me hasten to add that the lay professor is nearly always an exemplary and zealous Catholic; he would have to have supernatural motives to compensate for his meager wages and uncertain tenure! In other words, the great American heresy of conformity and mediocrity, to say nothing of athletic prowess and sheer " bigness," has invaded many Church-administered schools, and by restricting and in some cases totally excluding Catholic teaching and practice, has reduced them to the level of their secular competitors, leaving Catholic colleges open to the serious charge that they are not essentially and thoroughly Catholic, but only incidentally so, by reason of the name, student body or majority of directors. If Catholic college administrators do not exert every effort to permeate their schools with uncompromising Catholicity, they are no better than their a-religious competitors who in the last analysis must be antireligious ; indeed they are worse, because they are parties to a fraud. Such a problem leaves our hardy breed of college administrators undismayed . Their shield and their proud blazon of Catholic culture is their religion course, which may even attain the dignity of a department. The sole advantage of a Catholic college then would seem to be that courses in religion are offered to the student. Dr. Oliver Martin in an address to the Rhode Island Philosophical Society, entitled the "Iron Curtain in Education," has described how non-sectarian institutions evade the charge of religious indifference by loud and repeated reference to their professor or even a whole department of religion while they secretly harass the instructors and strangle the course by denying credit and limiting class time to a minimum. He, a non-Catholic...