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If you read George Will's article fairly, the only judgment of academia that it seems he allows as his own is,

Intellectual inquiry in the humanities often is not open.

This is a pretty balanced opinion, not a broad-brush dismissal of the academy as a whole.

 

In post #1, DeweyCA wrote:

This article shows what an insulary bubble of groupthink that academia has become.

All of academia? Medicine including all the health professions? Engineering? Science? Languages? Should there be athletic programs? Anything good anywhere?

 

In post #3, LouAvul wrote:

I got my last of three diplomas in 2012. In the time I was in school, my observation of higher ed is that it’s populated by pretentious, pompous, self serving losers who couldn’t do anything worthwhile, so they went into education.

Diplomas? Interesting word choice. A high school grants a diploma. Community colleges grant Associates degrees and we call them diplomas. Perhaps you meant you had received Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral diplomas from some fine institutions of higher education.

Having put all this effort into your education (and one wonders why considering what you have written) do you hold any gratitude for any educator? Is any discipline "populated" by people capable of anything worthwhile? Medicine including all the health professions? Engineering? Science? Languages? Should there be athletic programs?

Absurd.

Totally.

Interesting.

Very.

I think Mr. Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo really has no qualifications that would make him an authority on the topic.

Looking again at the lead article and then at the author's qualifications, I can't help but wonder if there is a personal bias that leads you to such a poorly justified conclusion.

Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo (born July 8, 1941) is an American scholar of religion and retired Brooklyn College professor emeritus. At Brooklyn College, starting in 1980, he authored and/or edited a dozen books and wrote more than 100 scholarly articles, book chapters and reviews for leading quarterlies in the United States, Latin America and Spain.

Stevens-Arroyo co-founded (1992) and was first President (1995–97) of the Program for the Analysis of Religion Among Latinos, known as PARAL, which published a four book series on various aspects of Latino religious experience in the United States for which Stevens-Arroyo was the editor in chief as a resident scholar at Princeton University. In October 2008, his career achievements were recognized with his reception of the Luzbetack Award for Exemplary Church Research, from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).

Stevens-Arroyo was appointed by the National Council of Churches to a commission reporting on religion in Cuba in 1976-77, and later named Director of the Hispanic Project for the Theology in the Americas in a program sponsored through the National Council of Churches. His history of Latino people of faith was published in 1980 by Orbis Press as Prophets Denied Honor; it was later designated as one of 15 outstanding English language books of 1980 by the editors of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (London, UK). Seven years later the book was selected as a “Landmark of Catholic Literature in the 20th Century” by Philip Gleason in his 1987 book, Keeping the Faith: American Catholicism, Past and Present.

Stevens-Arroyo testified to the United Nations’ Committee for Trusteeship and Decolonization Committee hearings on Puerto Rico in September 1982. On June 25, 1990, he addressed the Sub-Committee on Insular and International Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, concerning legislation authorizing a plebiscite for Puerto Rico. He returned to serving the United States Civil Rights Commission’s Advisory Committee for Pennsylvania. Retired as Professor Emeritus of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, he currently resides in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He publishes the OnFaith blog. He is a staunchly traditional Roman Catholic who has publicly espoused the proposed controversial canonizations of Queen Isabella of Spain and Pope Pius XII.

He was awarded the Columbian Citation of Honor by the National Columbus Committee in April 1992. He was invited to present to attend an important religious conference sponsored by the Archdioceses of New York and San Juan, Puerto Rico as a keynote speaker in Spanish for a symposium highlighting 20th-century Catholic Thought in anticipation of the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas and the consequent foundation of Christianity by Spain.

Okay. What then has he said that is incorrect? His lack qualifications have led him to some error in understanding which is what exactly?

No doubt.

ALL.

The CCC isn't RC theology you see.

Thanks :)

I went to Catholic Answers Live and listened to a couple of the archived shows hoping to find the one you had heard. I was asking if you knew what the broadcast name/date was.

Open Forum Thursday, Dec 17, 2015?

CCC #841 just does not serve as evidence of Roman Catholic doctrine that Catholics and Muslims worship the same “God.”

The Catechism section 839-845 is titled, “The Church and non-Christians,” and explicitly states that Jewish people, Muslims and other non-Christians have not received the Gospel.

American Catholic bishops have stated that theological opinion was not intended to be a part of CCC.

All I can do is suggest that perhaps your and the late Dr. Robert Reymond’s understanding of the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” is not as informed on all points as it could be.

Taken in context, #841 means what it says. It says Muslims aren't saved. (See below.)

Catechism of the Catholic Church

PART ONE - THE PROFESSION OF FAITH

SECTION TWO - THE PROFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

CHAPTER THREE - I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT

ARTICLE 9 - "I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH"

Paragraph 3. The Church Is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic

III. THE CHURCH IS CATHOLIC
The Church and non-Christians

839 "Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways."

The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People, the first to hear the Word of God. The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God's revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews "belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable."

840 And when one considers the future, God's People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah. But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.

841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."

842 The Church's bond with non-Christian religions is in the first place the common origin and end of the human race:

All nations form but one community. This is so because all stem from the one stock which God created to people the entire earth, and also because all share a common destiny, namely God. His providence, evident goodness, and saving designs extend to all against the day when the elect are gathered together in the holy city. . .

843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life."

844 In their religious behavior, however, men also display the limits and errors that disfigure the image of God in them:

Very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair.

845 To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood.

If Bergoglio said that he was merely affirming the official position of the Roman church.

There has been a phony news article in circulation for at least six months that reports Bergoglio said that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. I'm guessing that the Wheaton College professor got snookered by a new version of this and used it as the basis of the statement in her Facebook post, "Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God."

If a man never hears of Jesus Christ, etc., then that man is necessarily damned?

Catechism of the Catholic Church

    847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation. <><><>

If Bergoglio said that he was merely affirming the official position of the Roman church.

He didn't and it's not.