H-Catholicism

The second H-Net.org discussion network I followed was h-Catholicism, specifically a query that dealt with Catholic universities and higher education criticism. The query was as follows, “The Center for Applied Research in Education (CARE) at Notre Dame University in Lebanon has cited Freire on its website for many years.” And continues with a question, “Who can inform me if organizing a conference on ‘Paulo Freire and the Middle East’ would cause any controversy?” The h-Catholicism contributors had diverse ideas and offerings based off this question. Many contributing members touched on the Vatican’s involvement in the higher education system. A few of these posts were extremely persistent in claiming, catholic university faculty and administrators are rarely deterred by criticism from the Vatican. However, they did not discount that fact that the Vatican still ahs a huge influence on catholic universities’ curriculum and teaching methods. Most posts seemed to use Paulo Freire as an example to help prove their own points. I found this interesting. Many other questions that followed made me ponder the Catholic Church and its influence on higher education. These posts helped me strengthen my idea that religion is the area of history that changes the slowest. Numerous contributors were at a disagreement with each other. They would quote other contributors and use these quotes to fuel their new and different ideas; almost saying, “you are stupid to think that, here is what an intelligent historian thinks.” There were some mediators in the thread playing the devils advocate role. Sometimes the mediators would take a side. I did not think anyone was out of line but the conversation defiantly became heated quickly. One thing is for sure, religion in the classroom is always a difficult subject to come to agreement on no matter what the question at hand is. I would recommend reading this topic because it is informative and also entertaining.