The Inaugural Address Of
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Brother Norman W. Hipps, O.S.B., Ph.D.
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S e v e n t e e n t h Pr e s ide n t S a i n t Vin c e n t Col l e g e L at r obe , Pe n n s y lva n i a O c tobe r 11, 2010
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ishop Brandt, Archabbot Douglas, Chris Donahue and members of our Board of Directors, John Marous, Chair of our Seminary Board of Regents, Delegates, faculty, staff, students, alumni, friends all . . . I am grateful for your presence. I am honored to serve as President of Saint Vincent College, a place whose history and people I dearly love. Those of you who know me might be surprised to see me dressed up in purple! A long time ago my nieces tried to explain to me what the right colors were to match my complexion, but I never remembered it and the color has nothing to do with how I want to appear. It’s the doctoral robe from Northwestern where I did my advanced studies. When I finished my doctorate at Northwestern University, I never bothered to buy the official academic gown, but when my appointment as president was announced, a confrere offered the gown to spruce up our ceremonies. I’m very happy to be wearing this robe. You probably can’t see it from where you are sitting, but the official seal of the school is embroidered here, which has on it a passage from Sacred Scripture. It reads Quaecumque Sunt Vera, which alludes to Paul’s letter to the Church at Philippi: “Finally, my brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious; if there is any excellence, any virtue, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”1 These words you recognize as being part of the reading during our evening prayer.
Mission
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y experience at Northwestern was a wonderful one. The mathematics department was first rate; I was well prepared by my mathematics teachers at Saint Vincent and there was a real community of scholars. The Newman Center was a vibrant place of faith and worship. I’m grateful for the rich experience I enjoyed in Evanston. We have many visitors here today who are here for the first time. For their benefit, I would like to reiterate our Mission. Even though the rest of us have heard it before, this is an opportune time to hear it again and to reflect on it. Saint Vincent College is an educational community rooted in the tradition of the Catholic faith, the heritage of Benedictine monasticism, and the love of values inherent in the liberal approach to life and learning. Its mission is to provide quality undergraduate and graduate education for men and women to enable them to integrate their professional aims with the broader purposes of human life.
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Saint Vincent is one of the 220+ Catholic institutions of higher learning in the United States. The late Pope John Paul II summed up four essential characteristics of a Catholic University: • A Christian inspiration not only of individuals, but of the university community as such; • A continuing reflection in the light of the Catholic faith upon the growing treasury of human knowledge, to which it seeks to contribute by its own research; • Fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church; •
An institutional commitment to the service of the people of God and of the human family in their pilgrimage to the transcendent goal which gives meaning to life.2
Catholicism strives to bring the virtue of hope to bear in the midst of life’s uncertainties, a hope that can be life-changing and life-sustaining, a hope in things seen and unseen. I think of this virtue every time I stroll through Melvin Platz on our campus. It was the virtue of hope that led our beloved Fr. Melvin Rupprecht to convert a spot that was virtually barren into a luscious grove of trees. He knew he would never live to see his saplings reach their full majestic beauty, but hope gave him the freedom to envision a tranquil setting for people he would never get to meet. In fact, when
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he was diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live, he continued to plant trees. You would have thought he might have opted to plant flowers that he might enjoy their beauty; instead he acted for us and for future generations.3 In his encyclical on Hope, Pope Benedict XVI put it quite simply when he wrote: “The one who has hope lives differently.”4
Benedictine Saint Vincent is one of fourteen Benedictine colleges and universities in the United States.5 What can we offer the wider community? Our Archabbot Douglas Nowicki expresses it this way: “Our community of hope is bonded to the hope of Saint Benedict, who amidst the chaos of the disintegration of the Roman Empire, founded communities of hope. These became seedbeds of a renewed civilization. Abbot Boniface Wimmer, with a small band of monks, founded this community of hope in the midst of an American culture strongly affected by nativism and racism. The Saint Vincent mission of education was to help new immigrants learn how to become full contributing members of their new American community, without rejecting the covenant of their Catholic community.”6 A few years ago, Saint Vincent College had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Steven Strogatz, professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University and a gifted author. He shared his fascination with studies in synchrony, where scientists observe the universe’s mysterious desire for
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natural order. He noted that “every night along the tidal rivers of Malaysia, thousands of fireflies congregate and flash in unison without any leader or cue from the environment ... even our bodies are symphonies of rhythm kept alive by the relentless, coordinated firing of pacemaker cells in our hearts.”7 He continued to speak how science is on the threshold of something new. The way we have been doing science for the last several centuries has been very good at analysis, at reducing something complex down to its simplest, most minute parts. Now, we’re observing the spontaneous emergence of order out of chaos, where minute parts have a natural desire, as it were, to cooperate in something greater than them. Complex systems, seemingly independent, working in a miraculous harmony. Somehow the whole is greater than the simple sum of its parts. Our very life depends on a synchrony or a cooperation of our individual parts. Everyone knows that the eye has a different function than the hand. But if the hand were one day to speak and say to the eye, “I have no need of you,” how preposterous would that be?8 What is known to every athlete, indeed to every person is this: when each member of the body is in sync, the human body is capable of impressive feats.
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Saint Vincent College is greater than the sum of its parts. The students, the staff, the faculty in our four Schools: Business, Economics and Government; Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Computing; Humanities and Fine Arts; and Social Sciences, Communication and Education. The Benedictine monastic community, lay people, and the extended families of everyone involved, not to mention our alumni and our benefactors. The whole is greater than any one of its parts. What holds us together is our common “love of learning and the desire for God.”9 Love of learning, not just for its own sake, but for the transformation of the mind and heart.10 A place where each person is treated with dignity and respect. A place not only for knowledge, but for wisdom, and for the peace which passes understanding.11 A place where people grow together, a place of stability, where we share in one another’s joys and sorrows.
Liberal A few weeks ago Pope Benedict traveled to the United Kingdom where he beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman, who remains famous in academic circles for his classic work, The Idea of a University, where he promoted “the love of values inherent in the liberal approach to life and learning.” Many people say that Newman was an invisible presence at the Second Vatican Council, especially in those places where the Church balanced both faith and reason, and its courageous stand for religious liberty, and the need for dialogue with all of the world’s religions and cultures.
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When Pope John XXIII announced in 1959 that he was calling for a worldwide Church Council, he invoked Newman’s memory: “Far from jeopardizing the Church’s unity, controversies, as a noted English author, John Henry Cardinal Newman, has remarked, can actually pave the way for its attainment. For discussion can lead to fuller and deeper understanding of religious truths; when one idea strikes against another, there may be a spark! But that common saying, expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors, must be recalled with approval: in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.”12 In his beatification homily, Pope Benedict could not praise Newman highly enough, when he said: “I would like to pay particular tribute to his vision for education, which has done so much to shape the ethos that is the driving force behind Catholic schools and colleges today. Firmly opposed to any reductive or utilitarian approach, he sought to achieve an educational environment in which intellectual training, moral discipline and religious commitment would come together. The collection of discourses that he published as The Idea of a University holds up an ideal from which all those engaged in academic formation can continue to learn.”13 For Newman, an educated person is refined, accurate, and does not like to inflict pain.14 He also is tender toward the bashful, gentle toward the distant, and merciful toward the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking . . . and is never wearisome. The educated person has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments. . . . He addresses this courteous disposition to both the believer and the unbeliever, confident that human reason, despite all its limits, can persuade us to live a purpose-driven life. As someone else put it, in short: “An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life.”15
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Conclusion When Pope Benedict XVI was in Portugal this past May,16 he reiterated what the Catholic Church teaches when it is at its best, namely that we do not wish to impose anything, but to propose ceaselessly, that each of us has been made for something greater, that God has a purpose for each of us, and that we look to a kind of hope that outlasts every human disappointment. We hold a treasure in earthen vessels,17 yet the inspired words of the prophet Micah invite us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.18 Divine Providence has brought all of us to this time and place together. I invite you to join me in my hope, that as individuals we might not be able to do much, but with the help of many brothers and sisters, together we can accomplish things beyond our wildest imagination. Please join me on this journey.
endnotes
Philippians 4:8. Pope John Paul II, Ex corde Ecclesiae (“On Catholic Universities,” Apostolic Constitution, 15 August 1990) § 13. 3 Ronald F. Tranquila, “Outrageous Hope,” Saint Vincent: A Benedictine Place (Latrobe, PA: Saint Vincent Archabbey, 1995) 86 –89. 4 Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (“On Christian Hope,” Encyclical Letter, 30 November 2007) § 2. 5 Association of Benedictine Colleges and Universities http://www.abcu.info/. 6 Archabbot Douglas R. Nowicki, O.S.B., “Address to College Administration and Faculty,” (9 September 2010). 7 Steven Strogatz, Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life (New York: Hyperion, 2003) Preface. 8 Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:21. 9 Dom Jean Leclercq, O.S.B., The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982). 10 Cf. Romans 12:2. 11 Cf. Philippians 4:7. 12 Pope John XXIII, Ad Petri Cathedram (“On Truth, Unity and Peace, in a Spirit of Charity,” Encyclical Letter, 29 June 1959) § 71 – 72. 13 Pope Benedict XVI, “Beatification of Venerable Cardinal John Henry Newman” (Homily, Birmingham, England, 19 September 2010). 14 John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 159 – 161. 15 Source unknown. 16 Pope Benedict XVI, Homily (Porto, Portugal, 14 May 2010). 17 Cf. 2 Corinthians 4:7. 18 Cf. Micah 6:8. 1 2
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The Inaugural Address Of
Brother Norman W. Hipps, O.S.B., Ph.D. Seventeenth President Saint Vincent College Latrobe, Pennsylvania October 11, 2010
Quality Education in the Benedictine Tradition 300 Fraser Purchase Road Latrobe, PA 15650 www.stvincent.edu
Printed on recycled paper using vegetable-based inks.