On Aug. 15, 1990, St. John Paul II issued Ex Corde Ecclesiae, an apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education. He meant the document to serve as a kind of magna carta for Catholic universities. 

This year marks 35 years since it was released, but its message remains just as powerful and just as urgent today, as Catholic higher education faces growing cultural challenges. 

In a time when the very idea of truth is contested, Catholic higher education is not a luxury or side project for the Church. As the popes have affirmed, it is an essential pillar of the Church’s mission of evangelization.

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Western culture, as Pope Benedict XVI often said, is suffering from a “crisis of truth,” rooted in a deeper “crisis of faith.” To reject the Eternal Word, the source of all truth, is to open the door to relativism, skepticism and atheism. These ideologies have laid the groundwork for cultural decline, the reign of what John Paul II called a “soft totalitarianism” and Benedict XVI called a “dictatorship of relativism.” All around us, it seems, objective truth is denied, moral norms are eroded and the Gospel is pushed to the margins.

This crisis of faith has been felt especially in our education system. Catholic institutions themselves have struggled to remain faithful to their identity in a society that increasingly demands compromise, a situation requiring the Church to either stand as a sign of contradiction or else abandon her divine calling.

It was precisely into this situation that John Paul II spoke in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, calling for a renewal of Catholic identity at Catholic universities so they can live out their vocation of service to the Church and humanity and so be a source of spiritual and intellectual renewal in our culture. The Catholic university, he says, is born “from the heart of the Church” and carries an “indispensable mission” for both the Church and the world: to “consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth” and, in doing so, to prepare students to go out and renew the culture.

Ex Corde Ecclesiae sets before us both a standard and a prophetic call. A Catholic university does not exist merely to convey information to students, but to engage them in a shared pursuit of wisdom with their professors and to form them in a holistic way — intellectually, morally and spiritually.

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As he wrote: “A Catholic university pursues its objectives through its formation of an authentic human community animated by the spirit of Christ. The source of its unity springs from a common dedication to the truth, a common vision of the dignity of the human person and, ultimately, the person and message of Christ which gives the institution its distinctive character.”

The Catholic university stands in the great Christian tradition of higher learning, from the medieval universities back to the patristic and classical heritage. Its Catholic identity is not peripheral but essential, shaping its governance and academic and community life.

As Benedict XVI insisted, Catholic identity is not about the number of Catholic students, but about the institution’s conviction: “Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice and respect for God’s creation?” Only where this is true, he insisted, do Catholic institutions truly bear witness to their faith.

Ex Corde Ecclesiae emphasizes that Catholic higher education exists for evangelization. “By its very nature,” John Paul II wrote, “each Catholic university makes an important contribution to the Church’s work of evangelization. It is a living institutional witness to Christ and His message.” Everything it does — from classroom teaching to liturgy to student life — is in service of forming disciples to bring the Gospel into every corner of culture.

If we hope to see a renewal of Christian culture and the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel, Catholic higher education must be an essential piece of the Church’s witness and mission today. Engaging our confusing, and even hostile, times demands faith-filled, well-formed disciples who are immersed in the spiritual and intellectual heritage of our faith, and equipped through careful study of modern and contemporary thought to read and respond to the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel.

As John Paul II put it: “A Catholic university is without any doubt one of the best instruments that the Church offers to our age which is searching for certainty and wisdom.” His words are no less true today. This is the great task — the mission — of Catholic higher education in our times.

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Thirty-five years on, Ex Corde Ecclesiae calls us back to this mission. It reminds us that Catholic higher education is not only about training professionals — it is about preparing saints. Only then can it fulfill its role as a vital pillar of the Church’s evangelizing mission, bringing about, in John Paul’s words, “a new flowering of Christian culture.”

(Craine is president of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Barry’s Bay, Ont.)