Friendship as Wonder Therapy The Option for the Poor and the Education of Desire in Catholic Higher Education

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Abstract

President of the University of Notre Dame, John Jenkins, CSC, argues that Catholic colleges and universities can make a distinct contribution to higher e0ducation by providing a rich alternative to the commodification of education — a frequently cited problem of the current age. Reducing education to its commercial ends, the author argues, stifles wonder by restraining the search for the whole that is the catholicity at the heart of Catholic education. Building upon the ideas of Jenkins and others, the author then proposes that the commodification of education is fundamentally a problem of displaced desiring. He proposes the Church’s preferential option for the poor as a pedagogy of desire for Catholic higher education, as well as Bernard Lonergan’s ideas highlighting the role of friendship in education as a pedagogy of fundamental desiring.

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