The University of Notre Dame Australia is set to restructure its teaching of philosophy and ethics.
By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
The University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) is set to adjust its curriculum around the country to improve the teaching of ethics and philosophy in all faculties.
Associate Professor Sandra Lynch, founding director of UNDA’s Centre for Faith, Ethics and Society which Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Fisher OP launched on October 22, said the Centre will expand its activity and research to interact with the secular community.
The Centre will launch an online journal called Solidarity, where Catholic social thought will be debated with secular ideology throughout Australian secular universities. The Centre will also encourage staff conducting ethics-related research, for example the education faculty researching moral education of children.
The Centre will fund research partnerships and get funding for grants for UNDA to do research of its own.
“One of the first things we hope to do is to look at improving teaching of ethics across all schools in the university, and to look for funding to allow us to publish the research and have an impact more widely in the community,” Associate Professor Lynch said.
“The theory underlying research is we have staff competent in ethics and moral philosophy, and staff who are competent in their own areas of expertise. Often, in business and legal ethics, these people teach it within their own field, but we believe we can marry moral philosophers’ contributions with the particular vocational and professional expertise of lecturers in the departments of the university.”
This will lead to the curriculum being adjusted in all campuses in Fremantle, Sydney and Broome.
The Centre also plans to facilitate public talks and seminars to open the university’s expertise to connect with the wider community, giving the opportunity to comment on moral and ethical issues that arise in the community.
This will open the Catholic Church up to scrutiny from secular sources but will provide them with concrete answers in ethics across a wide range of faculties, including business, law and education.
Launching the Centre, Bishop Fisher said the Church looks to higher education in tertiary institutions to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.
Catholic ethics, he said, is the key to remedying polarisation in society as Catholics have the oldest and largest education system in the world, with over 200,000 schools and over 1,000 universities – an institution Catholics invented through the Benedictines in the Mediaeval period many historians falsely consider the “Dark Ages”.
The prelate referenced Pope Benedict XVI’s June Encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), in which the Pontiff teaches that academic research into the challenges of the physical environment, such as ‘climate change’ or the social environment like the global financial crisis, must go hand in hand with moral evaluation.
“This requires us to bring both faith and reason to the task so as to engage the various academic disciplines in a harmonious, interdisciplinary whole. Wisdom – the principal resource of the university – will reclaim the unity of knowledge,” Bishop Fisher said.
The Centre’s purpose is to promote the study of Catholic intellectual and moral traditions, with a particular focus on faith and ethics, and their application and integration into the broader life of society.