Lay Centre alumnus reflects on the role of Catholic education; his life and studies in Rome
By Laura Ieraci
CHICAGO — Catholic liberal arts education must focus on the fundamental questions of what it means to be human or risk being replaced by artificial intelligence, said William Brownsberger, president of Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington.
“The Catholic intellectual tradition has so much to offer in terms of human self-discovery,” he said.
“Who am I as a human person? What is my role in society? What does my relationship to God look like?” he said. “These are the great questions all students, even those who are non-Catholic, should be wrestling with and answering for themselves during the course of their college experience” at a Catholic university.
“That’s essential, that’s key, because so much of the way we approach education today is ‘how- to’ knowledge or ‘what’ knowledge,” he said, “But, as educators, we have to take a step back and focus on the ‘who,’ because that’s foundational.”
“If we think of education just in terms of information,” he said, “I’m not sure we have a compelling case for why we’re not going to be replaced by AI in the next 5, 10, 20 years.”
“What can AI not do?” he asked rhetorically. “It can’t do the fundamentally human part of ourexperience, and that is the type of education we need to rediscover and re-embrace.”
Brownsberger said his understanding and vision of Catholic higher education was largely formed during his doctoral studies in sacred theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in the late 1990s.
A Catholic education “doesn’t repeat only the things culture holds to be important at the time,” he said. “Sometimes the church is a sign of contradiction. It’s a voice crying in the wilderness. At that same time as the church is countercultural, it is always radically enculturated.”
He recalled how mentors at Catholic University of America and the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., kept suggesting the Gregorian “as a great option, a world-class institution” for doctoral studies.
“The Gregorian really offered something that was attractive to me,” he said, describing the pedagogical approach at the Jesuit university, which treats “any question” with a “very historical” perspective, drawing from Scripture, the Church Fathers, the Middle Ages, and early modern and contemporary theology.
“That style of writing, of research, not only appealed to me, but rubbed off on me,” he said. His exposure to the European academic community and to theological journals of international standing, in which he would publish, were valuable to his growth as an academic, he added.
He also enjoyed the cultural diversity among the student body and developed “a deeper appreciation for the institutional church.”
“My church got a whole lot bigger when I lived in Rome,” said Brownsberger, who was raised in Kansas City. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had a very parochial vision of what the church was.”
Life at The Lay Centre
Brownsberger said his student experience was heightened by living at The Lay Centre, then located at Piazza Navona, which he found through sheer Providence after his initial housing fell through.“
It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life,” he said. Brownsberger lived at The Lay Centre between 1996 and 1998.
He described his fellow Lay Centre residents as “a dream team of just wonderful people … from all over the world with incredible intellectual gifts.”
“You don’t often meet so many wonderful people all in the same place. That’s kind of once-in-a-lifetime stuff. It formed me to be the person who I am today,” he said, adding that he has remained friends with some, more than 25 years later.
Upon his return to the U.S., Brownsberger realized his ecclesial degree did not have the “instant recognition” of an American doctorate, despite being “as well prepared as anybody” coming from an American doctoral program.
“I think I had to work harder as a young professor in the marketplace to find an institution that I really fit,” he said.
He began as an associate professor of theology at the Cistercian-run University of Dallas in Irving, Texas, in 2001. Despite his initial job search being “a little bit uphill,” Brownsberger said he never regretted studying in Rome.
“It was definitely the right decision,” he said.
During his 11 years at the University of Dallas, he also served as director of intellectual formation at Holy Trinity Seminary, also in Irving, for nearly three years. He moved on to be academic dean and theology professor at Conception Seminary College in Conception, Missouri, for six years. He was then dean and theology professor at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, and vice president of academic affairs at Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, for three years each.
Brownsberger began a three-year term as president at St. Martin’s University last July, but hopes to remain at the Benedictine institution “a long, long time.”
Among his priorities is to lead the Catholic university in rediscovering its identity. Students should be able to find at St. Martin’s University “something identifiably different” from a state school, he said, something “they want to be a part of.”
Photo: Saint Martin’s University
