Of course, at their best, universities and academic societies tend … train students and faculty alike in the art of giving credit, not the pseudo-art of accounting debts. We have unfortunately come to think of “philanthropy” as extrinsic to the work of the university, an absolutely essential activity that sustains the lives and vocations many of us pursue. However, that word should not be limited to fundraising, but ought, at least, to name what a university or school does at every level: all learning is philanthropy, and above all that of theology. If theology cannot teach this to its practitioners as well as to the other disciplines then the latter are pretty well hopeless in the long run. If the metaphor of “the queen of the sciences” is not taken in this sense—that is, as a benevolent dispenser and orderer of goods held in common—then it is a misapplied and abused metaphor. Theology is the queen of the arts and sciences if it shows what it means to give, if it teaches charity, if it elevates and perfects. But if the model of “queenship” is dictatorial, tyrannical, demagogic and possessive, then it is neither theology nor a true queen at all; it remains simply one more ideology at which universities have, of late, proven so proficient at reproducing ad infinitum.