What made the presidents especially uneasy with the apostolic constitution was its explicit insistence that the bishops were not “external agents but participants.” Indeed, each university was “to maintain communion” with its own bishop, the national conference, and the Holy See, and to give a periodic account of the indicators of its Catholic identity. The bishop was said to have “the right and duty to watch over” its Catholic character, and to call on the Holy See for help if needed. This kind of language, under the headline, “The Catholic University within the Church,” gave the presidents’ attorneys the willies.
The text is so relentlessly specific about the way in which the university must manifest its determination to be Catholic that it overshadows a meaningful countervailing message: the urgency of the Church’s need to have universities. “A faith that places itself on the margin of what is human, of what is therefore culture, would be a faith unfaithful to the fullness of what the word of God manifests and reveals, a decapitated faith, worse still, a faith in the process of self-annihilation.”
The second concern for the presidents was the pope’s anomalous view of academic freedom. This is how it appears in the Norms:
A Catholic university possesses the autonomy necessary to develop its distinctive identity and pursue its proper mission. Freedom in research and teaching is recognized and respected according to the principles and methods of each discipline, so long as the rights of the individual and the community are preserved within the confines of the truth and the common good.’
The presidents needed no prompting to recall that the account of academic freedom held by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), did not defer to the “confines” of anyone else’s notions of the truth or the common good. The pope quoted here from Vatican II’s constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes, which asserts a “just freedom:’ but for a culture, not for academic life. For any culture to develop according to its own principles it “rightly calls for respect and enjoys a certain inviolability, without prejudice to the rights of the person and of the particular and general community within the bounds of the common good.”‘
Dueling Dogmas
The friction between this view of freedom and that commonly defended today in American academic life is that Vatican II and the pope respect freedom as a community need prior to its being a personal one. The norm first asserts the university’s academic freedom to be Catholic, and then the individual scholar’s freedom for inquiry and expression. Both are conditioned by truth and the common good, making the obligation both more complex and more interesting than the AAUP position. Neither the pope nor his advisers are likely to have known that these two notions of freedom—communal and individual—are both current in the United States, and that the freedom of an institution to maintain its identity and culture enjoys the stronger constitutional standing. Most presidents, one imagines, would rather settle for the individualist American version than suffer for this more classical, communal one.
A third gripe for most presidents was the very un- American way the pope assumed that a Catholic university required Catholic faculty and administration. He broached the issue by reminding the educators it was an internal decision what kind of undertaking each institution would make. The “responsibility for maintaining and strengthening the Catholic identity of the university rests primarily with the university itself,” principally with the governing body and the president. But then he went on to insist that the responsibility had to be shared “in varying degrees by all members of the university community.” Obviously—though the presidents profess not to see why it should be obvious—its teaching personnel have to be predominantly Catholic.
Throughout the document the pope distinguished the role and duty of Catholics from those of their non- Catholic colleagues. The Catholics are called to “a personal fidelity to the Church with all that this implies. Non-Catholic members are required to respect the Catholic character of the university, while the university in turn respects their religious liberty” Every teacher and administrator recruited by the university must first have its commitment and identity explained, with all its implications. Catholics who join then assume responsibility for it. Others need only respect it. The pope then draws the obvious conclusion: Whenever respecters outnumber promoters, the place is no longer functionally Catholic. This requirement obviously offended the widely professed belief of the presidents that, even though the well-cited Title VII of the Civil Rights Act explicitly defers to the freedom of authentically religious educational institutions to do so, they were legally restrained from including an active Catholic faith among the academic qualifications for appointment of faculty, administration, and staff.
The fourth but most specific complaint for the presidents was the “mandate,” the required credential for Catholic theologians. Actually, the pope’s first injunction was that “bishops should encourage the creative work of theologians.” Their respective callings are, after all, intertwined. As a particular instance of the general need for all Catholic faculty to be faithful to, and all non-Catholic faculty to respect, Catholic faith and morals in their research and teaching, “Catholic theologians, aware that they fulfill a mandate received from the church, are to be faithful to the magisterium of the church as the authentic interpreter of sacred Scripture and sacred tradition:” The Norms do not impose the mandate: It had already been imposed in 1983 by Canon 812 of the revised Code of Canon Law. Perhaps because it was so explicit a requirement, and perhaps because the presidents recalled various theologians who fell so publicly and so indecorously athwart their bishops, this papal requirement has become a most obstinate anathema for them.
The pope drew a conclusion from all this: that the Church’s universities must claim their rightful civil status:
Catholic universities join other private and public institutions in serving the public interest … and they are committed to the promotion of solidarity and its meaning in society and in the world. Therefore they have the full right to expect that civil society and public authorities will recognize and defend their institutional autonomy and academic freedom; moreover, they have the right to the financial support that is necessary for their continued existence and development.
The presidents have recently become quite successful in securing financial support, not just from federal and state sources. When they began slipping out from under the authority of their religious orders, they were living from fiscal year to fiscal year—barely, in some cases. Now the top 20 universities enjoy endowments stretching from $100 million to $2 billion. That is not the Heavenly Jerusalem, but it provides comfort in the meantime, with the promise of more to come. During this same interval, these top universities have massively restored and augmented their physical plants, if not always handsomely. Much, and often most, of that beneficence came from Catholics, and part of the appeal for those capital gifts explicitly highlighted the universities as both excellent and Catholic. Yet, if truth be told (and the background for this present imbroglio is that the truth has not always been told), the excellence has not often been portrayed as Catholic.
In any case, the presidents certainly raised the money without much help and, indeed, with almost no initiative, from the bishops. They understandably saw the Vatican ultimatum as carrying the intolerably high risk of compromising their eligibility for governmental subsidy in return for a useless certificate from the Church.
Out of the Heartburn of the Church
Explicit reactions to Ex Corde Ecclesiae took a while. Sister Gallin of the ACCU initially registered hasty satisfaction, in that the pope had clearly acknowledged that the universities (read: the presidents) bore the primary responsibility for their own Catholic character. All verification of their fidelity to that character was to be handled nation-ally and locally, and the presidents knew that their bishops were more compliant than their capo di tutti capi in Rome. “Questions regarding theologians,” she said firmly, “are likely to need further clarification:”
Presidents spoke in the same vein. Notre Dame’s Edward Malloy said, “I think it turned out to be the kind of document the delegates had called for.” Donald Monan of Boston College spoke of the final document as “totally different, much more positive …. The document itself and the process by which it was written are major reasons for satisfaction.” Since these two and Gallin were three of the delegates chosen to confer with Vatican officials during the revision process, their praise spoke loudly. “It is a reminder that when the Church develops a good process of consultation, the final result is far superior,” generously concluded Malloy.
After reflection and, perhaps, careful reading, the presidents realized that despite some serious revision of the prose portion of the apostolic constitution, its prescriptive norms retained stubborn imperatives they considered unendurable: Catholic universities would require 1) Catholic scrutiny and recognition, 2) Catholic personnel, and 3) credentialed Catholic theologians. Father Monan spoke of them as “our three non-negotiables,” and since the pope seemed similarly implacable but in the opposite direction, the clash was clear. Despite the fact that these three norms were tightly integrated with the prose exposition, the presidents chose to be pointed in their praise of the prose and in their rejection of the “regs.” After enjoying such an entree into the five-year edit-ing of this fateful document, the presidents found that Rome demanded procedural accountability for their Catholic authenticity as firmly in the final text as it had in the first draft.
There was, however, one hope left. Because of regional and national variances, the bishops’ conferences were authorized to monitor specific compliance with the norms. The presidents energetically set out to co-opt the bishops responsible for drafting the national application of the general norms in the hope that they could still effectively neutralize Ex Corde Ecclesiae in its implementation stage. As theologian Charles Curran put it: “They apparently feel confident that, because bishops supported their cause during the ’70s and early ’80s, they will continue to do so now.” With occasional exceptions the bishops had been amenable to the presidents’ point of view, and it was reasonable to hope they might “come with us, for fellowship,” as The Man for All Seasons‘ Duke of Norfolk would have put it.
The application, or “ordinances,” were the responsibility of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), but the seven bishops assigned to draft them worked with eight presidents, and after three years Bishop John Leibrecht, the chairman, had to report that on central issues the two cadres were in utter conflict. The demand for 1) Catholic scrutiny and recognition, in the person of their local bishops, the presidents saw as a sure step toward losing their accreditation since, they said, the academy was adamantly opposed to outside authorities compromising the autonomy of academic institutions. The demand for 2) Catholic personnel was unacceptable because, they said, they were forbidden by law to discriminate in hiring and promotion on grounds of religion. The demand for 3) Catholic theologians with mandates from their bishops was an unthinkable subversion of the academic freedom of the individual faculty member.
The bishops saw no alternative to sustaining Ex Corde Ecclesiae‘s clear imperatives, but repeated presidential warnings of reprisal by the federal government, the accrediting commissions, and the AAUP gave them pause. But no one, amidst the ensuing record incidences of “dialogue,” seemed to have taken seriously the prospect that many colleges and universities could be lost to the Church, let alone that they had been sliding resolutely in that direction during the five years the dialogue had thus far endured.
Dialogue, Discussion, Yada Yada
By 1995 the smart money had won. The newest draft (“for discussion,” it went without saying) stipulated that the key to “an explicit link” between the Catholic university and the Catholic Church was … dialogue. The draft intensified this point by accumulating synonyms: communio, relationships, shared beliefs, mutual listening, collaboration, respect, solidarity, mutual recognition … When the draft ordinances finally turned to more explicit matters, the contrasts with Ex Corde Ecclesiae became more explicit:
+ The folks in Rome had said that for a university to be Catholic it must incorporate into its governing documents the Norms stipulated in the apostolic constitution; make known its Catholic identity in its mission statement; and gain the approval and expect the continuing evaluation of the local bishop. The folks in Washington said that Catholic identity should simply be affirmed in the university’s mission statement.
+ Rome had said the majority of teachers had to be “faithful Catholics”; Washington said the universities should “seek individuals who are committed to the Catholic tradition.”
+ Rome had said theologians should enjoy the mandate of the bishop; Washington said the Catholic theologian required no theological credential from the bishop, but the bishop was free—though only after a lengthy process—to express his disagreement with a member of the theological faculty
+ Rome had accentuated collaboration, mutuality, and fidelity; Washington concluded by a cascading reaffirmation of dialogue.
These ordinances produced by the Implementation Committee, if accepted, would have made everyone’s task light indeed, since their content was minimal. The document was presented to the NCCB for approval with the notation that it “complements, and does not repeat, the themes and ideals of Ex Corde Ecclesiae itself.” The bishops amended slightly and approved by a vote to 224-6.” Theologian Richard P. McBrien wryly characterized the role the bishops had accepted for themselves:
Bishops should be welcome on a Catholic university campus. Give them tickets to ballgames. Let them say Mass. Bring them to graduation. Let them sit on the stage. But there should be nothing beyond that. They should have nothing to say about the internal academic affairs of the university or any faculty member thereof.”
During all these years of dialogue, facts on the ground had been worsening. In the very month when the draft ordinances were released, New York Times journalist Peter Steinfels—no conservative he—reported on his five-year inquiry into how Catholic colleges and universities were maintaining their religious identity:
Frankly, what I discovered as I spoke with deans and presidents and faculty members left me stunned.
At the higher levels there were repeated assurances that the commitment to Catholic identity had in no way weakened although there was wide-spread admission that it might be more difficult to implement under current circumstances.
At the faculty level, in some quarters I found frustration and anger at the perceived loss of Catholic identity. Among other faculty members I found resentment at the very idea that the Catholic identity of their institution meant anything beyond what they considered one or two vestigial theology courses and certain ceremonial flourishes—in other words, meant anything that might actually bear on their teaching and research.
I found a non-Catholic political scientist wondering why, in view of the richness of Catholic thought and experience in relating God and Caesar, the government department at his Catholic university should be interchangeable with that of any first-rank school.
I found faculty members who said that job candidates with Catholic backgrounds or known interests in relating their research to religious or ethical questions would actually be at a disadvantage because the philosophy department did not want to look too Catholic or the biology department did not want to give the impression of letting religious considerations intrude into their strictly scientific decisions.
Above all, I found confusion and euphemism and evasion and a tremendous sense that the subject could not be discussed openly and candidly…. I sensed self-deception when I found in conversations about hiring that the impressive official version differed radically from what actually happened in the trenches. What but self-deception explained the official devotion to Catholic identity that was accompanied by promotional brochures and catalogs, by ads in The Chronicle of Higher Education, by fund-raising campaigns in which all reference to Catholic had been either entirely eliminated, reduced to the minimum or duly obscured behind a word like Jesuit? Sometimes I was reminded of men who slip off their wedding rings when they go on business trips.”
When the U.S. bishops’ proposed ordinances arrived in Rome for review by the Congregation for Catholic Education in 1996, it was under different management. Throughout Ex Corde Ecclesiae‘s development process, an American, William Cardinal Baum, was serving as prefect. Baum was no liberal, but on his watch American interventions could at least gain a fraternal hearing. When all the wrangling and drafting had been completed in the spring of 1990, and the text sat on the pope’s desk, Cardinal Baum was transferred to a new responsibility as chief of the Apostolic Penitentiary (not what you think).
His successor in the education ministry was Pio Cardinal Laghi, an affable diplomat with whom one supped with a long spoon. He had been sent as apostolic delegate in Washington to replace and undo the work of Jean Jadot, who had been a good friend to progressives and liberals in the Church in America. The presidents might well have wondered whether Laghi was being installed as a knowledgeable and perhaps tougher counterforce to assure Ex Corde Ecclesiae of a meaningful follow-through.
Laghi to Bishops: Thanks for the Effort
Laghi swiftly returned the ordinances with a polite but detailed account of their inadequacies, suggested the Americans start from scratch, and informed them that the acceptance process would be more complex than they had thought. One can catch the spirit of the Vatican rejection in the way one passage fared. The Leibrecht committee had proposed that in recruiting faculty and staff the institution “seeks individuals who are committed to the Catholic tradition.” The NCCB then amended it to read: “makes serious effort to appoint individuals who are committed to the Catholic faith tradition.” Laghi’s observation is: “in place of makes serious effort to appoint it should read: shall ensure the appointment of.”
No student ever had a term paper handed back, after an expression of “profound gratitude” for effort, with sharper requirements for a rewrite. A now-sobered NCCB immediately created a subcommittee of bishops who were also canonists to draft new ordinances.
Canonists require less dialogue than most, and these seem not to have prevailed on the presidents to sit with them in their work, which was completed in a year’s time. These were not your ordinary canonists, however. Drawing on a relatively unnoticed but occasionally eloquent 1992 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on “communion,” they offered it as keynote of their draft, since it “unites … the various communities in the Church … on a deeper and more productive level” than does the previously all-purpose dialogue.
The communion of the teaching functions of the bishops and of the Catholic universities centers on the relationship between the bishops’ right and obligation to communicate and safeguard the integrity of Church doctrine and the right and obligation of Catholic universities to investigate, analyze and communicate truths freely in communion with the magisterium. Furthermore, the communion between the bishop and the teacher of theology furnishes the basis for the proper understanding of the mandate of Canon 812. The mandate simply attests that the Catholic teacher of the theological disciplines carries out his or her task in communion with the Church.
The particular norms they offer are quite interesting, though not brief. For instance, they begin by re-affirming institutional autonomy and academic freedom with plentiful references to the Second Vatican Council. Also, the subcommittee’s norms are blunt about matters the bishops and presidents had avoided. For example:
+ The university president should be a faithful Catholic.
+ The university should recruit and appoint faithful Catholics as professors so that, as much as possible, those committed to the witness of the faith will constitute a majority of the faculty.
+ Catholic students have a right to receive from a university instruction in authentic Catholic doctrine and practice, especially from those who teach the theological disciplines.
Canonists tend to link norms with their purposes; the controversial mandate is an instance:
The mandate is fundamentally an acknowledgment by Church authority that a Catholic professor of a theological discipline teaches within the full communion of the Catholic Church. The acknowledgment recognizes that he or she is a faithful Catholic, an active member of the Church’s communion who teaches a theological discipline as a special ministry within the Church community….
The mandate should not be construed as an appointment, authorization, delegation or approbation of one’s teaching by Church authorities. Those who have received a mandate teach in their own name in virtue of their Christian initiation and their academic and professional competence, not in the name of the Bishop or of the Church’s Magisterium.
The Norms require the theological faculty to manifest their communion by a profession of faith and an oath of fidelity, but leave the choice of formula to the bishops and the professors.
Despite their length, the Norms in some ways seem better drawn than those of Ex Corde Ecclesiae itself more direct, more explanatory, with a variety of suggestions in the footnotes.
Trump Card
The Norms will receive their due revision. But they are not the issue. The presidents, who had so easily mastered the bishops—only to be met by a pope who is not easily mastered—continue to claim that the pragmatic sequelae to Ex Corde Ecclesiae are thoroughly incompatible with their own autonomy and their faculty’s academic freedom. Frs. Monan and Malloy, of Boston College and Notre Dame, respectively, who have been spokesmen for the resistance movement, have come out in print against the whole business: “[I]n an age when secularizing forces are growing in strength and the alienation of intellectuals from religion is growing deeper, Catholic universities are perhaps the best means the church has to maintain its dialogue with modern culture, to learn from it and to influence its development.” By those who appreciate that Catholic universities have been perhaps the most secularized and secularizing force in the church in America, perhaps attention may not be paid.
The presidents’ constant aim has been to make the Catholic character of their institutions autonomous and nonessential, an aim clearly conveyed in their rejection of the Norms in the 1998 implementation. Each institution, the presidents say, should “state its identity,” “make clear [its] relationship with the Church,” and “set out the practical implications of its Catholic identity” In a word, its Catholic identity will be unilaterally claimed and defined.
But membership in the Catholic Church is traditionally bilateral: We profess the faith of and with the Church, and are acknowledged as communicants. The presidents find it repugnant that their schools should need evaluation and then certification by the Church.
Faculty and administrators—those who embody the Catholic character of the institution—are not required or expected by the presidents to be Catholics themselves. Instead, they commit themselves to make “all reasonable efforts to attract” academics who will “respect,” “maintain,” and “promote” the Catholic character, without needing to be Catholics themselves.
Can one imagine the presidents binding themselves to make “all reasonable efforts to attract” academics who will respect and maintain and promote high scholarship, without needing to be scholars themselves? And coursework in Catholic theology, they agree, should be “academically excellent and readily available,” but not integral to the curriculum. Can one imagine them claiming that coursework in philosophy, mathematics, or foreign language should be “available” but not required for an integral education on their campus?
The Catholic university and college presidents have faced a succession of frights in their determination not to be answerable to the Church for the fidelity of their schools. The fumbling attempts by Roman authorities in the ’60s to control them were relatively maladroit. But the successive moves of this pope to require accountability without control have elicited such pleas of fond fellowship with the civil power as have not been heard since the European episcopates used their allegiances to their princes to hold the papacy at a safe distance. The presidents’ energetic and enduring lobby in Rome seemed to assure them of an inconsequential document, but those efforts suffered a great let-down when Ex Corde was published. Their hopes then fastened on the American bishops, who were responsible for developing the particulars of Church approval. Years of indefatigable effort in that direction, fruitless at first, eventually secured for the presidents a protocol about as rigorous as an eyesight chart that never requires you to read beyond the initial “E”. But Rome tore it up and told the bishops to get serious—and now they seem tempted to do so. But, to be fair to the presidents, they have been serious all along: dead serious in their determination not to be answerable to any Church scrutiny that might seriously take a measure of their stewardship.