Bishops tighten control over Catholic colleges

Christian Century, Dec 1, 1999

Turning aside fears that they would increase tensions between the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and its theologians, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops voted November 17 to approve a plan to tighten their control over the nation's 230 Catholic colleges and universities, including requiring theologians to receive permission from a bishop to teach.

By a solid 223-31 vote, with one abstention, the bishops approved a set of rules aimed at implementing Pope John Paul II's principles, issued in 1990, for maintaining the Catholic identity of the church's colleges and universities. The plan, hotly and sometimes bitterly debated within academic and church circles--and once rejected by the Vatican as not firm enough--must still go back to Rome for approval. Crucial to maintaining Catholic identity, the document says, is that Catholic colleges and universities must retain "fidelity to the Christian message in conformity with the magisterium [teaching authority] of the church."

"It is not a perfect document, but it is a good and workable document," commented Bishop John Leibrecht of Springfield--Cape Girardeau, Missouri, chairman of the committee that drafted the plan. But Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee warned that the document comes at a bad time in U.S. church history when relations between many of the church's theologians and the hierarchy, especially the Vatican, are at an all-time low.

"It [the document] will be a pastoral disaster for the church in America," said Weakland, the only bishop to speak against the statement's adoption during an hourlong debate that brought some two dozen prelates to the microphone. The statement was adopted on the third day of the fourday fall meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and its social-policy arm, the U.S. Catholic Conference.

While the statement covers a broad range of issues in an effort not to let Catholic colleges go the way of such institutions as Harvard, Yale and Princeton--all founded as church schools but now largely secular--the heart of the controversy within the church is the requirement that theologians receive a "mandatum," or mandate, from their local bishop in order to teach doctrine at a Catholic school. The statement says the mandatum should be given in writing and the reasons for denying or removing it should also be in writing.

Academics, especially theologians, have expressed the fear that the mandatum will be used to punish dissent or squelch academic freedom. "The mandatum is fundamentally an acknowledgment by church authority that a Catholic professor of a theological discipline teaches within the full communion of the Catholic Church," says the statement, titled "Excorde Ecclesiae [From the Heart of the Church]: An Application to the United States." The statement says that Catholic professors of the theological disciplines, such as biblical studies or systematic theology, "have a ... duty to be faithful to the church's magisterium as the authoritative interpreter of sacred Scripture and sacred tradition."

But most of those speaking to the statement dismissed or minimized the fears of Catholic college presidents and theologians. "I believe it has addressed the concerns raised by some bishops and presidents of Catholic colleges and made notable and appropriate improvements in response to their concerns," Cardinal John J. O'Connor of New York said in a message sent to the conference. O'Connor, who recently underwent brain tumor surgery, did not attend the meeting.

Cardinal Anthony Bevilaqua of Philadelphia argued that the document presents "the most benign definition possible" of the mandatum--essentially a license or certificate to teach--and that definition should "remove any fears of its implementation." He said the granting of a mandatum would not "involve a long, intrusive investigation" of a theologian's views.

In addition to the question of theologians, the new rules require that the university presidents and a majority of each school's board be Catholic and that the schools should, "to the extent possible," recruit and appoint Catholics as professors "so that ... those committed to the witness of the faith will constitute a majority of the faculty." Priests and deacons working in campus ministry with students must also have the local bishop's permission.

A major issue in drafting the statement, according to Leibrecht and Bevilaqua, was concern that the statement could east the church schools in such a sectarian light that they would be denied federal grants and other aid. But both prelates said those concerns had been met and no college president should fear any loss of federal aid.