Two groups urge due process for Fiand

National Catholic Reporter, July 3, 1998 by Pamela Schaeffer

Two groups of Catholic theologians have adopted resolutions in support of Sr. Barbara Fiand, the professor who resigned in May after she was barred from teaching in the seminary division of the Athenaeum of Ohio. The school is sponsored by the Cincinnati archdiocese.

Both the College Theology Society and the Catholic Theological Association of America urged in separate statements on Fiand's situation that due process be followed in conflicts between officials and theologians.

Meanwhile, the Athenaeum's top administrator, Fr. Gerald Haemmerle, issued a statement in defense of his decision to transfer Fiand to lay ministry programs. Previously she had taught four required courses to men being educated for the priesthood. Fiand has taught at the Athenaeum and its seminary division, Mount St. Mary's of the West, for 17 years.

Haemmerle said he regretted Fiand's decision to resign and did not regard her transfer as a demotion. He said the transfer had been based on his conversations with seminarians, priests, vocation directors and bishops who told him that "Sr. Barbara was not supportive nor encouraging of seminarians preparing for ordination. Though not unanimous, this perception was too pervasive to be ignored," he wrote.

Haemmerle said his action did not reflect concerns about Fiand's orthodoxy. He added that the move "had nothing to do with pressure from the right, nothing to do with orders from Rome. This was a personnel move designed to make the best use of a teacher's gifts," his statement said.

In a telephone interview, Fiand said she agreed that an assignment to teach laity should not be regarded as "less worthy" than teaching seminarians. Nevertheless, she said, she regarded Haemmerle's decision to bar her from teaching seminarians as "punitive." Further, she said she regarded Haemmerle's perspective on "use of her gifts" to be "the height of paternalism ... since he didn't consult me about my gifts and has never been in my classroom to assess my gifts."

As for another change Haemmerle made in Fiand's status, a retraction of her three-year "rolling contract," Haemmerle said he had intended to honor the two remaining years. "Renewal in a future year was a possibility," his statement said.

A rolling contract is an agreement that offers professors a degree of job security in lieu of tenure. Fiand said she regarded the contract change as a warning that when her contract expired she could be ousted entirely from the Athenaeum. She said she had been given no convincing reasons for either of the changes.

Haemmerle's statement said that Fiand had received stronger evaluations from lay students than from seminarians.

Fiand acknowledged that she had received unusually low evaluations from seminarians in the academic year that just ended. "My sense is that they are generally a more conservative group," she said. "I protested to the dean because they were written in a manner than was insulting to me," she said. "Generally speaking, you can't say that my evaluations have been lower in the seminary division. They have not." She said she found it "ludicrous" that one group of low evaluations could alter the course of her career.

The statements from the theological association addressed in particular what Fiand described as lack of convincing rationale and due process.

A resolution by the College Theology Society, adopted May 29 in St. Louis, decried the "failure of due process and the resulting violation of Sr. Barbara Fiand's human dignity."

A resolution by the Catholic Theological Society, adopted June 12 in Ottawa, Canada, urged "justice and charity" in working out disagreements between institutions and theologians. The society affirmed the right of faculty members, when sanctions are being considered, "to know the identity of their accusers and the content of the accusations and to answer these accusations."