Take pride in Catholic tradition
Charles Rice
Right or Wrong?
In announcing Notre Dame's plan to spend $500 million on new building projects, Vice President Timothy R. Scully, said, "We really feel a deep responsibility to build the world's leading Catholic university." A worthy objective. But the Catholic Church alone has authority to define the "Catholic university." John Paul II did so in 1990 in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education.
Notre Dame's focus on money and a veritable building binge might obscure an important question: If Notre Dame is to become a really Catholic university, what attitude must our leaders have toward Ex Corde?
Fortunately, Avery Cardinal Dulles, the eminent Jesuit scholar, offered some guidance on that point in his recent address on John Henry Cardinal Newman, the great 19th century Catholic educator. To put Cardinal Dulles's advice in context, we ought to look at some basics.
In Nov. 1999, the bishops approved an Application of Ex Corde to the United States. The Application's emphasis on dialogue rather than formal enforcement makes it likely that the implementation of Ex Corde, that is, whether a university will be truly Catholic or Catholic-lite, will be up to the choice of the university itself.
The Application specifies some obligations of a Catholic university: "[T]he university should ... appoint Catholics ... so that, to the extent possible, those committed to the witness of the faith will constitute a majority of the faculty.
"All professors are expected to be ... committed to the Catholic mission ... of their institutions [and to] exhibit not only academic competence and good character but also respect for Catholic doctrine." At Notre Dame, 54 percent of the teaching and research faculty list themselves as Catholic; the number is headed south.
"Both the university and the bishops," said the Application, "have a right to expect [theologians] to present authentic Catholic teaching. Catholic [theologians] have a ... duty to be faithful to the church's magisterium as the authoritative interpreter of sacred scripture and sacred tradition."
Much discussion has focused on Ex Corde's requirement that "Catholics who teach the theological disciplines in a Catholic university are required to have a mandatum granted by ... ecclesiastical authority." The mandatum, notes Father Edward D. O'Connor, "is meant as a first step" to reverse "a widespread and grave situation: that so-called Catholic faculties have largely abandoned or disfigured their Catholicism."
"The mandatum," says the Application, "recognizes the professor's ... responsibility to teach authentic Catholic doctrine and to refrain from putting forth as Catholic teaching anything contrary to the church's magisterium." Even without the mandatum, that obligation would arise from the truth-in-labeling duty to avoid consumer fraud.
As the Application notes, "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." Universities that claim to be Catholic ought to conform their product to their fund-raising pitch.
There is no mystery about what it takes to be a Catholic university. Read Ex Corde and the Application. And reflect on Cardinal Dulles's analysis. "If Newman were alive today," said Cardinal Dulles, "he would enthusiastically embrace the principles set forth by John Paul II in Ex Corde Ecclesiae."
Describing Newman's position, Dulles said, "because the university cannot fulfill its mission without revealed truth, and because the Church has full authority to teach the contents of revelation, the university must accept the Church's guidance ... the higher authority of the Church was necessary to rescue freedom of thought from what Newman called its own `suicidal excesses.'"
"In the United States," said Cardinal Dulles, "Catholic universities have been very apologetic, almost embarrassed, by their obligation to adhere to the faith of the Church. For Newman and for John Paul II, any university that lacks the guidance of Christian revelation and the oversight of the Catholic magisterium is ... impeded in its mission to find and transmit truth.
"It fails to make use of an important resource that God in His providence has provided. Surrounded by powerful institutions constructed on principles of metaphysical and religious agnosticism, the Catholic universities of this nation have too long been on the defensive. While making certain necessary adaptations to the needs of our own day, they should proudly reaffirm the essentials of their own tradition, so brilliantly synthesized by Newman in his classic work."
Cardinal Dulles's analysis should be instructive for our leaders, especially on the necessary relation between the Catholic university and the magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church.
Professor Emeritus Rice is on the Law School Faculty. His column normally appears every other Thursday. He can be contacted at plawecki.1@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Wednesday, January 16, 2002
