Waiting for the future of Catholic education
Charles Rice
Right or Wrong?
The Catholic bishops' Application to the United States of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, will go into effect next May 3rd. In this academic year, the bishops and the universities will dialogue as to how to implement the Application.
First, the Application requires that "the university should ... recruit and appoint Catholics as professors so that to the extent possible, those committed to the witness of the faith will constitute a majority of the faculty." In the past two decades the proportion of Catholics on Notre Dame's tenured and tenure-track faculty has fallen to about 55 percent.
Second, the Application says that Catholic professors of theology "have a ... duty to be faithful to the Church's magisterium as the authoritative interpreter of sacred Scripture and sacred tradition [and they] are required to have a mandatum granted by competent ecclesiastical authority." The mandatum, which is required by Canon Law, is "an acknowledgment by church authority that a Catholic professor [of theology] is a teacher within the full communion of the Catholic Church ... The mandatum [is not] an appointment ... or approbation of one's teaching by church authorities." Francis Cardinal George, of Chicago, described the mandatum "as a statement of relationship, not of direct control. It is a ... recognition that a Catholic theologian teaches in communion with the Church, that the theologian is related to the pastor of the faith community ... and that the discipline of theology receives its data from that same community." According to the Application, "the mandatum recognizes the professor's commitment ... to teach authentic Catholic doctrine and to refrain from putting forth as Catholic teaching anything contrary to the Church's magisterium." That makes sense. It is fair to say that, if Notre Dame will not ensure that its required courses in theology are "faithful to the church's magisterium," those courses (and required philosophy courses) should no longer be required. If the professors want to do their own thing, let them and the University abandon any claim that it is the "Catholic" thing and let the students decide whether to take such courses.
Third, the Application states that "students should have the opportunity to be educated in the church's moral and religious principles and social teachings and to participate in the life of faith ... Catholic students have a right to receive ... instruction in authentic Catholic doctrine and practice... Courses in Catholic doctrine and practice should be made available to all students."
The Application enumerates, among "the essential elements of Catholic identity": "Commitment to Catholic ... attitudes in ... all ... university activities, including ... recognized student and faculty organizations ... with due regard for academic freedom and the conscience of every individual; ... Commitment to provide personal services (health care, counseling and guidance) ... in conformity with the church's ethical and religious teaching and directives; Commitment to create a campus culture and environment that are expressive ... of a Catholic way of life."
The principle here is truth in labeling. As The Wall Street Journal noted, "The ... secularizing trends that ... erased the Protestant foundations of America's leading universities ... threaten to do the same to the country's 235 Catholic ... universities. Even non-Catholics would likely regard the [Application] as a tautology: that theologians advertised as Catholic actually teach `authentic Catholic doctrine' and that a majority of a Catholic university's trustees and faculty be Catholic as well. From the outcry this has provoked you might think the bishops had called for reinstating the rack... As former Notre Dame Provost James T. Burtchaell pointed out, "the same administrators howling about autonomy submit without protest to authorities ranging from the NCAA to the Department of Education, who tell them what they can and cannot do, on everything from hiring and admissions to curricula and how they run their basketball programs... All of which makes it hard to avoid the suspicion that what really bothers Catholic administrators is the fear not of censorship but of not being accepted by their colleagues at secular campuses ... And do not parents who ... send their sons and daughters to Catholic ... universities precisely because they are Catholic have the right to expect that their children will get what they paid for?"
The dialogue over the next few months provides an opportunity for Notre Dame and other affected universities to define their identity in a spirit of cooperation. Perhaps we should recall Mother Teresa's advice to the Notre Dame class of 1986, that "We need to be humble like Mary to be able to say `Yes' to God' to accept God's law, God's teaching as given to us by His Vicar on earth, the Holy Father and the Magisterium of the Church."
Prof. Charles Rice is on the Law School faculty. His column appears every other Tuesday.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Tuesday, August 29, 2000
