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Why Catholic colleges should worry

In the continuing controversy on how the papal document Ex Corde Ecclesiae will be implemented in the United States, the more aggressive position has been taken by the college and university presidents. With several notable exceptions, these presidents have just been saying No.

It may well be that in their negative reaction to the Vatican efforts to make Catholic colleges Catholic, the presidents believe that they are dealing from a position of strength. After all, all they have to do is stop calling themselves “Catholic” and describe themselves instead as “in the Jesuit Tradition”; then they would be home free. This is what happened in California some years ago when a religious community split, and the secularized half walked away with the community’s institutions. I am sure the presidents were surprised when an archbishop asked his fellow bishops recently: “Why are we worried about the college presidents? They should be worried about us.”

Why should the college presidents be worried about the bishops? What could they do?

Perhaps the bishops need what one might call a plan of battle. Such a plan might include some or all of the following suggestions. These suggestions are not all of the same importance, and no one would suggest that they all take place within a short period of time. Nevertheless, used with prudence and determination, they might bring the college presidents to a greater respect for the position of the bishops and a willingness to be cooperative.

Here are some suggestions:

1) Ecclesiastical property cannot be alienated without permission. Where this has been or will be attempted, the bishops could take the cases to the civil courts to secure and defend our rights to ecclesiastical property.
2) Priests and religious could be forbidden to serve as administrators of the newly secularized colleges, or members of their boards of trustees.
3) Priests and religious could be forbidden to teach in the newly secularized schools.
4) Priests and religious could be forbidden to attend newly secularized schools.
5) Priests and religious could be forbidden to live on campus at the secularized colleges.
6) Secularized institutions could be barred from using the name “Catholic” in advertising, or even using substitute phrases implying Catholicity, such as “in the Jesuit tradition” or “in the Vincentian tradition.”
7) Newly secularized colleges could be prohibited from recruiting students at Catholic schools, and could be deprived of the use of Catholic newspapers and other media for recruiting. Counter-advertising might even be started.
8) Degrees granted by secularized schools (after a cut-off date set by the bishops) would not be recognized as satisfying criteria for employment in Catholic schools and parishes.
9) If smaller schools should begin to feel the economic pinch brought on by such a campaign, the bishops might offer to buy out the failing colleges and to make them truly Catholic.
10) If, despite the assurances offered by Kenneth Whitehead (see “Averting a Collision,” May 1999), students at truly Catholic colleges and universities were denied federal student loans, the bishops might themselves offer such loans.
11) If accrediting agencies should try to intrude into intra-mural Church activities, the bishops might respond by suing the agencies for violating the First Amendment of our Constitution.
12) If accrediting agencies attempted any anti-Catholic actions, the bishops might move to set up their own accrediting agencies.

Right now the bishops are a paper tiger, and the college presidents are not afraid of them. However, with the support of the Holy See, and with united action on the part of the bishops, the support for the institutional autonomy as set forth in the Land O’ Lakes statement could be dried up.

The bishops have nothing to fear from the college presidents. The college presidents should have much to fear from a rejection of the role of the bishops in Catholic higher education.

—Msgr. George P. Graham
Levittown, New York

Perverting academic freedom

Yes, the Barbie doll exhibit at Detroit Mercy University, which claims to be a Catholic institution, was an expression of crude, anti-Catholic bigotry. But just as sad is that the university devoted resources to an activity that had no intellectual or educational value. That professors engaged in a trivial and self-centered display indicates a weakness in judgment that is incompatible with college-level education and discourse.

Academic freedom means that a researcher who has conducted an objective inquiry, analyzed significant data, implemented methodology appropriate to his field, and whose results have been favorably evaluated by independent reviewers is entitled to teach and make public the conclusions of that research. To accept uncritically Father McGovern’s assertion that a commitment to “academic freedom” required Detroit Mercy to subsidize a display that shows no research or analysis is to give in to a lie. The problem at Detroit Mercy and other so-called Catholic schools is not that they adopt secular standards of academic freedom, but that they are so intent on attacking the Church that they abandon ordinary academic standards as well.

What needs to be pointed out is that the Catholic-bashing at Detroit Mercy is not an isolated phenomenon or an example of student high jinks. Faculty-led, administration-approved expressions of anti-Catholicism which also repudiate reason and scholarship regularly take place at schools that claim to be “Catholic.” Loyola University in Chicago gave its facilities to a witchcraft conference; DePaul urges its faculty to participate in an annual week-long “celebration” of gay and lesbian lifestyles; Boston College has subsidized Mary Daly’s anti-Catholic, anti-male, and unresearched ravings for decades.

The real problem is that American Catholics continue to make alumni contributions and go into debt to send their children to schools at which the climate is more anti-Catholic and anti-intellectual than less expensive and often more fair-minded public colleges. And American bishops continue to mandate courses at these institutions for religion teachers and other parish staff.

Just as the emperor in the fable thought he was parading in new clothes when he was actually wearing none, many so-called Catholic colleges are wearing neither Catholicism nor academic standards. Yet few Catholics are willing to admit that. Instead American Catholics and even Catholic media foolishly cheer when they learn that a school, like Detroit Mercy, is going to put on a fig leaf with a newly created “Catholic Studies” department. Given the attitudes already expressed at these colleges, it is likely that such departments will be neither “Catholic” nor involved in serious “studies.”

—Lynne C. Boughton
Palatine, Illinois

The UN as a dangerous place

Your latest report on the activities of the family-planning lobby at the United Nations (“Five Years After Cairo,” May 1999) should be enough to set the yellow “caution” lights blinking in Rome. But sometimes I wonder whether Vatican officials will ever come to understand the dangers of working with the United Nations.

For forty years Vatican officials have been singing the praise of the UN, and promoting the authority of international government. Yet whenever the UN holds an international conference—especially on questions like population and family planning—the same Vatican officials are fighting tooth and nail against the UN bureaucracy and its enthusiastic backing of the “culture of death.” Does anyone in Rome sense a contradiction here?

Now the Vatican is rallying behind a new international cause: the forgiveness of debts accumulated by Third World nations. The Pope advanced this idea as part of his vision for the Jubilee; superpowers are lining up behind the idea for their own political and economic reasons. Since those poor countries can never pay the debts anyway, I see no reason to oppose the idea. But I do see a reason to worry about how the UN (and the other international institutions: the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and so forth) would set up a program to help the Third World countries. I hear commentators saying that forgiveness of the debts should be tied to “reforms” in the countries themselves. After reading CWR, and coming to understand how strongly the UN bureaucracy supports family-planning programs, I have no doubt that the first “reform” demanded of the debtor nations would be an unprecedented push to limit family sizes, by contraception and abortion. Then before you know it, the Vatican would be in the position of arguing against the implementation of a program (debt relief) which the Pope first proposed!

—Francis X. Bevivino
Donora, Pennsylvania

Mary’s heart now only a memory?

Words can become icons, just as paintings and music are able to express symbolically specific truths about our faith. Since I was a child, the touching gospel reading, “and his mother kept all these words in her heart (corde suo)” have become for me an icon expressing the loving heart of the mother of God. Why, after hundreds of years, should we replace “heart” with the banal (if not inaccurate) word “memory?” As the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of May more than likely had its origins in this scriptural reference to Mary’s heart, I wonder if this translation was made through ignorance of the profound and beautiful sentiment expressed by the word “heart”? Or do we have here another veiled attempt to obscure Mary’s role in the divine plan of our salvation?

I am Music Director at a church named for the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so I mentioned to my pastor that we may have to change the name to the Immaculate Memory of Mary.

—J.G. Phillips
Fitchburg, Massachusetts

More on conscience in
A Man for All Seasons

Although orthodox Roman Catholics understand that Robert Bolt distorted the true nature of conscience in A Man for All Seasons, it can be difficult to argue that point to those who refuse to accept the teachings of the Church on her own authority. Predictably some of the greatest admirers of Bolt’s play are people who reject all external authority in deference to the inner voice which they misconstrue to be conscience. But with more than a little poetic justice, A Man for All Seasons inadvertently demonstrates through reason the error which some Thomas More enthusiasts are incapable of understanding on the basis of faith.

Bolt’s misconception of conscience is nowhere so evident as in the interrogation scene in which Cromwell, Norfolk, and Cranmer attempt to persuade Sir Thomas to take the oath to the Act of Supremacy. Norfolk asks Thomas to join him in taking the oath “for fellowship,” to which Thomas replies: “And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?”

This is one of the most memorable and powerful lines in a stage play that is distinguished by memorable and powerful lines, but it goes too far. The concept of conscience that Bolt attributes to Sir Thomas is predicated upon subjective human opinion, rather than upon God’s objective truth. It would be possible to follow that kind of conscience and still be wrong; indeed, it would be possible to follow that kind of conscience and still go to hell.

The theological problem created by this theory of conscience is obvious. If each man properly defines the limits of his own conscience, and if each man were saved or damned according to his obedience or disobedience to that “conscience,” then hell would be filled with the best of men, whose strict consciences held them up to the most rigorous scrutiny, while heaven would be filled with the worst scoundrels, whose uncritical consciences allowed them to sin without compunction.

The absurdity of this reasoning effectively discredits the subjective theory of conscience, and that absurdity should appeal to our reason as surely as it would have appealed to the wit of Thomas More.

—Stephen Rombouts
Loretto, Pennsylvania

Of good news and bad

Hopefully, when William Saunders (see “The Slaughter of the Innocents,” May 1999) has set up his foundation to aid Catholics in Sudan (and, one further hopes, gained tax-deductible status for that foundation), Catholic World Report will announce the address to which contributions might be sent.

You have mentioned that you are often criticized for being “negative.” While “good” news should be included in your magazine for moral purposes (if no other reason), if most of the news is “bad” news you need to report it.

If, as a physician, I were to withhold the “bad” news from patients for fear of being “negative,” I would be guilty of malpractice. Unfortunately, too much of the Catholic press is guilty of this type of malpractice. Wasn’t there a prophet of God in the Bible who lamented that the people only wanted to hear from their prophets that there would be plenty of beer (alcohol) and good things?

—Frank Grabarits, MD
San Diego, California

Since many readers have asked the same question, we are happy to relay the announcement that the Sudan Relief and Rescue, Inc. (3720 Yuma Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20016) is now in operation; all US contributions are tax-deductible.

— The Editor

Needed: Church discipline

Why do relatively few people rob banks? Could it be that everyone knows that if you are caught, there is no way to escape punishment. The robber will be disciplined promptly, because we’re talking about money.

After many years of ostrich-like behavior, everyone now admits to a crisis in Catholicism, which Pope Paul VI sensed when he smelled the smoke of Satan within the Church.

There is no “crisis” with bank robbers because of discipline. But in the Church anyone can say or do anything he pleases. Just look at the way the holy sacrifice of the Mass is celebrated today! Dissent is rampant. What happens? Nothing.

Pope John Paul II left his office desk for frequent-flyer points (but I still love him). Hopefully, the next pope will stay home signing disciplinary orders for the bank robbers of our faith.

—Victor J. Dirse
Perrine, Florida

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