Daniel J. Flynn

America’s Catholic Bishops overwhelmingly approved a plan that would maintain the Catholic identity of America’s 235 Catholic institutions of higher learning. The plan is expected to have a dramatic impact on Catholic colleges and universities in the United States. 

    The November 17 vote affirmed Ex Corde Ecclesiae, a papal directive from John Paul II that calls on Catholic institutions of higher learning to stay true to their roots. Specifically, the document states that presidents of Catholic colleges should be members of the Church, a majority of faculty and trustees should be Catholic, and that local Bishops should have input into who teaches Catholic theology. The vote among the Bishops implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae passed by 223 for, to 31 against. 

    Although there was near unanimity among the Bishops, reaction from those working within Catholic higher education was mixed. 

    “I think it’s disastrous,” opined Sister Winifred Whelan, an associate professor of theology at St. Bonaventure University near Buffalo. “A lot of good theologians are going to be leaving. They won’t be able to teach what they want to teach. It puts a damper on their creativity.” Professor Terrance Tilley, dean of religious studies at the University of Dayton, predicted that “Faculty who can may leave.” He suggested that the plan would “cause Catholic intellectual life in Catholic universities to disperse.” 

    Others wondered what is so controversial about Catholic schools putting forth a Catholic message or why a Catholic institution should subsidize theologians who seek to undermine its own teachings when plenty of secular schools already do this. 

    Father Leo O’Donovan, president of Georgetown University, announced his approval of the Bishops’ vote: “We embrace our Catholic and Jesuit identity and our commitment to academic excellence. We welcome the call of Pope John Paul II and the American bishops to strengthen these mutually sustaining dimensions of our educational mission.” 

‘Ex Corde Ecclesiae’

    Literally meaning “Out of the Heart of the Church,” Ex Corde Ecclesiae was issued by Pope John Paul II on August 15, 1990. In 1996 America’s Bishops approved a plan to implement the Papal order that sought to appease both Rome and academia, but the Vatican rejected it as too watered-down. The new guidelines are expected to be approved by the Papacy. The Universities will have a year to begin taking action on the directives within the document. A failure to implement the program could mean derocognition as a Catholic institution from the Church. 

    Ex Corde Ecclesiae affirms “academic freedom” at the same time it ensures intellectual diversity within academia by preserving the uniquely Catholic perspective represented by Catholic institutions. “In a word,” the document reads, “being both a university and Catholic, it must be both a community of scholars representing various branches of human knowledge, and an academic institution in which Catholicism is vitally present and operative.” 

    “Since the objective of a Catholic University is to assure in an institutional manner a Christian presence in the university world confronting the great problems of society and culture,” Ex Corde Ecclesiae reads, “every Catholic University, as Catholic, must have the following essential characteristics: 

    “1. A Christian inspiration not only of individuals but of the university community as such;

    “2. A continuing reflection in the light of the Catholic faith upon the growing treasury of human knowledge, to which it seeks to contribute by its own research; 

    “3. Fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church;

    “4. An institutional commitment to the service of the people of God and of the human family in their pilgrimage to the transcendent goal which gives meaning to life.”

    To achieve these goals, a number of aconcrete directives are put forth. 

    The document asks for “the recruitment of adequate university personnel, especially teachers and administrators, who are both willing and able to promote” Catholicism. It sets forth guidelines declaring that at least 50% of all faculty members and trustees must be Catholic and that presidents of Catholic colleges must share the faith of the institution they seek to lead. “Catholic teachers are to remain faithful to, and all other teachers are to respect, Catholic doctrine and morals in their research and teaching,” the Pope asserts. Perhaps the most controversial tenet of Ex Corde Ecclesiae is its stance on teachers of Catholic theology. The document advises that “every Catholic university should have a faculty, or at least a chair, of theology.” It states, “Catholic theologians, aware that they fulfill a mandate received from the Church, are to remain faithful to the Magesterium of the Church as an authentic interpreter of the Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.” This means that those wanting to teach Catholic theology at Catholic schools must first get approval from the local Bishop. Those teaching theology relating to  other religions need not receive a mandate from the Church to do so. 

Many Protestant Colleges No Longer Christian
    Proponents of a Catholic mission for Catholic higher education point to the scores of Protestant institutions that have been hijacked by academics advancing a secularized agenda that is inimical to the founding principles of those once Christian colleges and universities. What happened to these institutions earlier this century, they say, is now transpiring at such Catholic schools as St. John’s, the University of San Diego, and Loyola-Chicago. 

    “We cannot ignore the history of institutions of higher learning that were founded in the Protestant faith that are now secular,” expressed Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law. “We are at a new moment in Catholic higher education, a moment molded by the challenges posed by a culture that is aggressively secular.”

    Other Church leaders disagree. “While we can use the Protestant universities as a wake-up call, we have the wisdom tradition, we have great resiliency in the Catholic Church,” expressed Bishop John M. D’Arcy, whose diocese includes Notre Dame. D’Arcy, who voted against the plan, remarked, “We’re not afraid of modernity. We can handle it, with faith seeking understanding. We don’t have to go down that road.” 

    The Ivy League provides perhaps the most famous examples of schools betraying the Christian principles of their founders. 

    Harvard University was founded by the Reverend John Harvard for the purpose of training clergymen. Students were initially required to read scripture twice a day. Today the school’s chaplain is a homosexual activist. Gay weddings have been performed in its chapel and abortions are provided by the university’s health plan. The school’s divinity program has instructed its students not to use “AD” and “BC” when referring to dates, but instead use “CE” (Common Era) and “BCE” (Before Common Era). Professors in the divinity school have even marked down papers for having the letter “G” capitalized in the word, “God.” 

    Yale’s revised charter of 1745, that is used even to this day, brags: “Under the blessing of Almighty God, [we] have trained up many worthy persons for the service of God in the state as well as the Church.” Like its rival in Cambridge, Yale’s chapel has been the site of homosexual weddings and its health plan provides abortions. The school’s annual publication, The Yale University Pink Book, has listed scores of courses promoting abhorrent behavior, including, “Drag Queens, Transsexuals and Queers: Anthropological Approaches” and “Redefining the Family: Challenges from Lesbians and Gay Men.” 

    Although Quakers founded the University of Pennsylvania, today its classrooms are used to attack religion. The Philadelphia school boasts such courses as “The Feminist Critique of Christianity” and “The Historical Origins of Racism: Views of Blacks in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” Similar courses offering an opposite view extolling the role of religion are missing from the school’s course catalog.

    Dartmouth was founded, in part, to convert the Indians to Christianity. Last year, administrators at the New Hampshire college banned a campus group from giving Christmas presents to other students through the campus mail system. Scott Brown, the school’s dean of religion, stated that giving Christmas presents is an act “that a large number of students will take offense at.” Bad publicity forced Dartmouth to finally permit the students to send the Christmas gifts—in January! Two years earlier, Christian songs were banned at the school’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony. The glee club’s performance was cancelled by the school when they were unable to meet 11th hour university demands that their mix of religious and secular seasonal songs be replaced with exclusively secular favorites such as “Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer” and “Jingle Bells.” The school’s action ended nearly a century-old tradition. 

    Princeton’s founding statement explained, “Cursed is all learning contrary to the Cross of Christ.” It’s official motto read: “Under God’s Power She Flourishes.” Up until Woodrow Wilson took over as president of the college after the turn of the century, all of Princeton’s presidents were clergymen. Today, Peter Singer, proponent of infanticide, euthanasia, and abortion-for-any-reason, teaches at the school’s “Center for Human Values.” 

    Althogh there are many fine colleges and universities affiliated with Protestant faiths, it is undeniable that the most exceptional of these schools established to educate young people no longer include a religious message informing their curricula. 

Taking the ‘Catholic’ Out of Catholic Colleges

    Many within the leadership of the Catholic Church have become alarmed at the growing trend of Catholic institutions becoming carbon copies of secular universities. This concern is especially great for the many major Catholic schools such as Georgetown University, Boston College, Notre Dame, and De Paul. Church leaders fear that within an academic world that is increasingly intolerant of the Christian viewpoint, the religious identity of Catholic colleges and universities must be preserved if intellectual diversity is to be strong within American higher education. 

At many Catholic colleges it is common for courses in theology to attack the Church or promote such fringe causes as Marxist inspired liberation theology or pantheistic environmentalism. Courses that embrace sin, such as Georgetown’s “Unspeakable Lives: Gay and Lesbian Narratives” and Villanova’s “Constructing/Reconstructing Homosexualities,” continue to increase at Catholic institutions as well. 

    Ex Corde Ecclesiae is seen as a reaction to such anti-Catholic excesses. 

    At Georgetown, for instance, a number of events have made many question whether one of the most prestigious Catholic colleges in the country is still committed to the faith of its founders. America’s oldest Catholic college suffered embarrassment last spring when America’s most notorious pornographer, Larry Flynt, delivered an address on campus. Strong opposition to crucifixes in the classroom brought national attention upon the school. Although the religious symbols were eventually approved for display in most classrooms, many wondered why there was any controversy at all.  When a student newspaper questioned the school’s “Safe Zones” program—which encouraged resident assistants to hang pink triangles on their door in support of homosexuals—more than 3,000 copies of the publication were trashed. The school’s president initially held back criticism of the theft. When he finally spoke out in favor of the paper’s right to publish, he did so in a way that has been widely interpreted as a condemnation of the paper’s so-called “hate-speech”—earning him columnist John Leo’s annual “Sheldon” award that goes to spineless college administrators.

    Feminist Mary Daly’s 20-year practice of banning men in her classrooms at Boston College was exposed to a national audience last spring when two male students sued after being told that they could not enroll in her courses because of their sex. Daly claimed that the attempt to open up her class to all students is really an attempt by the “right wing” and the “patriarchy” to attack “the rights of women and minorities so that white male power reigns.” Daly, a theologian at the college, regularly expressed contempt for Catholicism and men during her more than two decades at BC. Typical of her courses was “Feminist Ethics II,” which explored “the problem of breaking old habits (‘virtues’ and ‘vices’) instilled through patriarchal teachings and practices” and analyzed “patriarchal religious myth, especially in the professions and in the manifestationsof phallotechnology.” Among her many books are Beyond God the Father, Gyn/Ecology, and Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage. Although Daly was finally forced to retire last year, many questioned why BC was bankrolling her anti-Catholic and beyond-the-fringe rants.

    Although such examples are not representative of what is occurring at every Catholic college and university, they are a wake-up call for the necessity of a restoration of the presence of Christ in schools affiliated with the Church. 

A Strong History in Education 

    For a millennium, Catholic colleges and universities have turned out a disproportionately large number of the great minds in Western Civilization. In addition to the great many believers that have benefited from a Catholic higher education,  many figures that are often seen as enemies of the Church, including Voltaire, Copernicus, and Bacon, were educated in Catholic colleges and universities. Without the painstaking transcription and scholarship of medieval monks, many ancient classics would not have been passed on to the current generation of scholars. Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Paris, and a great many other leading universities owe their existence to the Roman Church. When Church institutions were taken over by government or competing faiths, Catholics simply built new ones. In his lifetime, Ignatius Loyola launched more than 100 Jesuit colleges. By the dawn of the 18th century, well over 700 Jesuit colleges existed in Europe—many of them shocking competitors by offering free instruction. 

    As the Church enters the third millennium after Christ, Ex Corde Ecclesiae explains that it is now more important than ever that “to examine and evaluate the predominant values and norms of modern society and culture in a Christian perspective.” It is easy to see why those within the Church who embrace modern values—a group that is heavily represented on the campuses—are so vehemently opposed to this groundbreaking action. 

    “If need be,” the Pope decrees, “a Catholic university must have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion, but which are necessary to safeguard the authentic good of society.” With the implementation of these new rules governing Catholic colleges and universities, the Church hopes to continue the work it has done in the intellectual world in the past for many centuries to come.