Bishops and Ex corde ecclesiae (Canada).

The Canadian bishops sent their recommended application of Ex corde to Rome before the American bishops sent theirs. The poor spiritual condition of Canadian Catholic colleges and universities is not significantly different from that of the American ones, but there are differences between the documents of the two episcopal conferences.

The Canadian document requires that the boards of governors set out clearly and preserve their college's Catholic character, but does not require the president and a majority of the trustees and of the faculty to be Catholics committed to the Church.

It requires that those teaching theology receive a mandatum from the local bishop but does not require that every effort be made to appoint Catholic faculty.

It requires that non-Catholic faculty "promote, or at least respect, the Catholic tradition of the institution," but not that they "be committed to the Catholic mission and identity of their institution."

Nor does it say that "fidelity to the Christian message in conformity with the magisterium of the Church" is "essential for Catholic identity," as the American document states. Such a statement is absolutely necessary for reform of our institutions of higher learning.

Comment

While it is rightly pointed out that in Canada the status of each university or college is different, and that together they are very different legally, financially, and academically from Catholic colleges in the United States, advantage is not taken of the situations in which some institutions have great autonomy and can have a board and a faculty which is almost completely Catholic. Experience shows that without a majority Catholic faculty, a college cannot and will not be Catholic in a meaningful sense.