Catholic Colleges and Rome (United States).

Washington--At their November, 1999, meeting, the American bishops voted 223-31 to adopt a final application to the United States of the Vatican document Ex corde ecclesiae (From the heart of the Church), which regulates Catholic colleges and universities (henceforth collectively called colleges). Their document will now go to Rome, where it is sure to be approved.

The Canadian bishops have also sent their final document to Rome. A difference between the two countries is that, in the United States, the whole Church was allowed to know how the negotiations went, and their final result, but in Canada only the bishops and a few academics know (see below).

By 1970 the Catholic colleges of the Western world were in a bad state religiously. Many were dropping their Catholic mission, while others had dissenters teaching in them, especially after the watershed ruling of the 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae. There followed two decades of financial prosperity but declining Catholicism. In 1990 the Church finally published Ex corde. It asked the episcopal conference of each country to apply the document in its own area. But Ex corde was opposed by many colleges in the United States and ignored in Canada, and so it required another decade of negotiation (see C.I., "Academics resist Church communion," Sept 99, pp. 18-21).

The new American norms require that the trustees (or directors) be responsible for setting out clearly their college's Catholic character in their governing documents and implementing their commitment to it. The president, and a majority of the trustees and of the faculty, must be active and practising Catholics "to the extent possible". Those teaching theology must be approved by the local bishop or his delegate, and a process of requesting, granting, or withdrawing the approval (the mandatum) will be developed. The requirement that theologians at Catholic colleges have a mandate from the local bishop rests on the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

The bishops, the document states, have "the right and obligation to communicate and safeguard the integrity of Church doctrine"; and Catholic students have the right "to receive instruction in authentic Catholic doctrine and practice." Also, "all professors are expected to exhibit not only academic competence and good character but also respect for Catholic doctrine."

The trustees have five years in which to satisfy the new requirements, at the end of which time the bishop must be informed of what has been done. As was expected, publications and individuals in opposition to the document before the bishops' vote continue to oppose it after the vote. Commonweal speaks of "heavy-handed measures" and a "misbegotten application of norms." The English weekly The Tablet quotes mainly opponents of the document, such as Fathers Richard McBrien and James Heft, Sister Margaret Farley, and Archbishop Rembert Weakland. The Jesuit magazine America claims that the bishops are being unduly "deferential to the Vatican."