Catholic Universities in Church and Society: A Dialogue on Ex corde ecclesiae.

In the spring of 1993, Georgetown University sponsored a symposium at which a number of distinguished American scholars and well-credentialed lawyers took a close look at Ex corde ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II's apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education. Ex corde ecclesiae establishes criteria for "iniversities" that are or wis h to be "in" the Roman Catholic chruch; it articulates the requisitie "identity" and "mission" for such institutions of higher education; and it imposes general norms for their establishment, governance structures, and conduct. The document delegates to national episcopal conferences the adoption of particular rules, subject to Vatican scrutiny, appropriate in light of local circumstances (the proposed ordinaces from the NCCB, which are included in this volume along with the text of the apostolic constitution and the general norms, are now being circulated to the bishops and Catholic college and university presidents).

Ex corde ecclesiae poses several diffuculties in the areas of governance structures, and standards fo conduct for those American universities and colleges (which are included in the use of the term university) that wish to be "officially" Catholic (assuming that is what is meant by the phrase "in" church). Its promulgation compels, at least in the United States, consideration of the problems and consequences of conforming American universities and colleges now considered or assumed to be "Catholic" to this Vatican model. Because most Catholic schools probably have an option (under both canon and secular law) to decline to conform to Ex corde ecclesiae, its promulgation also invites consideration of the nature, feasibility, and desirability of developing university and college models that are "Catholic," but not officially so.

The essays included in the book looked at American Catholic educational history (Phillip Gleason of Notre Dame), the place of the catholic university in the chruch (Joseph Komonchak of The Catholic university (Michael Buckley of Boston College), canon law (James Provost of the Catholic University), American civil law (Phillip Burling and Gregory Moffatt, civil lawyers) and "intellectual" history (Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale). Equally qualified commentators at the symposium contributed both substance and alternative insights to the presentations.

Everyone seriously involved in the enterprise of American Catholic higher education can benefit from reading this book. It should be required reading for those with responsibilities for responding to the proposed ordinances and for the overall questins raised by Ex corde ecclesiae. The required reading list should also include Sister Alice Gallin's American Catholic Higher Education: Essential Documents, 1967-90 (University of Notre Dame Press). We would add to the list Newmanhs The Idea of a University, the volume most often cited in the Georgetown book.

A newcomer to American Catholic higher education need only to be literate to sense the tension reflected in this dialogue. Appreciation of these tensions and their origins is essential to understanding the nuances of the dialogue as well as Ex corde ecclesiae and its implications. Some protions of the dialogue may be understood to suggest the hopr of some participants that the problems will go away if everyone just ignores them. This is not likely.

The portions of the apostolic constitution dealing with the identity and mission of the Catholic college or university (section 1) are a cogent and direct rearticulation of the best traditions of Catholic higer education. It is those portions that deal with governance structure and conduct (section 2) that are the source of the difficulty. The American bishops' initial effort to establish particular implementing rules--the proposed ordinances--for the United States, protend a strict application of the general norms and a seeming unwillingness to sponsor any accommodation to the American scene, as some educators had earlier hoped.

Simply stated, the model described in the 1983 Code of Canon Law as amplified in Ex corde ecclesiae requires that a majority of an institution's faculty be Catholic, that the lives of faculty members be lived with probity, that faculty members who teach theolgy have had continue to have authorization (a "mandate") from the local bishop, that theology be taught that is consistent with the teaching of the hierarchy, that the institution's own conduct (for example, in regard to the recognition of student organizations and in granting honarary degrees) be consistent with its Catholicism, that the institution cede to local episcopal authorities control over its compliance with these requirements, and that it incorporate this cession of authority in its governing documents.

In contrast, the American university model, in some areas reinforced by secular law, precludes colleges and universities (at least those that are not avowedly religious educational insitutions; seminaries, for exampl) from employment discrimination based on religion (unless, as is plausibly the case with theology, religion is a bona fide occupational qualification); excludes "probity of life" (except perhaps in the case of conduct at the extreme) as a determinant of faculty status; insists that academic freedom exist and that judgements as to whether it has been abused be intrusted only to academic peers; and requires that institution's board of trustees.

The Vatican was fully informed of the inconsistencies between its model and the American model that most U.S. Catholic colleges and universities have attempted to conform to, at least since the late 1960s. Nevertheless, Ex corde ecclesiae, with substantial support in the Roman Catholic tradition, clearly demands departure from the American model.

All the Georgetown participants seem to assume that Ex corde ecclesiae will be adopted by most U.S. Catholic colleges and universities. Some of them suggest ways in which its harsher restrictions on autonomy and academic freedom might be "nuanced," as well as ways in which the dialogue between the academy and the hierarchy might continue and the tensions between them be abated. These suggestions implicity recognize, but perhaps do not give sufficient weight to, the reality that given the hierachical governance structure of the Roman Catholic church, the hierarchy is empowered to define all its "official" institutions and to enforce that definition when and as it chooses. While in a society as large as pluralistic as the United States there is clearly room for more than one model for higher educationa institutions, it is uncertain, of not unlikely, that American society will choose to view such institutions as authentic universities.

Given this reality and this uncertainty, we note an important omission from the Georgetown dialogue of any significant reference to the U.S. experience under a parallel piece of church legislation, Sapientia christiana, which governs several of the faculties ( the "pontifical" faculties) of The Catholic Univerity of America as well as the omission of any reference to the significance of that legislation to the termination at the behest of the Vatican of one of its distinguished professors of theology, the Reverend Charles E. Curran.

In the Curran affair, a civil court upheld his termination, ruling in essence that because of the institution's explicit submission to the church in its governing documents, it could terminate Curran's status as a tenured member of its theology department and deny him the right to teach anything that smacked of theology on any of its facilities, even those that were not "protifical." The court noted the tension between the institution's desire to be seen as a "full-fledged American university" on the one hand and as a part of the hierarchical church on the other, and the university's evident attempt to have ot "both ways." When a choice had to be made whether academic freedom in theology should be subordinated to a decision of the pope, thus precluding the institution's having it "both ways," the court concluded that Catholic University was free to decide whether to be an American University or an arm of the Church.

A large majority of American colleges and universities originally established undre Catholic auspices by sponsors who intended them to be Catholic are not now either directly or indirectly subject to hierarchical control and, although they are juridical persons under secular law, they are not canon law and thus not subject to church law. They are controlled by boards of trustees, a majority being lay members who may or may not be Catholic and whose Catholic members do not have a religious obligation to cause these corporate enitites to elect to come under the norms of Ex corde ecclesiae. The Georgetown symposium materials do not fully address the issues posed by the promulgation of Ex corde ecclesiae for these colleges and universities and their governing bodies.

These institutions have three options (in addition to procrastination): to espouse Ex corde ecclesiae; to decline to so do; or, in the words of the court in the Curran case, to try "to have it both ways." The first choice is an irrevocable one given the requirement for the integration of hierarchical control into the institution's governing documents. The seond choice involves many difficult problems, not the least of which is the serious risk of losing all Catholic identity. The third choice, trying to have two inconsistent identities (putting aside questions of honesty), is, as we think the history of The Catholic University demonstartes, unworkable, certainly in the long run.

It is incumbent then on U.S. Catholic scholars and administrators along with secular and canon lawyers to ge beyond the Georgetown dialogue in order to inform and assist the boards of trustees of U.S. Catholic colleges and universities who will soon be called upon to answer these questions: Do you wish to cede your independence to the local bishop so that he may decide, for example, who may be hired to each "theology" (a discipline extended by the hierarchy in the Curran case to include philosophy, ethics, and any other subject taught from a religious or theological perspective)? Who can be hired and who must be fired (for example, divorced Catholilcs remarried outside the church)? Whether anything taught contravenes church teaching? What student groups may be established? Who may receive honorary degrees? Do you wish to cede to the hierarchy the right to determine who will prevail in disputes between the bishop and your institution or its faculty or students? Is this too high a price to pay to enjoy "official" Catholic status?

Similar information and assistance will be required to help these same trustees answer the flip side of that question: How does their institution diffeerentiate itself from a purely secular institution of higher eduction? If it is not different in significant ways, how can it in any sense be Catholic?

The challenge presented by Ex corde ecclesiae, only briefly touched on at Georgetown, may be whether dual status as Catholic and as a true university (American or otherwise) can be achieved other than purely as a matter of theory.

The Georgetown conference could not address the most important question, which must be left to future generations of scholars: Will Ex corde ecclesiae succeed in strengthening and improving the Catholic identity of U.S. Catholic higher education or onlly in destroying it?