Continuing the Conversation.

A historian's view Two cheers to Commonweal ["Keeping Colleges Catholic," April 9] for its contribution to the important debate about American Catholic higher education occasioned by proposals to implement the apostolic constitution Ex corde ecclesiae. I appreciated especially President John Piderit's vigorous defense of intellectual honesty when we speak of Catholic claims to truth and virtue, Francis Nichols's excellent survey of the prospects and problems of emerging Catholic studies programs, and Paul Saunders's hard-nosed reminder of what it might mean to put the proposed norms into practice. Peter Steinfels accurately shows the conflict between the goals of Ex corde ecclesiae and the canonical norms proposed for its implementation. His essay reflects the complexity and diversity of these more than two hundred remarkable institutions, each with its distinct mix of academic, civic, and ecclesial responsibilities.

But two cheers not three. There are some problems, three of which I would like to note.

* First, the proposed norms are recommendations of an episcopal subcommittee made in response to a Vatican request for more juridical norms than the more pastoral approach approved by the hierarchy in 1996. Readers should be reminded that after five years of extended and at times very heated discussion, the bishops with only six dissenting votes approved norms based on pastoral considerations and argued in terms of communio, with its suggestion of shared responsibility for the life and work of the church. In that text, canon 812 was shelved for further study, a step not taken lightly by anyone involved. Pastoral considerations blurred the edge of what has become since 1967 a chronic tension between academic integrity-which requires institutional autonomy and academic freedom-and the consistent Vatican argument that Catholic identity and integrity require formal accountability to ecclesiastical authority.

The 1996 resolution in favor of dialogue and mutual trust was not new. It has been the consistent, and I would argue inevitable, stance of responsible American bishops and academic leaders since the revolution that separated control of most Catholic colleges and universities from their sponsoring religious communities.

* Second, secularization is still the wrong word to describe what has happened to Catholic higher education. For one thing, Andrew Greeley again reminds us of how Catholic we remain, perhaps in spite of ourselves. But more important is a point that should be evident to Commonweal editors and readers. In 1759 young Charles Carroll of Maryland was asked by an English friend why he did not simply become an Anglican and avoid all the disabilities imposed on Catholics. Carroll might have responded that he preferred to await a Catholic restoration, so that true religion, culture, and government could once more be properly integrated. Instead he responded with a careful argument about why it was bad for religion and for civic life to make religious preference the defining criteria for citizenship and public policy. The experience of religious difference had produced in Carroll a new wisdom: When people engage in their common business, in marketplace and civic forum, and in laboratory and classroom, they must speak and act in terms of shared meanings and common values. Almost two centuries later, in 1965, Carroll's Catholic church finally agreed that yes, that was about right.

The transformation of Catholic higher education, like the arrival of many children of Catholic immigrants into the multiple centers of American culture it facilitated and reflected, did not arise from unworthy, even silly, yearnings for acceptance and respectability. On the contrary, it arose from the deepest aspirations of real men and women for economic sufficiency, social equality, cultural respect, and political participation; in short, for liberation. The many public squares for which we now share responsibility may be empty, as the critics of secularization always suggest. But they are, quite properly, ours, and they should be. We can help clothe their nakedness with meaning, in part by drawing on our own rich tradition, but we will never do that if we see the process that brought us here as simply an improper accommodation to "secular" culture.

* Finally, I fear that some of the writers come close to giving away the game by acknowledging exclusive episcopal responsibility for things Catholic. Peter Steinfels has three "requires" in one paragraph, and in the next he explores how ecclesiastical "muscle" can be held in "reserve" to balance "communication and mutual trust." I am not at all sure how we should define the relationship between the bishop and these institutions (or for that matter the relationship between the bishop and me) except in "pastoral" terms of communication, mutual trust, and shared responsibility for the life and work of the church. I think it self-evident that what our American church needs is not more episcopal muscle, though I yield to no one in my respect for a strong hierarchy, but more, not fewer, independent initiatives by clergy, religious, laity, and even bishops which manifest practical acceptance of responsibility for the life and work of the church. Of course we must try to "keep colleges Catholic" but their Catholic identity is not the goal. The goal is a vital and intelligent American Catholic church, and the issue here is what the editors say it is in their introduction: "the practice of Catholic intellectual life." The 1996 norms and the process of intense dialogue that produced them encourage that practice; the 1998 norms make it harder.

Might I add that the experience of Catholic higher education, and of Catholic academics wherever they work, mirrors that of this magazine. At an earlier stage of the Ex corde discussion, theologian Joseph A. Komonchak compared Commonweal and the Catholic university. Founded "to bring a distinctive Catholic voice to the public conversation," Commonweal has always been independent of the hierarchy but unmistakably Catholic. Komonchak ended with a good question: "Would [the bishops] like to see Catholic colleges and universities more closely resemble a typical diocesan newspaper than they do Commonweal?" (John P. Langan, editor, Catholic Universities in Church and Society: A Dialogue on Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Georgetown University Press, 1993). Sister Alice Gallin got it right in the title of her excellent monograph on separate incorporation: Independence and a New Partnership (University of Notre Dame Press, 1996). After a generation of expansion and change, most Catholic colleges and universities are ready for that new partnership, but it will require authentic dialogue; muscle won't help.

David J. O'Brien is Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts.

A bishop's view At their November 1998 general meeting, the Catholic bishops of the United States discussed a draft document which applies the norms of Ex corde ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic institutions of higher learning, to the Catholic colleges and universities of the United States. The draft drew little attention from the media covering the event. Within a few months, however, the media turned their attention to it, but unfortunately many reports failed to reflect clearly not only what happened last November but what has been going on for the better part of a decade.

The publication of Ex corde provided the occasion for what has probably been the first and certainly the most sustained dialogue between the U.S. bishops and the leaders of Catholic higher education in the United States. The participants agreed that the dialogue has become necessary and has been worthwhile as well as timely.

Dialogue continues on a draft which seeks to find a way of maintaining the Catholic identity of Catholic colleges and universities within the necessary framework of "academic freedom" and "institutional autonomy" called for by Ex corde itself. What comprises Catholic identity in its relationship to academic freedom and institutional autonomy is an issue which inevitably occasions differing, even conflicting, analyses.

In view of academic freedom and institutional autonomy in Catholic colleges and universities, the application of Ex corde within the United States can in no way mean that the U.S. bishops will control these institutions. The point in question is not one of control but of relationships. Catholic colleges and universities have relationships to civil authorities, accrediting associations, academic and professional associations, athletic associations. Just as the colleges and universities have a certain form to their relationships with those entities, Ex corde seeks additional specific clarity on the form of their relationships to the church. That, of course, is a valid and important matter.

Earlier this month, dialogues on the draft now before Catholic institutions of higher education and the U.S. bishops prompted recommendations to the committee of bishops guiding the implementation of Ex corde in this country.

The media have highlighted the current draft's neuralgic language on certain points: that presidents of Catholic colleges and universities make a profession of faith and an oath of fidelity, that a majority of faculty and trustees should be "faithful Catholics," and that professors of theological disciplines are to have a "mandate" from the local bishop, even though the local bishop has no authority either to hire or to fire professors of theological disciplines because that would be interference in the internal affairs of the institutions.

Those neuralgic issues should not overshadow the consensus previously reached in past dialogues. Already agreed upon is that the relationship of Catholic colleges and universities with U.S. bishops should be based on mutual trust, cooperation, and respectful dialogue. Without that understanding, the issue of the ingredients of Catholic identity in Catholic higher education can never be constructively addressed.

After hearing from the bishops and representatives of Catholic colleges and universities, as well as from other interested parties, the committee of bishops responsible for a next draft implementing Ex corde in the United States will provide that draft in the early fall of this year. Discussion of and vote on that draft will take place at the November 1999 national assembly of bishops in Washington, D.C.

The Most Reverend John J. Leibrecht is the bishop of the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He is also chairman of the U.S. bishops' implementation committee for Ex corde ecclesiae.