Mandate from Rome.

On November 17, after more than a decade of negotiations with the presidents of Catholic colleges and universities, and after repeated efforts to appease curial offices, the American Catholic bishops acquiesced in the Vatican view that formal "juridical" norms are essential for assuring the religious identity and mission of Catholic higher education. We are not sure which is more discouraging: what this decision portends for Catholic higher education or what it tells us about the bishops.

As to the first, we have emphatically agreed that the bishops, or rather the whole Catholic community, confront a very real problem of maintaining Catholic identity in the universities. But this so-called "juridical" approach promises only to add to that problem rather than provide a solution (see, "Keeping Catholic Colleges Catholic," Commonweal, April 9, 1999). The norms the bishops voted to implement include the requirements that Catholic theologians seek a mandate to teach from the local bishop; that college and university presidents must be Catholic and, on taking office, make a profession of faith approved by the Vatican; and that board members and faculty be committed Catholics "to the extent possible." None of these measures in and of themselves can succeed at maintaining Catholic identity, and their imposition will undermine those local efforts (some of them outlined by Peter Steinfels, Andrew Greeley, and Francis Nichols, in our April 9 issue) that are being pressed by faculty or administrators, often in the face of skeptical opposition. Heavy-handed measures can only strangle the delicate negotiations committed Catholics have brought to the discussions in their own departments and faculty senates. We do not underestimate the opposition within the academy to a clarification of Catholic identity. What seems obvious is that Rome's response will make matters worse, not better.

Many of the bishops, let it be said, are determined not to be heavy handed. Bishop John Leibrecht, chair of the committee that drafted this American application of the norms, insists that implementation will remain the responsibility of the university, which according to the bishops' document enjoys full institutional autonomy and freedom from external intervention in its governance. The episcopal role, he said, is one of persuasion and exhortation.

But what then is "juridical" about the bishops' position? How is it fundamentally different from the previous version approved three years ago (and rejected by the Vatican), which relied on dialogue and trust between bishops and educators to reinforce Catholic identity? And if it is not fundamentally different, why cause the ill will and suspicion that the last few years of revision have produced?

The truth is that enormous ambiguity surrounds the current document. A few bishops, furthermore, are inclined to be heavy handed; many others will be egged on by organized conservative lobbyists; and all will find grounds in the application for exactly the kind of confrontations and interventions that Leibrecht and other prelates forswear.

While visions of antimodernist censorship and self-censorship, of spies and snitches, may overplay the consequences of implementing the norms, they are not entirely fanciful either. In more instances, a cheerful Roman duplicity will take hold: Don't see, don't tell. Hypocrisy is a well-honed Catholic tool for dealing with inherently contradictory situations. In a few places, theological Zhdanovists will root out all but the catechism thumpers and yes-men (and women). But in most places, good people will try to make this work-to what effect only time will tell. Nonetheless, it will take only a handful of battles over academic freedom and university independence to poison the entire process. And at what cost to an intelligent and educated church! One can only hope that, having thrown themselves on their swords for a legal solution to a cultural and intellectual challenge, the bishops may be able, in their own dioceses, to bring about a careful and resourceful implementation without disturbing the programs and practices already in place to insure Catholic identity.

The bishops may have left their meeting with a sense of having, at last, taken decisive action in the prolonged haggling over Ex corde ecclesiae. But instead of decisive action, they wearily took verbal action. Instead of confronting these problems in their concrete complexity, the bishops took refuge in formulas that are immediately satisfying but evade, or even muddle, the hard questions. At their November meeting, the bishops ended a statement on another matter (Iraq) with the words of the psalmist, but they will do as well for their misbegotten application of norms on Catholic colleges and universities. "May God, in his mercy, rescue us all from the tangle in which we are snared."