No restoration of Catholic colleges. (News in Brief).

South Bend, IN -- In a landmark article, Gerard Bradley, professor of law at Notre Dame University, South Bend, IN, former president of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and one of the most ardent advocates of re-Catholicizing higher education in the United States, now thinks that the Church must consider as lost almost all the 235 Catholic universities and colleges in the country. In the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, Spring 2002, he explains how these Catholic institutions declared themselves independent of bishops in 1967; fought the Vatican doctrine dealing with these institutions, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), from 1990 to 2001; and neglected the deadline this past June for theologians to obtain approval for teaching theological subjects.

In an excellent analysis of the present situation, he writes: "The interventions of authority are done. Nothing on the horizon suggests that the colleges left to themselves will get religion. The Catholicity of our institutions is set for the next generation. What you see is what you are going to get."

Comment:

The people in charge--faculty, college administrators, trustees, other intellectual elites, and (judging by what they do) the bishops--do not believe what they need to believe to restore Catholic education to the colleges: that a Catholic education is better because the faith is true.