World: North America
Catholic bishops and Catholic universities
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Catholic bishops and Catholic universities
Thursday, November 19, 2009
By Adam Wilson
A decade after America’s Catholic bishops approved guidelines to strengthen the Catholic identity of Catholic colleges and universities, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is again considering ways of increasing “communion” between the bishops and Catholic universities.
The National Catholic Reporter is reporting that Catholic higher education will be a key topic during today’s closed-door, three-hour executive session of the nation’s bishops, who are gathered in Baltimore for their Fall General Assembly.
November 17 marked the 10-year anniversary of the bishops’ vote to approve guidelines implementing Ex corde Ecclesiae, the Vatican constitution on Catholic higher education, including requirements that at least a majority of faculty must be Catholic and professors must request a “mandate” from their local bishop before teaching Catholic theology. And six months ago, the University of Notre Dame defied the U.S. bishops to honor pro-abortion President Barack Obama, violating a USCCB policy and provoking criticism by 83 bishops—including the new bishop in Notre Dame’s diocese, Bishop Kevin Rhoades.
“Clearly the bishops still consider the renewal of Catholic higher education to be a key priority,” said Patrick J. Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society. “Faithful Catholics will be grateful for the bishops’ thoughtful and significant response to very serious concerns.”
During his opening address on Monday, USCCB President Francis Cardinal George announced that the bishops have already begun discussions on improving the bishops’ relationship to Catholic colleges and universities. The Associated Press is reporting that Cardinal George has created a task force for this purpose.
Cardinal George said that it falls to the bishops to “re-establish” necessary connections if “there is a loosening of relationship between ourselves and those whom Christ has given us to govern in love.”
“Since everything and everyone in Catholic communion is truly inter-related, and the visible nexus of these relations is the bishop,” Cardinal George said, “an insistence on complete independence from the bishop renders a person or institution sectarian, less than fully Catholic. The purpose of our reflections, therefore, is to clarify questions of truth or faith and of accountability or community among all those who claim to be part of Catholic communion.”
At a subsequent press conference, Cardinal George declined to name specific universities that the bishops have in mind, although he added “if any institution… calls itself Catholic,” it is the moral responsibility of a bishop to assure that it is Catholic, according to the National Catholic Reporter. Cardinal George said this offers the bishops “a chance to clarify the relationship” and see if the entity in question is operating within the bonds of Catholic communion. He said that it is the bishops’ responsibility, when institutions or organizations call themselves Catholic, to sort out what that means in each case.
Also highlighting their support for a university that became a model for reform, the bishops gave a standing ovation to Very Rev. David O’Connell, C.M., president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Delivering a farewell report as he prepares to retire next year, Father O’Connell said that “the greatest progress the university has made in the past 12 years is in its Catholic identity.” He contrasted that to the “antagonism and cynicism that was present on the campus the day I arrived.”
Adam Wilson writes for the Cardinal Newman Society.
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