Resignation of USD Trustee Brings Out a Touchy Issue

Author E. Hughes, president of the University of San Diego, calls it a clear case of clerical interference: priests, irked by articles in the San Diego Union, pressuring the newspaper’s publisher to quit the university’s board of trustees.

The Most Rev. Leo T. Maher, the bishop of the Catholic diocese of San Diego, calls it a clear case of freedom of speech: clerics, like anyone else, discussing the affairs of a Catholic university that would deny them that right.

Either way, USD is out a crucial patron--Helen Copley, an influential Catholic and multimillionaire who helped build the university. She is stepping down from the board because of machinations among priests upset by her paper’s printing of articles about clerical scandal.

The whole affair swirls around a disagreement over the role of a publisher in determining what appears in her paper. It appears to be a case of a publisher’s profession placing her at odds with leaders of her church.

But it has also, for the first time publicly, raised a tender issue long brooded over privately within the diocese and USD: What is the proper relationship between the university and the church that founded it, and how often is that uneasy truce breached?

The query comes up at an inauspicious moment, when relations between American Catholic universities and Rome are strained. And it interrupts a long struggle by USD to broaden its base of students, faculty and donors.

“They want people to know that we are independent of the diocese. They really want people to know,” said Gary Macy, a religious studies professor, remarking on the administration’s surprisingly vocal denunciation of the machinations behind Copley’s retirement.

“They certainly don’t want the people of San Diego to think of USD as a narrowly religious school,” Macy said. “They’ve spent 15 years building up the reputation of the university. They want to set the record straight.”

“The Copley affair,” as one professor laconically labeled it last week, began as fallout from a series of articles published in the Union last year airing allegations of cocaine abuse, homosexuality, financial finagling and favoritism within the diocese.

Many of the charges had surfaced earlier in the Reader, the Union and on KFMB-TV (Channel 8). Maher declined repeated opportunities to rebut the charges, Union editors say. They say none of the charges has been challenged.

But the pieces were less than popular, in certain circles.

“If you read the articles and were not a Catholic, the conclusion you would get is that priests are either one type or another,” said a priest who agreed to talk only if he was not named. “They are either homosexuals or thieves. If not, they are both.”

“Well, I know that 99% of the people in the diocese were upset with the articles,” Maher said. “There’s no doubt about that. Not only upset, but I think they were hurt that the press would use this type of writing. It certainly was not journalism.”

Some priests said they resented the page-one play of the final Dec. 29 series, in view of the fact that some of the information had been reported before and in one case was 15 years old. They say some of the people involved had already been penalized and were trying quietly to reconstruct their lives.

“It’s very unusual to see the Union print something like that,” said the priest. “I certainly haven’t seen such a series of articles done about the Episcopalians or the Unitarians or the Jews. You know, you could do quite a series on the Copleys.”

On Jan. 13, the diocesan Clergy Welfare Committee convened at St. Mary Magdalene Church and talk turned quickly to demoralization within the ranks. Up came the subject of bad press, as minutes of the meeting reported: “Received at the hands of the San Diego Union.”

From there, the discussion shifted to Copley and “the apparent paradox” that the publisher is Catholic and vice chairman of the USD board. The priests decided the Diocesan Presbyteral Council should “question” that fact with the Board of Trustees.

Some priests went on to talk about USD’s Catholicity, saying it seemed “wobbly” and in need of “shaping up.” They complained that USD is less loyal to the bishop than to “its own special interests,” yet uses its Catholicity as a selling point.

“I think removing (Copley) from the board would have accomplished two things,” one priest said in an interview recently. “First, it would have given the board some integrity--they certainly wouldn’t have the president of Planned Parenthood on the board. Secondly, it would have been a manifestation of the loyalty of the university to the diocese.”

But the plan fared poorly a month later when reported to the Diocesan Presbyteral Council, chaired by Maher, who also chairs the USD Board of Trustees. The minutes of that meeting, distributed only to all priests in the diocese, have since turned up all over San Diego.

Maher himself discouraged plans for a letter to USD President Hughes, saying the priests ought to focus their query. One monsignor suggested approaching Msgr. Richard Duncanson, who heads a committee that keeps tabs on the Catholicity of USD.

Duncanson, like some in the diocese, had doubts about the connection being drawn--that Copley, as publisher, had something to do with the articles.

“I’ve always maintained that I doubt as a publisher of the newspaper Mrs. Copley would sit with a green visor on her forehead and a red pencil in her hand every night checking every line of copy and classified ad,” Duncanson said in an interview.

But he said there was a possibility of “a credibility problem with the Catholic folks, because folks sitting out in the pews might be confused. . . . I think it really comes from a very unenlightened view of what it means to be a publisher of a newspaper.”

Helen Copley had nothing to do with the articles, editors at the Union insist. They say she knew they were in the works but never discussed them or saw a draft. They say she never intervened and they are unaware of any efforts by anyone to persuade her to do so.

“She’s not involved in the daily news process,” said Herb Klein, editor in chief of the Copley Newspapers. “She’s involved in the policies of the paper.”

Copley declined to be interviewed by The Times.

Yet Maher himself said he believed Copley was ultimately responsible.

“I certainly do,” he said. “Because if that happened in our Southern Cross (the diocesan newspaper), I would be responsible.”

The matter never reached Duncanson’s committee.

Instead, anonymous letters went out to Copley--signed “a priest of the diocese” and enclosing copies of the minutes of the meeting of the Presbyteral Council at which the Clergy Welfare Committee reported its discussion about her.

“They offended her,” said Hughes, a friend of Copley’s. She quietly told him she would not run in May for election to a sixth three-year term.

Hughes said Copley told him “that she regretted that she was becoming a target of a dispute for her serving as a trustee and that she could resolve that very simply by not continuing as a trustee.”

Other trustees also refused to talk about the matter, though some insisted Copley is retiring simply because she is tired after 15 years as a trustee. In theory, trustees oversee the functioning of a university. In practice, the most influential trustees raise a lot of money.

Hughes gave little credence to the theory that Copley is tired.

“If she is, she didn’t indicate that to me,” he said bluntly.

Copley’s loss is no small blow to USD, struggling to come into its own. Arguably, she has been USD’s most valuable trustee since the university cut its financial ties to the church and struck out on its own in 1972.

Copley is chief executive of the Copley Press, the San Diego-based publisher of dozens of daily and weekly newspapers in California and Illinois. She has held that position since 1973, when her husband, James, died of a brain tumor.

Forbes magazine recently pegged her net worth at $335 million.

The USD library is named for the Copleys, in recognition of the first “seven-figure gift” the university had ever received. The $1.5-million Copley donation was the ice-breaking first major gift in a four-year capital campaign headed personally by Helen Copley.

The campaign, from 1979 to 1983, built much of the USD campus. That includes a new business school funded by a $4.5-million foundation grant, and the Manchester Executive Conference Center, aimed at making USD more visible in the business community and San Diego at large.

Copley’s $1.5-million gift proved crucial--useful in pitting donor against donor to leverage bigger and bigger gifts. That it came from a trustee was also significant: It illustrated the confidence of those who knew the university best.

And gifts are especially critical to USD, whose endowment fund is a mere $4 million. Ninety-two percent of the operational fund comes from tuition and fees. A larger endowment would lend flexibility and an operating margin, and resources to fall back on in a bad year.

The administration now hopes to build up the endowment, after a half-decade of building the campus. Revenue from the endowment would improve academic quality, it is hoped, through endowed faculty chairs and student financial aid.

“She was with us right from the very beginning,” said William Pickett, vice president for university relations. “And the fact that her name was with us was very important in saying to the community, ‘This is a significant thing.’ ”

But “the Copley affair” is equally disturbing for another reason, administrators and faculty say: It could create the impression in the community that people within the diocese call the shots at the university.

Most insist that impression would be dead wrong. But years of progress could be jeopardized if it existed. So they attempted this month in blunt terms to, as Macy put it, “set the record straight.”

Immediately after the announcement of Copley’s retirement, the university’s Cabinet, made up of 20 top administrators, unanimously passed a resolution urging her to reconsider. The faculty senate followed with its own resolution saying her retirement is “inconsistent with the best interests of the university.”

“Let me say clearly that the diocese has no right, no role, to have a position on who’s on our Board of Trustees,” Pickett said. The church leadership “is a separate organization from the University of San Diego,” he said. “Many people get confused about that because they have their offices on campus. But it is a separate organization.”

The problem is, it wasn’t always that way. The church created USD.

First, there was San Diego College of Women, opened in 1952 by an order of nuns called the Society of the Sacred Heart. Then came the College of Men, the dream of San Diego Bishop Charles Buddy. It opened next door two years later, on the hilltop that now houses USD.

By the late 1960s, the men’s college had left the diocese heavily in debt. For financial and academic reasons, the colleges began a long and difficult merger. The merger was delayed almost a year as The College of Women insisted on complete independence from the diocese.

“The Catholic higher educational institution, like all higher education institutions, is first a university,” said Sister Sally Furay, an architect of the merger who is now a USD vice president and provost. “And like all universities, it has to have autonomy. Because a university is a place where a society does its thinking. Scholars have to be free to probe any aspect of a subject.”

“But when we say we’re independent, this does not mean we want to separate ourselves from the church,” she said. “Our very purpose in being is to serve the church. But to serve the church in a way a university serves the church, not in the way a parish serves the church.”

In 1972 the two schools finally merged, into a coeducational, independent, Catholic university. The diocese and the nuns turned over the assets to the new university corporation--all but a narrow strip of land at the heart of the campus.

And on that strip still stands the diocesan offices--cream-colored and Spanish Renaissance-style like the rest of the campus. It shares the land with Immaculata Church, the diocese’s blue-domed cathedral.

“The church is probably our most visible symbol--the blue dome on the hill,” Pickett mused from his office in DeSales Hall, shoulder to shoulder with the Immaculata. “That can lead to some confusion about the mixing and melding of these two institutions.”

The relationship is indeed complex.

The board of 34 trustees is independent--with four seats set aside for the diocese and the Society of the Sacred Heart to protect their investment. Every year since the board was established in 1972, the trustees have elected Bishop Maher chairman.

About three-fifths of all undergraduates are Catholic, and that percentage is substantially lower among graduate students. The head of the faculty senate estimated that one-third of the faculty members are Catholics, though six of the 12 religious studies professors are clerics.

“The institution has indeed become more free-standing--independent not only in terms of control, but support and the breadth of the community it serves,” Hughes said. “It has also become less doctrinaire.”

USD’s statement of academic freedom is the usual one, endorsed by the American Assn. of University Professors. But it includes a coda that instructors “are expected to refrain from inculcating doctrines opposed to the essentials of the Catholic faith.”

Most of the tenure and promotion criteria are unsurprising: teaching, research, and university and public service. But the fourth criterion is support for “the spiritual and moral orientation of USD” through respect for Catholic Christianity.

“If you’re a faculty member, you’re going to want to know how they interpret that,” said Professor Macy, who, being in the religious studies department, is more sensitive than many to church-university issues. “ . . . When you’ve got a criterion in there like that, you want to think twice before you take a position that is particularly offensive.”

Those professors who have qualms about the church’s role say they have difficulty citing clear-cut cases of what they would call interference. But they point to a handful of instances that they say make them uncomfortable:

- Jane Via, formerly a religious studies professor, was barred by Maher from speaking in Catholic forums in the diocese last year after she joined 96 other prominent Catholics in signing a published statement calling for a dialogue within the church on abortion.

Via was not working at USD at the time, so whether she could have continued to teach there has not been tested. Maher insists that the church has not curtailed her freedom of speech, only her “freedom to teach falsehood.”

- Now Maher has criticized Macy and two sociology professors who signed a follow-up statement that appeared March 2 in the New York Times. Signed by 900 people, it declared solidarity with original signers like Via who have been penalized by the church.

“He certainly has not given the university a very good name and has caused a certain amount of scandal in backing up people who are for freedom of choice,” Maher said of Macy. “ . . . We are going to help him form an upright conscience and to accept the teachings of the church.”

- Maher acknowledges that he would intervene if the religious studies department tried to hire a former priest. Macy said former priests appear in the applicant pool for most jobs. Aware of Maher’s opposition, he said, the department never gives them serious consideration.

“They could teach, but I have made it a policy that they should not be teaching because I find it difficult,” Maher said. “The fact that they have left the priesthood is a certain departure from the conduct of the church. There’s some question on the faith of the individual.”

- Several years ago, the administration hired a nun as a religious studies professor even though there were no openings in the department. Professors say the department opposed the hire, finding the woman highly qualified but the position not needed.

However, Provost Furay says the department was split on the question and clearly needed an Old Testament specialist. USD wants priests and nuns on campus, she pointed out. If it waited for an opening, it would have lost a qualified candidate who was also a nun.

“When you look closely at the university’s actions relating to the diocese, there’s nothing to worry about: It’s independent,” said Macy. “But it’s obvious, too, that people have felt that it might be a problem.

“You have a feeling in the back of your mind; it’s a little elusive. The faculty does worry about it. But if you try to find an actual structure that would create the problem, it doesn’t exist.”

Perhaps the most serious qualms concern the future.

The church in Rome is developing a new statement on the relationship of Catholic colleges and universities worldwide to the church--a statement that has been widely interpreted as insisting that Catholic colleges are part and parcel of the church.

So last month, the Assn. of Catholic Colleges and Universities sent a detailed critique to the Vatican. It said the plan neglects the peculiar history of Catholic colleges in this country and could jeopardize their ability to get federal money.

“I know that it is not easy and that in the minds of some it would be much neater if everything were tucked neatly under the arm of the church,” Hughes said. “But unfortunately, American universities don’t operate that way. . . . I’m not sure that Rome understands that.”

Maher counters that university administrators exaggerate the decree’s effects.

“It’s like anyone else,” he said. “They’re trying to hold onto their turf. They don’t want interference in academic freedom whatsoever, in any area. When the church has to make a move in reference to the authoritative teaching, to keep the integrity of the doctrine, then there will always be conflict.”

Some priests within the diocese feel Maher has been too lenient with USD--an institution that older priests remember as draining the diocese’s coffers at the expense of their parishes. That issue surfaced in talk of the university’s Catholicity and the issue of Helen Copley.

“It was founded to be a diocesan university,” said one priest, speaking like others on the condition that he not be named. “What that means is to serve the people of this diocese. Instead, it’s fast developing into a school for rich white kids and Jewish law students.”

Ultimately, both they and more moderate priests and leaders within the diocese insist that the priests who complained about Copley’s presence had a perfect right to do so. The issue, they say, is not improper interference; it is healthy influence.

“We have a right to discuss anything,” Maher said. “They’re refusing to give the priests a right to discuss things, and they want all the academic freedom in the world. They are taking away our freedom. It’s very much a contradiction on their part.”