Catholic Bishops Move Toward More Control Over College Theologians

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, walking a fine line between their obligations to the Vatican and American traditions of academic freedom, voted Wednesday to break a long-standing deadlock over the power of church leaders to control theologians teaching at Catholic colleges and universities.

The bishops, meeting at their annual conference here, adopted a compromise proposal on a dispute that has divided the church for nearly a decade. The proposal could have a major impact on the nation’s 235 Catholic colleges and universities, which include such nationally known institutions as Notre Dame and Georgetown as well as such Southland campuses as Loyola Marymount and Mount St. Mary’s.

The proposal will require Catholic theologians who teach in Catholic colleges and universities to obtain a mandatum from their local bishop--a written acknowledgment that they are in “full communion” with the church’s official doctrine. The proposal also urges Catholic colleges and universities to recruit Catholics as presidents, faculty members and trustees “to the extent possible.”

The plan was approved 223 to 31 with one abstention. It will take effect in one year if ratified by the Vatican.

In 1990, Pope John Paul II, in an edict known as “Ex Corde Ecclesiae” (“From the Heart of the Church”), ordered the church to take steps to ensure that Catholic colleges and universities maintain their distinctively Catholic character.

Key to the Vatican edict was that bishops must have the power to determine whether theologians are teaching properly. That requirement has been embedded in church law since 1982 but has never been implemented in the United States.

The pope’s edict left implementation up to each nation’s bishops. In the face of extensive controversy at America’s Catholic colleges and universities, the U.S. bishops tried to come up with a compromise in 1996 that they hoped would satisfy both the colleges and Rome. But Vatican officials rejected the plan, saying it failed to clearly spell out a bishop’s legal authority to pronounce a theologian acceptable.

Tensions With Rome

The difficulties the bishops have faced with the issue have become a prime example of the tensions between Rome and the American church over the pope’s efforts to enforce Catholic orthodoxy.

The new plan spells out a bishop’s authority more clearly, but leaves unclear what might happen if a theologian or Catholic college ignores the requirement. Theoretically, a college or university could fire a theologian who lacked a mandatum, but the bishops’ declaration does not flatly require that.

The ambiguity, which was crucial to winning the support of liberal bishops, has drawn complaints from some traditionalists who believe the compromise is too weak.

“What is finally at stake is the survival of Catholic education as Catholic,” said James Hitchcock of St. Louis, founding head of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

“The history of higher education in this country, Catholic and Protestant, has demonstrated conclusively the tendency over a period of time for these institutions to lose their religious identity,” he said. For example, universities such as Harvard and Yale began as Protestant institutions, but have long since drifted from their religious moorings.

Many parents of Catholic college students complain that school theology departments have become too liberal, said Helen Hull Hitchcock, a Catholic convert who has become active in a Catholic traditionalist organization, Women for Faith and Family.

“A lot of times a lot of parents say they sent their kids to Catholic schools and paid through the nose for a Catholic education--and their kids no longer go to church or accept Catholic teachings,” she said.

On the other side of the issue, college and university officials fear the change could undermine their independence and make it more difficult to attract and keep top students and scholars.

“The danger is, you could have an autocratic bishop who is not very well educated or schooled in theology and would judge a particular professor as not teaching church doctrine properly,” said Father Thomas Rausch, chairman of the department of theological education at Loyola Marymount.

Margaret A. Farley, president of the 1,400-member Catholic Theological Society of America, says she fears the new rules could be abused and for that reason believes they are “probably misguided.”

Catholic traditionalists could attempt to force a bishop’s hand, provoking disputes over the teachings of more liberal theologians, Farley warns.

“It may put a damper on the creative work that theologians are doing, not because they don’t want to be faithful to the tradition, but because there’s a threat that hangs over them,” she said. “The best and the brightest that have been going into theology may be discouraged from doing that. In the long run, if those theology departments are not strong and getting even stronger . . . I think that will contribute to the demise of Catholic higher education.”

Father Thomas Reese, editor of America, the Jesuit magazine, contends that the Vatican’s directive, and the bishops’ latest plan, would stifle free inquiry. Even some of the church’s greatest theologians of the past might have suffered under the proposed rules, Reese argues.

“If this had been in effect at the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, he would not have gotten a mandate from the bishop of Paris to teach, because the bishop of Paris thought Thomas Aquinas was a heretic and burned his books,” he said in an interview.

Supporters of the new compromise assert that they have written a document with enough flexibility to move ahead.

“There is enough in this document to get us started, and we’ll learn how to better implement it as we go along,” said Bishop John J. Leibrecht of the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau in Missouri, chairman of the committee that drafted the proposal.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles urged college and university officials to work with the bishops in implementing the rules.

“I would say to the presidents of our Catholic colleges and universities, you have nothing to fear from us, as bishops, your friends, your pastors,” he said. “On the contrary, this is a new moment of collaboration for all of us, as bishops, as local churches, and colleges and universities.”

But Bishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, known as one of the church’s leading liberals, told the conference that in his 36 years as a bishop he has never seen so much tension between theologians and the hierarchy.

“For us it’s easy to draw up regulations for them,” said Weakland, who was one of only two bishops to speak against the proposal in the debate.

But theologians “have to be afraid not just of bishops but also vigilante groups,” he said. “I really believe passing this document now will create a tremendous pastoral disaster for the church in the United States.”