c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Seeking to strike a delicate balance between academic freedom and a commitment to church doctrine, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops Wednesday (Nov. 13) adopted a set of rules on their relations with the church’s 235 colleges and universities.

With little debate and no significant dissent, the prelates adopted a statement that will implement rules set forth by Pope John Paul II six years ago, aimed in part at reining in the church’s theologians and other dissident academics. The action came on the third day of the annual fall meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB).

The new rules essentially direct local bishops to play a larger part in the life of the schools and universities in their dioceses and to insure that the schools accurately reflect Catholic teaching on controversial matters.

John Paul’s statement was a response to what some church officials saw as an open revolt by dissident theologians at Catholic schools and universities in the United States and Europe. Among the disputed issues are church teachings opposing contraception and family planning, the ordination of women and clerical celibacy.

In two famous cases, moral theologian Charles Curran was stripped of his license to teach Catholic theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and the Rev. Hans Kung was ousted from his post as an official Catholic theologian in Germany.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and an expert on church life, said the adopted document managed to meet both the bishops’ concerns and those of the academics.

Bishops, he said, were concerned that Catholic schools were”going the way of Protestant colleges and universities”by becoming secularized and separated from the institutional church.

College and university presidents were similarly concerned. But many academics voiced fears that the insistence on Catholic identity would destroy academic freedom.

Cardinal James Hickey of Washington, D.C., who oversaw the ouster of Curran, noted the”climate of suspicion that has endured for the last 28 years”between bishops and theologians.

When the papal statement, known by its Latin name”Ex code Ecclesiae,”was first published on Aug. 15, 1990, it caused an uproar among college and university presidents as well as among Catholic theologians and academic organizations.

They saw the papal statement _ meant to insure that Catholic schools accurately reflected Vatican teaching on a host of controversial subjects _ as a threat to academic freedom. Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, for example, noted that when the document was first made public, university administrators”were almost in open revolt against it.” He said that after five years of talks, schools that were distancing themselves from the church by describing themselves as”`in the Catholic tradition,’ now call themselves Catholic colleges.” For five years, bishops have engaged in talks with school officials and others in an effort to find language that will both meet the Vatican concern that Catholic schools remain true to their calling as Catholic schools while operating in the American context that makes academic freedom and even dissent a cardinal virtue of higher education.”Catholic academics were terrified six years ago, but now they’re very pleased because the bishops listened to them,”Reese said.”Catholic colleges and universities are participants in both the life of the Church and the higher education enterprise of the United States,”the new statement says.”This relationship is clarified through dialogue which includes faculty of all disciplines, students, staff, academic officers, trustees, and sponsoring religious communities of the educational institutions, all of whom share responsibility for the character of Catholic higher education,”the statement said, adding that the bishops are an essential part of the dialogue.

The document stresses that Catholic colleges and universities must make a serious effort to hire and retain faculty and other staff members”who are committed to Catholic tradition or, if not Catholic, who are aware and respectful of that tradition.” It does not, however, anticipate or suggest firing or refusing to hire non-Catholics.

At the heart of the statement is the requirement that local bishops be more involved in the life of the schools and universities in their jurisdictions and especially exercise oversight over professors and others charged with teaching Catholic doctrine.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

The document states, however, the local bishop”in circumstances where he questions whether or not an individual theologian is presenting authentic Catholic teaching, shall follow a set of due process procedures adopted as suggestions by the bishops in 1989.

The new statement makes those optional procedures mandatory now in cases where bishops and theologians find themselves in conflict. But the bishop cannot force the school to fire the teacher.

Still at issue is how the bishops will apply the provision of canon law requiring they give theologians a license to teach theology. A footnote to the statement said the application of that part of church law to U.S. schools requires more study by the bishops.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

Conservative groups welcomed the adoption of the statement but said the bishops should go further in rooting out doctrinal dissent.”We urge that the bishops simply refuse to give their license to teach the sacred sciences (such as theology and philosophy) to any proposed new faculty members who are not both thoroughly orthodox and prepared to submit to the discipline of the church,”the recently formed Society of Catholic Social Scientists said in a statement.

The group also said that bishops should insist that Catholic schools”foster a campus life that is consistent with Catholicism”and not permit practices that encourage student immorality.

Terrence W. Tilley, president of the College Theology Society and chair of the religious studies department at the University of Dayton, called the new statement a model for resolving disputes between bishops and theologians.”The document keeps distinct the important duties and responsibilities of bishops and theologians,”he said.”A bishop has the duty and responsibility to maintain the integrity of doctrine, while a theologian has a specific responsibility and duty as an academic to investigate the tradition. Theologians tend to discover significant shifts in church doctrine historically, and people don’t like that.”

MJP END ANDERSON