Framing a Catholic Education

By Matt Krupnick, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Feb. 6–MORAGA — Catholic educators often say they have no desire for their schools to be listed among the likes of prestigious Yale University, University of Chicago and Columbia University, at least in one sense.

All three schools were founded with religious ties that have diminished over the years, and Catholic colleges are trying to prevent a similar fate. But unlike most Baptist or Anglican institutions, Catholics have a plan.

First decreed by Pope John Paul II in 1990, the framework called Ex corde Ecclesiae — Latin for “from the heart of the church” — explained how to be a Roman Catholic university, and U.S. clergy also adopted related guidelines for Catholic professors who teach theology.

Bishops and Catholic college presidents across the country will spend the next couple of months examining how the framework has worked in the five years since it was adopted for use in the United States.

A mixture of encouragement and warning, the decree was greeted with apprehension by U.S. scholars who theorized it would be used to intimidate church critics. But, nearly five years later, academics and clergy say Ex corde’s effects have been more positive than insidious, especially in left-of-center California.

“It’s created a natural dynamic between the bishops and the presidents,” said Bishop Allen Vigneron of the Oakland Diocese, which includes two Catholic four-year colleges — St. Mary’s and Holy Names — and a two-year school in Fremont. “It was a landmark step in the life of the church.”

Ex corde, as it is often known, can be separated into two distinct parts: the Vatican’s desire to preserve Catholic identity on campus, and the more controversial approvals for Catholic theology professors.

The endorsements, called mandatum, were supposed to be bestowed by local bishops by June 1, 2002. A mandatum, essentially, is meant to be the church’s accreditation of college theologians who teach Catholicism.

But anecdotes and evidence reveal that Ex corde has been far more successful at strengthening Catholic identity on campuses than fulfilling its mandatum requirements, a shortcoming that doesn’t bother many academics. Some Catholic teachers continue to worry that obtaining permission from the church could prevent them from expressing personal opinions.

In the Oakland Diocese, former Bishop John Cummins simply invited his local theology professors to dinner and offered them a mandatum. Dioceses are cautioned against releasing names of people who did or did not accept a mandatum, but East Bay theologians say they believe everyone accepted.

“The mandatum here is one that is affirming my Catholic teaching,” said Tom Poundstone, who teaches Christian ethics and Catholicism at St. Mary’s College in Moraga. “For us, it was the tremendous pastoral relationship we had with our bishop. I don’t know how many colleges really have that kind of relationship.”

In San Francisco, the process was a bit less personal and a lot less effective.

Theologians at the University of San Francisco, for example, received form letters offering a mandatum from the archbishop — with the wrong school’s name on top. Non-Catholic instructors and philosophy professors also received the offers.

No Catholic theologians at the university are believed to have accepted a mandatum, professors say, but there have been no repercussions.

At some schools in Ohio and Florida, a mandatum is strictly required for faculty members, but bishops in Boston have yet to even approach theologians with the offers. And at Indiana’s University of Notre Dame, perhaps the country’s most contentious battleground for Catholic politics, liberal theologian Richard McBrien simply refused to seek a mandatum, and none was ever offered to him.

“Overall,” McBrien said in an e-mail interview, “it must be a big disappointment to Catholics on the far right who expected Ex corde and the mandatum to drive Catholic theologians whom they dislike out of their institutions.”

There’s the rub for conservative Catholics: that Ex corde is applied inconsistently and that the church does not tightly control how Catholicism is taught to young people.

“The mandatum has been a complete waste of time,” said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, which protests performances of “The Vagina Monologues” and speeches by abortion rights politicians on Catholic campuses. “They implement it in such a way that it means practically nothing.”

Because of the fractious structure, it’s hard to predict the effects of this year’s review of Ex corde. Each bishop will hold private meetings with college presidents, but nothing requires participants to discuss publicly or with other bishops the results of those conversations.

The localized reviews should be enough to focus the next five years of Ex corde, said Richard Yanikoski, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

“The review is not going to be a formal investigation or a national survey, but rather a set of conversations,” said Yanikoski, the former president of Saint Xavier University in Chicago. “Ex corde is intended to be a pervasive document, not to create factors you could count.”

At St. Mary’s and elsewhere, Ex corde’s most visible result is the application of Catholic thought to social issues such as poverty and famine. For example, Poundstone and others at St. Mary’s founded the Catholic Institute for Lasallian Social Action as a direct response to Ex corde in order to promote volunteer work among students.

St. Mary’s association with the Lasallian Christian Brothers order, which focuses mainly on education, makes it easier to comply with Ex corde, said Brother Ronald Gallagher, the school’s president.

“It’s not like Ex corde is anything new,” he said. “We’ve been living that out. Being Lasallian is our way of being Catholic.”

With each Catholic school associated with a different religious order, it makes sense for Ex corde to be applied mainly on a local level, said Paul Fitzgerald, a Jesuit priest and associate dean of arts and sciences at Santa Clara University.

“Ex corde is help from a distance, but really it’s up to each individual campus,” he said. “It’s sort of how do you grow over time while remaining consistent with your mission and tradition.”

Matt Krupnick covers higher education. Reach him at 925-943-8246 or mkrupnick@cctimes.com.

EX CORDE

How U.S. Catholic dioceses and colleges have approached the theology teaching approval required by Ex corde Ecclesiae:

— Oakland Diocese: All Catholic theologians believed to have accepted the bishop’s mandatum.

— San Francisco Archdiocese: No theologians believed to have accepted.

— Boston Archdiocese: Bishops have not asked theologians to accept.

— Chicago Archdiocese: Bishops believed to strictly enforce mandatum.

— Franciscan University of Ohio: All faculty theologians must have mandatum.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.

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