SHAPING THE END OF A DIVINITY SCHOOL?:
Carlan, Margaret M
Shaping the End of A Divinity School? In those heady days for theology following Vatican Council II, it seemed like an idea whose time had come: the establishment in 1967 at St. Louis University of...
...its students have been in the forefront of social activism...
...In April of 1974, after a two-year "search," a new president was elected...
...Louis University School of Divinity...
...The school had built a modest reputation for graduate studies in religious formation and spiritual development and had developed new professional programs for nuns entering and older priests rethinking pastoral work...
...The School of Divinity and the university's mainly undergraduate theology department, the committee said, should be merged in a single department within the College of Arts and Sciences...
...The larger enrollment and academic setting, it was thought, would allow superior education for both diocesan and Jesuit seminarians while providing training also for members of religious orders too small to support adequate seminary programs...
...But the school was not completely dependent on seminarians...
...The committee's report is expected to be before the board for possible action at its next meeting on Jan...
...Soon after the opening of this school year, the committee's existence and its recommendations were made known...
...Dropped were Woodstock College in New York and the St...
...Further, Father O'Connell says he is confident that the whole review process will be beneficial to the university and the "primacy of theology" on campus...
...Its faculty members have spoken out on the progressive side of the theological issues...
...Father Sullivan says he is confident that the Board of Trustees will decide to continue the School of Theology and that the school will emerge in "a stronger position for having been through the bonfire...
...MARGARET M. CARLAN (Margaret M. Carlan, formerly with the St...
...Practically, such a merger would mean that the School of Divinity would cease to exist, although some of its graduate programs might be continued in the new department...
...Louis Archdiocese's major seminary would join their Jesuit counterparts at the school...
...Father O'Connell had been a professor of psychology at the school for 10 years and rector of the Jesuit community there for one...
...Mary's (Kan...
...Sullivan, the school's second dean, came to the post from Marquette University in November of 1971...
...With the new quiet and conservatism in the church and on campus, it probably seemed like a good time to make the move...
...We can't afford-and I mean that in every sense of the word, not just money-to continue two isolated operations here...
...Third- and fourth-year students at the St...
...Those associated with the school did not see it as simply a Jesuit seminary and vowed it would continue...
...The prelate who would succeed Ritter the following March was to take a dimmer view of the modernization of ministerial training...
...The plan needed and had the support of the then Archbishop of St...
...Louis University campus (the seminary had been on campus from 1899 to 1930) and reorganize it as a divinity school...
...Much of the support on which the school's bright future was predicated has since been withdrawn...
...Most importantly, pledges of support were quickly forthcoming from the university administration...
...Louis University of the first divinity school on a Catholic campus other than at the episcopal Catholic University in Washington...
...If the university board should agree and the Divinity School operation is slated for extinction, it will say a lot about the theological poverty-in every sense of the word-of the Catholic Church in the United States...
...Father Sullivan suggests there is a connection but he won't reveal what reasons for the removal he was given by O'Connell...
...Louis Review, is on the editorial staff of the St...
...And a new study of the Divinity School and the theology department is being made by the Academic Affairs Committee of the university's predominantly lay Board of Trustees...
...College, back to the St...
...The School of Divinity in many ways represents the new church on campus...
...This affair and suggestions from both sides that only "charity" prevents stronger name-calling gives the current controversy the appearance of typical academic infighting...
...In January of 1973, the Jesuits announced plans to eliminate two of their five theologates...
...Louis Post-Dispatch...
...The student body recently voted in favor of a university plan to bring its ROTC program back on the campus from which it was evicted in response to student antiwar protests of the '60s...
...Now the university itself is wavering and 1967 seems a long time ago...
...It would be open to non-Jesuits, non-seminarians and even non-Catholics and an eventual enrollment of 800 was predicted...
...But in the eight years since, it has several times seemed that the time for that idea had quickly run out...
...But the merger proposal was so soundly opposed on campus (and reportedly by the Jesuits' Missouri Province) that Father O'Connell is now trying to disown it and to assume a position of neutrality...
...With the church then struggling to enter the modern world, it was thought also that the university setting would properly expose seminarians to lay students in other disciplines on the urban campus...
...Louis, Cardinal Joseph E. Ritter...
...Louis area...
...Yet he remains convinced of one thing: "Some form of consolidation is absolutely imperative...
...In 1973, Jesuit scholastics made up only about 15 percent of the full-time enrollment of 270...
...Now, it seems to many that Father O'Connell would like to return the university's theological role to the more traditional and apologetic one performed by Catholic colleges in the old church (and still performed to a large extent by the university's theology department...
...And in a way the Divinity School's problems began before it opened its doors in the fall of 1967 when in June of that year Cardinal Ritter died...
...The proposal was strongly opposed by several campus groups, and most of the Divinity School faculty boycotted Father O'Connell's inauguration in protest...
...There is undoubtedly some of that involved but at the same time the conflict is of a church nature that is broader than academic wrangling...
...So, in six years, the Divinity School had lost its two major sources of students, and in some observers' view, its raison d'etre...
...And in an archdiocese on the retreat from Vatican II progressivism, the Divinity School stands as a symbol of continued church renewal...
...He quickly let it be known that he believed a dangerous secularization had been creeping into the university and that its Catholicity needed more emphasis...
...Father Daniel C. O'Connell, S.J., assumed the university presidency on July 1, 1974...
...It was in January of that year that the Society of Jesus announced it would move its theological seminary, St...
...Father O'Connell says Sullivan's removal was not connected with the merger proposal but he won't reveal the reasons behind the action...
...His inauguration was not until October, but he did not wait to begin reshaping the university to his ideals...
...In the midst of the controversy it was revealed that Father William J. Sullivan, S.J., had been notified this past August that he would be removed as dean of the Divinity School at the end of this school year...
...In 1970, Cardinal John J. Carberry announced that henceforth archdiocesan seminarians would once again be trained in the safer confines of Kenrick Seminary...
...Meanwhile, seminary enrollment everywhere was declining...
...the school has been a center for liturgical experimentation and ecumenical advancement in the St...
...But Father Paul C. Reinert, S.J., then university president, had already announced that he was going to step down to the new post of chancellor and concentrate on fund-raising...
...Just as quickly, but not as publicly, he appointed a committee of three outside priests to review theological education on campus...
...The number of Jesuits preparing for ordination in the United States dropped about 40 percent in the Divinity School's first five years of existence...
...It may not have fulfilled the promise of 1967, but it has been trying...
...It was to force such a review and not to eliminate the School of Divinity that he initiated the outside study, the new president says...
...The theology department currently functions almost entirely on the undergraduate level where it, provides mandatory courses for bachelor degree candidates...
Vol. 101 • January 1975 • No. 12
