THe HOLY CROSS CASE

...As one faculty member put it: The Jesuits' sense of apostolate must change if the Jesuits are going to have a maximum impact and if Holy Cross is going to prosper...

...Accordingly it seems inevitable that a Catholic Holy Cross will have difficulty simply maintaining the present quality of its student body, much less improving it dramatically...

...Somehow the college leadership found a way to unite the ordinarily passive, conflict-ridden Holy Cross faculty...

...And it is the Christian ethos, the Christian vision of values, that must use these tools while submitting them to judgment and relativizing their tendency to make absolutes of themselves...

...The new committee was elected, worked hard, and at the end of its deliberations, the college president and non-voting chairman, Father John Brooks, complimented them on the quality of their work...

...While professing their dedication to academic excellence, college authorities never answered the argument that excellence was unattainable under present admission and promotional policies...

...Jesuit resistance to faculty initiatives was understandable...

...A Possible Solution The goal of Jesuit education as set forth by Arrupe is the formation of "men for others" (I hope, now, "persons for others") who live out personal and political resistance to egoism and dehumanization...

...but all will live with the shame of having failed to insure fairness to people whose careers were at stake and having failed, too, to work out a reasonable and equitable resolution of conflict among people who, with few exceptions, are dedicated and responsible men and women...

...Rarely have advocates of a "Catholic Amherst" made clear that their position does reduce the Jesuit role to one of sponsorship and, at best, collegiality...

...Students marched and held a referendum expressing lack of confidence in the tenure procedures...

...the college shows no sign of retreat...

...While Jesuits defend their besieged citadel and faculty try to salvage their self-respect, a national election is going on in which such issues as world hunger, domestic and international resource distribution, environmental deterioration, and worldwide militarism are not even discussed...

...It would involve developing new programs to encourage the kind of critical consciousness required to live authentic Christian and human life in our times...

...While rejecting, or more frequently ignoring, the program of Dr...

...Bishops' Bicentennial Program...

...Deans and presidents would be academically qualified persons who commanded the confidence of the faculty...

...The uneasy balance between Jesuit administrators, lay faculty and a semi-public but informally controlled Board, was upset by a series of decisions which no one has even tried to defend on their merits...

...No summary of events of this sort can adequately convey the passions which they engender...

...Neither students, nor faculty, nor, one hopes, priests can be coerced or browbeaten into either academic excellence or action for justice...

...Only mutual respect and a willingness to trust people can create the kind of atmosphere where different concerns can be expressed, alternative visions explored and debated, fears put at rest, and legitimate decisions made...

...Faculty spokesmen met several times with the executive committee with no result but increased frustration...

...In part, this stems from the self-image of Holy Cross's Jesuit academics...

...In the end, nobody wins...

...The cost is paid by the whole church, which fails to benefit as it might from the enormous talent and dedication of the Jesuits but instead helplessly watches their institutions accommodate to the prevailing pressures of the moment...

...In April, 1974, the Planning Committee outlined the problem: under the impact of Vatican II and rapid social change in the nation, Jesuit colleges and universities, and the men who staff them, had lost their sense of mission...

...it is...

...The bishops around the country today who believe they are insuring the future of Catholic elementary and secondary education by fighting teacher unionization with all the antiquated union-busting weapons of the past, are not only deluding themselves and their people, but seriously damaging the prospects of Christian mission through the Catholic community in America...

...Fine professors, trained in first-rate secular graduate schools, staff on an equal basis the departments and offices of the college, while their Jesuit colleagues, whom they meet occasionally for drinks, monopolize key positions in academic administration...

...McBrien and his supporters, the college's leaders offered no clear alternative of their own...

...Rarely do they notice that their instiutions share in the painful ambiguities and contradictions of the contemporary church...

...not merely resisting unjust structures and arrangements, but actively undertaking to reform them...

...It is no accident that this program, then, is viewed by college administrators as a threat to Jesuit presence...

...Second, a firm resolve never to profit from, or allow ourselves to be suborned by, positions of power deriving from privilege...

...A few years ago the American Jesuit Assistancy initiated a study of its educational apostolate, imaginatively entitled "Project One...

...Relativizing them, putting them in their place, as it were, with full realization that the Christian ethos cannot possibly construct a new world without their assistance...

...People at Holy Cross know of what the Fathers spoke...

...Inter-departmental and college-wide allocation of limited financial resources in particular was removed from effective community participation and from clear procedures of internal accountability...

...This violation of due process caused the regional office of the American Association of University Professors to demand that his case be reconsidered ab initio...

...placing a layman in the Office of Dean, with a consequent extension of an effective faculty voice in decision-making...

...extension of student recruiting to non-Catholic high schools at a truly national level...

...Rather than a simple disposition to practice justice and charity in personal relations, Arrupe makes clear that education for justice demands a stance of fundamental resistance to many of the economic, political and educational policies of the present day...

...Yet, the promise of the Society stands in sharp contrast to its frequent immobility, particularly in higher education...

...When Holy Cross has achieved that kind of image, the real apostolate will have been fulfilled...

...At Holy Cross College this past year, a series of events exposed the precarious situation of Jesuit leadership in one of the nation's oldest and most respected Catholic colleges...

...From the viewpoint of many faculty, college policy appeared a series of ad hoc responses to financial emergencies unrelated to clear goals or objectives...

...Only one Jesuit was involved in the eight cases, but a few faculty began to think that maybe Jesuit control was, after all, the issue...

...Several points are notable about the consultation: it has not involved any concerted effort to ask the church at large, or any significant group within it, what it perceives to be the proper Jesuit educational apostolate today...

...At the same time, another issue was boiling...

...the anger which many felt was, like Greeley's, related less to anti-Jesuit hostility than to the frustrating realization that so many leaders cannot translate clear moral and theological commitments into effective action but instead revert to defending personal and corporate privilege...

...It is not a decisive effort of the Jesuits at Holy Cross to reshape the college as Jesuit that causes problems, for no such effort has taken place...

...A dispute about jurisdiction on personnel matters was gradually escalated by the defenders of the Board's action into a struggle over the Jesuit character of the college...

...Several years ago, Dr...

...While he sees little good in the ecclesiastical system, Greely still cares for it enough to be angry...

...The Fathers of last year's Jesuit General Congregation put the problem in its proper context: Our apostolic institutions, along with many of those of the church herself, are being subjected to the same crisis that social institutions in general are presently undergoing...

...The Jesuits, who fostered and facilitated the growth of Holy Cross as a liberal arts college would now join other faculty on an equal professional basis in building a program indistinguishable from that of other "comparable institutions...

...It would surely be quite unacceptable for the Jesuits to announce tomorrow that they have finally figured out what "Jesuit college" means and all must now abide by it...

...In their response to the Project One consultation, several Jesuit groups involved in the social apostolate noted the absence in the options presented to the colleges and university communities of more than passing reference to the 1974 Jesuit General Congregation...

...They then turn around and tell their faculties: "You may have a role in certain areas of academic governance, as decreed by the Board of Trustees...

...But this does not mean acceptance of a normal secular willingness to leave these in their convenient compartments, or disciplines, while giving a separate but equal role to ethics and religion...

...Could this vision be the foundation for a new set of goals for Jesuit education and for a program to attain them...

...The relevance of our work as religious priests and apostolates is often enough not evident to the men and women around us...

...De-emphasis need not mean elimination of the college's Catholic character...

...The Jesuits at Holy Cross, like the orders which administer other Catholic colleges and universities, look to the broader world of the church, and even to their own religious communities, and say, in effect, "We are now autonomous institutions, governed by lay boards, responsive to the educational demands of our various constituencies...

...Administrators might begin by examining their own attitudes and practices in light of this commitment to human dignity, just dealings, and personal and collective self-determination...

...Lest this seem too "religious" an emphasis, Arrupe emphasized as well "technologies are needed as instruments of analysis and action" and "ideologies are needed to program analysis and action so that they will actually dislodge and dismantle injustice...

...Technologies, ideologies, disciplines are tools...

...Implementation and application has been left to Provinces and schools...

...All Catholic institutions share in this experience of promise and failure, and Jesuit colleges and universites are not exempt...

...It would re-emphasize the colleges' Catholic character, not as respectable window dressing, but as real demands that people make on themselves and one another...

...therefore you cannot tell us what we should, or should not, do...

...on closer examination it is a position of ambiguity and indecision which creates a lack of legitimacy and a chronic defensiveness which distracts and distorts the energies and capacities of the often outstanding men who occupy positions of leadership and authority in the college...

...Once made, these decisions could not be reviewed or reversed, it appears, for that would threaten, somehow, the uneasy chair on which Jesuit control now rests...

...The role of the privileged is to assist them, to reinforce with pressure from above the pressure exerted from below on the structures that need to be changed...

...Nevertheless, the program would require the subordination of the college's denominational and Jesuit character...

...He had held a full professorship at another institution and was hired as an associate professor...

...Father Andrew Greeley has documented signs of decline evident to every serious and committed church member and Time magazine has given its imprimatur to his pessimistic assessment...

...and a vigorous development and public relations program aimed at changing the college's traditional Catholic and athletic image to one more in accord with the goal and the reality of academic excellence...

...Let us hope that we can quickly restore justice and fairness throughout the Catholic community and that at Holy Cross the present crisis will result in more confident, organized and responsible faculty and the renewal of a sense of Jesuit mission and service...

...They know the college only for its academic quality...

...If so, it will not be because Father Arrupe isn't trying...

...A serious corporate Catholic presence in higher education, Jesuit or not, will be possible only if religious communities who have been the custodians of institutional traditions invite the collaboration of lay faculty...

...If indeed the Jesuits wish to take this vision of "persons for others" seriously, they must recognize that the vision itself conveys something about the necessary character of its promotion...

...College administrators who try to insure institutional preservation by treating the faculty as the enemy are just as tragically foolish...

...The drive for academic excellence is, must be, also a drive for faculty power...

...The elected members of the committee immediately resigned...

...Unfortunately, the Jesuits have not taken seriously Pope Paul's warning to the General Congregation that "we must not forget that the priest should inspire lay Catholics, since in the promotion of justice theirs is the more demanding role...

...That this argument is insulting to the rest of the faculty, they seldom seem to understand...

...Of course, it need not be a "Jesuit plan," but it could provide a basis for justifying a special role for Jesuit faculty and administration...

...No group in the universal church has probed more deeply the meaning of renewal or tried harder to understand the nature of Christian mission in the contempordavid o'brien is presently on leave from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, to serve as consultant to the U.S...

...Adherents of this faculty program assume that Catholic students are no longer naturally inclined towards Catholic schools, and are no longer inhibited by parents and teachers from considering Amherst and Williams...

...The Congregation took this step with full awareness of its own failures on this score in the past, and in spite of the reservations of Pope Paul, who feared that other essential elements of Jesuit apostolate might be neglected...

...As a result, "confidence in the religious character of their work" and "Jesuit self-confidence" in general have "come into question...

...Drawing upon the results of that historic meeting, they urged that, whatever resolution came out of the consultation, it should include a serious commitment to raise the critical consciousness of students and faculty regarding issues of social injustice in the world and the relationship between those issues and the structures of economic and social life here in the United States...

...He has in fact given education for justice a very high priority...

...But even that small beginning will be impossible unless there is a clear articulation of the goal and an honest, straightforward statement of its implications...

...The result has been inertia, mutual distrust and suspicion, administrative high-handedness and a general inability on all sides to respond with firmness and clarity to the challenges of recent years...

...Both the court case and the AAUP proceedings are pending...

...These documents, and the courageous leadership of the Jesuit General Pedro Arrupe, have pointed the Society toward the frontiers of faith and justice, challenging local Jesuit communities to reconsider their apostolates in light of the demands for justice which arise from the poor and oppressed peoples of the world...

...It would require a set of guidelines in faculty hiring which would emphasize recruiting personnel who shared the commitment to justice...

...an embittered truce will probably be restored...

...Individual board members came to the campus, dialogued with faculty and students, and, in the end, voted not to respond to a faculty request for review of the decisions and acceptance of the principle of faculty primacy in personnel matters...

...Alumni, including trustees, profess to value this presence in a special way, for, they contend, Jesuits are dedicated to serving the college and the students...

...If these assumptions are valid, then only by de-emphasizing the Catholic, Jesuit character of the school, could Holy Cross hope to compete successfully in recruiting the broad-base, national, student presence that the primary goal of academic excellence requires...

...Nevertheless, a few weeks later, the executive committee of the Board of Trustees, composed of the president and four Board members, without consultation or discussion, overrode five of the committee's eight tenure decisions...

...The result was overwhelming: almost unanimously Jesuit leaders involved in the educational apostolate called for a continued commitment to a "corporate apostolate...

...In governance, despite mechanisms for full community participation, decision-making on college-wide issues remained safely beyond faculty or student control...

...The Planning Committee, working closely with the nation's provincials, pointed out that a positive response would require a new structure for intra-Jesuit cooperation and dialogue and a "rationale . . . which would make intellectually comprehensible and psychologically satisfying the purposes, mission, and goal of the Society in the apostolate of higher education...

...None is more skilled in pointing out the hypocritical gaps between theory and practice which exist in the parishes and dioceses of the country than the denizens of Jesuit community rooms...

...if the commitment were made, funding could be found for special programs, faculty development and new resources...

...The faculty closed the year's events by rejecting the Board's rejection and notifying all affected by this year's personnel decisions that those decisions did not represent the judgment of the faculty of their contribution to the college or their ability as teachers and scholars...

...Rather the proper stance must be one of invitation, by which those who are concerned about the goals of the institution invite others who share its life to consider new possibilities...

...Third, an attitude not simply of refusal but of counter-attack against injustice...

...Through it all, the Jesuit administration and faculty have failed to articulate new goals and objectives for the college and to initiate changes in accord with them...

...Instead of vigorous discussion, sullen resignation characterized many faculty meetings...

...so that, first, they come to understand the problem of human misery, and then attain to that indispensable interior change of heart which is a necessary condition for a just and lasting solution at all levels, structural, political, and social...

...The General Congregation left unclear the exact relationship between these goals and the Jesuit educational apostolate...

...Neither has any organized effort been made to consult lay faculty at Jesuit educational institutions...

...Most striking of all is the public acknowledgment that a convincing corporate rationale for Jesuit education does not exist...

...The trustees overrode without reasonable dialogue or adequate justification an overwhelming faculty decision to place financial aid on a need basis, in effect abolishing athletic grants-in-aid...

...But do not push that role too far, or try to participate in fundamental debate about the nature of the institution, for, after all, we are a Catholic and a Jesuit College...

...First, they would give witness to their "firm determination to live much more simply, as individuals, as families, as social groups, and in this way to stop short, or at least slow down, the expanding spiral of luxurious living and social competition...

...Greeley's pain is accentuated by the hope he sees in the tough-minded idealism of "communal Catholics" who get on with the business of translating values into action with little reference to a church whose corporate affairs they regard with indifference or amusement...

...At the same time, they said that this should in no way restrict the autonomy of Jesuit institutions, should involve no serious accountability of local Jesuit communities to their provinces, and should give the widest scope to the local community in its adaptation to its educational institution...

...Here again is an experience we share with our contemporaries, and in a particularly painful way...

...Yet, it is not the present confusion and intransigence of Jesuit education which is so specially frustrating, but the sense of real possibility which is an equally significant reality in the Jesuit community today...

...One result was the work of the 1974 General Congregation of the Society of Jesus which produced a set of documents which are among the most creative and exciting to emerge from the post-conciliar church...

...The vision would seem to imply a program quite different from that normally available in American or in Catholic higher education...

...Given the makeup of the executive committee, and the apparent randomness and carelessness of its deliberations, this seemed dubious...

...Not only that: despite the firmness of our faith and our convictions the relevance of what we do may not even be clear, sometimes, even to ourselves...

...We have to strive to transform the mentality of society, not only among those in power but also among the middle classes whose influence is great in this field...

...The new system replaced unwieldy ad hoc committees created for each case which annually had created bad feelings...

...The Thirty-Second General Congregation of the Society of Jesus did indeed place at the center of Jesuit mission "the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement...

...Indeed, the test of every significant policy would be academic...

...Holy Cross would simply recapitulate the histories of other, formerly Protestant, schools which gradually de-emphasized their religious orientation while growing into vigorous undergraduate institutions...

...ary world than the Society of Jesus...

...The processes appropriate to an intellectual community are the same processes appropriate to the Christian church, processes of witness and dialogue and free decision...

...What is lacking is not means but a real commitment to education for justice and a determination to explore strategies for its implementation...

...learning to represent them when they cannot be heard...

...The vision of the congregation could begin to take on flesh at Holy Cross without disrupting proper academic procedures...

...The faculty who uphold this goal have not always been candid about this...

...If that could happen, the best of Jesuit traditions and commitment could become exciting resources for the renewal of Catholic higher education, to the enrichment of the church and the world...

...Jesuits would call each other and their friends to conversion, to put aside sin and greed not only personally but in terms of those structures within which we live and which mirror our failings...

...There is nothing unusual about this, for it is the dominant tendency of institutions in our culture...

...Accordingly all Jesuit communities were asked to consider whether they thought it desirable to articulate a new rationale and develop a new structure for a "corporate Jesuit apostolate" in higher education...

...A college which was Jesuit would, then, be composed of a lot of people who agreed on at least three things...

...The college's immediate problems arise from a fairly simple conflict over governance...

...For the facts are clear to any who look: without the collaboration and sacrifice of the lay faculty, Catholic education at any level has no future at all...

...Equally important, after several defeats, they have failed to promote their goal by regularly articulating and explaining their program, soliciting support for it among all segments of the college community...

...At first glance this might be called having it both ways...

...Given the times, few faculty will resign...

...Huang sued the college for discrimination and in the process, documents surfaced which indicated that the president, who had voted for Huang in his ad hoc committee, had changed his vote at the Board level on the basis of a somewhat gossipy letter written, after the faculty deliberations, by a Jesuit assistant professor in another department...

...The Board and its administrative spokesmen originally argued that only discretionary power of the Board on personnel could insure academic excellence...

...This unsettles us, and in our insecurity we tend to respond to questioning with silence and to shy away from confrontation...

...For if the sole, or predominant, criterion of policy is academic quality, then the faculty must be the sole, or predominant, source of authority and legitimacy...

...For reasons never entirely clear, the trustees and the Jesuit administration did not accept this program...

...Holy Cross seniors enter a world where they will be forced to scramble for decent jobs with little hope of using their talents and spirits on behalf of justice and human liberation...

...Of course, it would allow an unobtrusive religious presence in the Chaplain's Office and the Religious Studies Department, but continued emphasis on the college's Catholic tradition would unduly restrict the pool of students from which the college draws to Catholics and an occasional non-Catholic attracted by some particular feature of college life...

...While this vision need not disregard, or even deemphasize, academic excellence, it would place that quality in an explicit value framework...

...Until this spring, they did not even organize to resist administrative violations of faculty prerogatives...

...The next year he was denied tenure, again with no reason given and no reason that was convincing to his colleagues...

...But that role would have to acknowledge mutual accountability of all involved, for that is integral to the framework of the value commitment involved...

...The corporate apostolate posture and purposes of the Society are not clear- or at least are not publicly articulated," they wrote...

...For some reason, Jesuits who would be the first to criticize a bishop who acted without consultation, seem not to understand that to the faculty, utilization of Trustee power to override vital faculty concerns seems-is-equally arbitrary and unjust...

...The fact is that the Jesuits want it both ways: academic excellence and decision-making based solely on educational criteria, and, at the same time reservation of a special role to Jesuits...

...This dual commitment to responsible service to the church and dedication to serving mankind in the struggle for justice and peace arises from the best and most hopeful thrusts in contemporary Catholic life...

...Such a program, they believed, would justify the college's high tuition and would supply a firm basis for a creative undergraduate education which, they confidently expected, would attract private and foundation support...

...People and institutions which identify themselves as Christian must possess three attributes which he describes: First, a basic attitude of respect for all men which forbids us ever to use them as instruments for our own profit...

...Some faculty believe that the vision of Holy Cross as a "Catholic Amherst" flows quite naturally from the college's traditions...

...Unfortunately, if Project One's published proceedings are any evidence, this decentralized implementation may bring no response...

...One way out would be to complete the transition to secularization, which would mean basing all decisions and positions on academic grounds alone...

...Bad communications, personal misunderstanding, administrative mistake and faculty pride, and, perhaps, a bit of malice, combined to shatter the ambiguity about legitimate authority which characterizes Holy Cross, as it does most Catholic colleges today...

...Insofar as these institutions figure in the consultation, they are defined from a Jesuit point of view: colleges and universities must develop their own direction and purposes, these must be "consistent" with those of the Jesuit community, and must provide opportunity for Jesuit participants to exercise their particular apostolate...

...In 1974-75 a committee on tenure and promotion was created to receive departmental recommendations, review them, and make its own recommendations to the board of trustees...

...He says in his letter, "Men for Others": We have to be the voice of those who have no voice, studying for this purpose the situations in which they find themselves...

...In the middle 1960s they were encouraged by Professor David Riesman's statement that Holy Cross was "on the verge of greatness...

...No one ever asks what denominational base underlines Amherst College...

...Nor is there here any straightforward confrontation of the Jesuit apostolate with the professional commitments and limitations of the faculty, for there has been no articulation of the nature of the Jesuit apostolate, at least none that has any substance for the life of the school...

...In this the Jesuits at Holy Cross are not alone...

...Led by Professor Vincent McBrien, they have dreamed of creating at Holy Cross a "Catholic Amherst...

...Joe C. Huang came to Holy Cross to teach political science...

...There are many people at Holy Cross who would like to be part of a diverse, even tense, community where serious issues were openly and honestly faced...

...a decision to work with others toward the dismantling of unjust social structures so that the weak, the oppressed, the marginalized of this world may be set free...

...If academic excellence is in fact the primary goal, then an absolute policy granting Jesuits special privileges in hiring or retaining for one of their number key offices of leadership is quite simply dishonest...

...de-emphasis of intercollegiate athletics and redirection of scholarship aid to needy but gifted students...

...and, above all, providing them with a voice and a platform by means of education and a wise conscientization...

...Instead Christians learn together to live authentic and effective lives for others, understanding the injustice of the world, analyzing its sources and organizing technologies and ideologies for dealing with it, remembering always that "the oppressed . . . must be the principal agents of change...

...Some respected Holy Cross faculty have advocated a position which involves this choice as the best way to remedy the college's lack of clear direction...

...Holy Cross's problems reflect deeper issues in Catholic higher education...

...But it would mean that Jesuit presence, beyond the window-dressing of campus ministry and religious studies, either of which could exist quite vigorously at Amherst, would have to justify itself on academic grounds...

...Unable to move forward to new possibilities and unwilling to move back to the days when they controlled their colleges and imposed their discipline on students and faculty alike, the Jesuits often seem paralyzed and adrift...

...And thirdly, and Arrupe admits, "most difficult, they would make a firm resolve to be agents of change in society...

...We see, or think we see, a lot of vitality, energy and power still pulsating throughout the establishment, from the parishes of Minneapolis and the community organizations of San Antonio to the still stuffy boardrooms of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops...

...Those of us working as best we can with the official church cannot help but share a bit of his anger...

...Responding to an informed understanding of the state of the world, the Jesuit Fathers made the "clear decision" that "the Society should commit itself to work for the promotion of justice...

...It would challenge prevailing departmental and disciplinary divisions, questioning all academic procedures from the point of view of education for justice...

...If the program of a "Catholic Amherst" threatens Jesuit power, and it does, the faith and justice model threatens faculty power, independence and, if presented heavy-handedly, faculty self-respect...

...It demands, too, a clear recognition that commitment to justice goes beyond confrontation with personal sinfulness to the analysis, evaluation and revision of the structures of injustice which dominate much of our world...

...An adversary relationship between faculty and administration became chronic at Holy Cross, rooted in confusion regarding the legitimate locus of authority...

...Second, they would make a "firm determination to draw no profit whatever from clearly unjust sources...

...To complete the journey to academic excellence, they had a program: reduction of the size of the student body to 1800 or 2000 students in order to maximize use of the college's resources and bring the quality of students up to the elite college level...

...Holy Cross's problem is precisely the opposite: silence from the administration regarding the goals and purposes of the college, as they see them, and a general unwillingness or inability to articulate an understanding of the Holy Cross mission which the faculty could accept or reject, debate and correct...