'The Holy Cross Case': An Exchange of Views
0 an exchange e l v i e w s 'The Holy Cross C se' Worcester, Mass. To the Editors: The chief value of David O'Brien's perceptive piece on the crisis in Jesuit education is that it...
...In his article, O'Brien forcefully calls upon the Jesuits to forego their frenetic distortion of the doctrine of Jesuit presence as enunciated in their official documents...
...8], I find myself deeply attracted to his vision of Catholic higher education (or rather, Pedro Arrupe's vision: the formation of "persons for others") while rejecting the rather hollow perceptions which curiously bring O'Brien to accept that vision...
...Again, the reported facts do not permit judgment on the Worcester situation...
...To the Editors: In reflecting on David O'Brien's "The Holy Cross Case" [Oct...
...Most of the faculty were surprised it took this long for the board to act," said Faculty Association President Michael Lehmann...
...It is, I believe, an argument with great merit, made even more attractive today by judicial and government decisions in regard to higher education...
...should offer this kind of education coupled with a religious background and an atmosphere which encourages and fosters the religious beliefs of the student and is not simply passive in this regard...
...Of course constraints exist, but too often these are an excuse to do nothing...
...REV...
...CHARLES J . KICKHAM, JR...
...I am the fh-st to acknowledge the vestiges of past practices which remain impedimenta in our quest for Newman's university . . . . "a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries, verified and perfected, and rashhesS rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge...
...Project One did not call on the Jesuit community at Holy Cross to plan the future of Holy Cross College (which includes many participants besides themselves...
...Bronx, N.Y...
...To find the courage to trust, all of us must look to ourselves and to those with whom we share the life of faith in community...
...O'Brien's relation of the actual situation...
...It is meager evidence of their "defending personal and corporate privilege," and to generalize this to all of American Catholic higher education is a serious distortion...
...DAVID O'BIUEN Department of History College of the Holy Cross 21 Jam~ry 1977: a...
...In order not to hold their preliminary conclusions concerning those consultations in abeyance, inconveniencing their many participants, the Provincials decided immediately on their return from Rome (April 1975), to publish them, as provisional...
...REV...
...He raises good issues, but I wish he had been more historical in presenting them...
...Above all, O'Brien badly misreads community life (on the college scene or elsewhere) if he presumes that more than a handful of college religious communities could agree on anything as substantial as college and university control...
...I am too far removed from Holy Cross to judge the accuracy of Dr...
...It is not, however, the position I would wish to uph6ld...
...In fact, I am naive enough to believe that the sponsoring refigiom congregation which has the courage to invite its faculty and students in a collegial spirit to actively undertake programs to explore the concrete meaning of renewal in its curricular and extracurricular programs will find an enormously sympathetic response from large sectors of its various constituencies...
...We may bemoan the fact that administrations and faculties step on each other's toes (.and maybe even do more violence) in the process, but let us not leave the impression, as David O'Brien does, that this is a special Catholic issue or unique to Catholic higher education...
...To move in this direction, we need first a rebirth of trust in one another and in our people, for there is no lack of ideas, programs and possibilities in the enormous resources of Catholic tradition and contemporary Catholic experience...
...Rather, I have tried to argue, the Catholic college or university should acknowledge its heritage and its relation to the universal community of faith by seeking to understand the needs and mission of that community and contribute to its life and work...
...To the Editors: To an interested friend of the College, David O'Brien's article 'q'he Holy Cross Case" [Oct...
...For .the project or ideal for Holy Cross, regardless of its merits, which this phrase represents, would seem to be one that empties the adjective "Catholic" of all but contingent, and potentially ephemeral or trivial significance...
...The Jesuit problem in higher education is the ongoing and irreversible secularization of the institutions founded by Jesuits and the progressive loss of Jesuit control of these institutions...
...The cry for "lay collaboration" is a needless one to the religious (as qualified as lay colleagues) who, long ago, joined the ranks of those unable to secure college employment, tenure or promotion in "their own" institutions...
...In this country, the Jesuits early erected an amazing network of institutions of higher education at a time when they were sorely needed and when there was no one else to do this essential work...
...I am bemused by O'Brien's resurrection of an old faithful bogeyman, the sponsoring religious order as powerhungry, green-eyed monster...
...The slim prospects for survival of an identifiable Catholic higher education, then, are hound up with the fate of the American Church...
...I regret that David O'Brien has yet to experience it...
...David O'Brien seriously errs in his perceptions on a number of counts...
...As the pool of Jesuit talent continues to dwindle in both quantity and quality, this last-ditch stand in the office of a powerful presidency becomes more and more difficult to maintain...
...It did give them the task of determining what they as a community are trying to do in their apostolate at Holy Cross...
...Surely, then, it is not too much to expect his followers to be able to reconcile themselves to the loss of their encurabering institutions, even though it might take 15 years rather than 15 minutes to achieve Ignatius' level of detachment...
...Even a half-hearted glance at the Catholic college scene reveals dwindling numbers of religious personnel and the accompanying diminution of presence, influence, power, whatever vocabulary one chooses...
...Louis, LeMoyne, Seattle, Gonzaga...
...Holy Cross Class '40 Detroit, Mich...
...PAUL H. BESANCENEY, S.5...
...It seems legitimate to do so before (or after) trying to get all of the neighbors together to talk about their common aspirations for the neighborhood...
...If that decline continues, and university inaction continues to contribute to it, then surely Catholic higher education has no future worth worrying about...
...Needless to say, acknowledgment of responsibility to the Catholic community should not imply a return to docile acceptance of direction by bishops or Roman congregations, nor return to authoritarian patterns of education or governance...
...The fact is that the present strength of Holy Cross in attracting excellent students is the very fact that the college does offer a first-rate liberal arts education with a campus-oriented atmosphere, which if you stop there is true of a good many other first-rate institutions, but Holy Cross does offer one additional dimension and that is that its education is permeated with the traditions and heritage of almost 150 years of Catholic religious atmosphere and Jesuit direction, and this does represent an alternative which does appeal at least to some students and their families and does afford this kind of choice...
...And now...
...The Provincials might have suspended judgment concerning Project One, making decisions only in the light of approved Congregation Documents, but uncertainty as to this approval, and pastoral concern for Jesuits and their colleagues in higher education motivated the provisional decisions made in April, an ongoing process...
...REV...
...He accuses the Jesuits of failing to notice that their institutions "share in the painful ambiguities and contradictions of the contemporary church," while he himself fails to acknowledge that Catholic higher education can only be examined in the context of the painful ambiguities and contradictions of contemporary American higher education...
...Ignatius never intended his sons to he caretakers of property, because men burdened by property and human institutions cannot be free followers of the Gospel...
...Acting President Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago Replg Some readers have misunderstood a point in "The Holy Cross Case," a result, undoubtedly, of my own lack of clarity...
...In this plan, Jesuits would staff the key administrative posts, particularly the office of the president, which should be made as powerful as possible...
...The enormous pressures from the Vatican focused on the Congregation made it quite doubtful meanwhile which Decrees would stand as voted by the Congregation...
...If they invite in other faculty members to their discussions, it should be clear that the purpose is to help the Jesuits clarify their role at Holy Cross...
...Rather, let the invitation to the vision of educating "the person for others" emanate from each sector of the college or university but, above all, from the faculty...
...Ye~, such a sketchy treatment forces the reader to reserve judgment on the merits of the tenure cases and the worth of the College's governance mechanisms...
...It is not made clear that the Project One consultations took place (in 1974) before the 32nd General Congregation (2 December 1974 to 7 March 1975...
...Theoretically, there is logic to the position advanced by Professor O'Brien, but I respectfully suggest that the practical results would be disastrous and that Holy Cross would not he a "Catholic Amherst," but instead would become a "Non-Catholic Holy Cross" which could not and would not favorably compete with Amherst, Williams, etc...
...To the Editors: The chief value of David O'Brien's perceptive piece on the crisis in Jesuit education is that it has situated the Holy Cross problem in the broader context of the Jesuit problem...
...These documents hold up the promotion of justice as one of the principal goals of Jesuit institutions...
...viction that the signs of declining interest in the Church, its leadership, its parishes, its apostolic movements, on the part of educated Catholics, can be overcome...
...Yet, facuRies, administrations and boards have been ill prepared to deal with these external pressures...
...Ignatius envisioned the spirit and the work of his Society of Jesus...
...to the Provost at the College o/ New Rochelle and was previously the _9 Director of Campus Ministry at Manhattan College, Bronx, New York...
...Whereas O'Brien himself candidly identifies the phrase (which is not his own coinage) with an option "to complete the transition to secularization," the phrase's rhetoric suggests something rather different, and may do the unwary a disservice as false advertising...
...At the risk of using an analogy that limps too much, let us say that your family decided to have a meeting to determine what you as a family might do to make yours a better neighborhood (or town...
...Last June the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) censured the Jesuit administration of Marquette University because of its policy on tenure for Jesuits...
...STEPHEN J . SWEENEY (The author el the above letter is Asst...
...He taught that Jesuits should not do the kind of work that others can do just as easily, and maybe even better...
...8] is a lucid illustration Of the .unacknowledged cross-purposes and resultant disingenuousness that dampen morale and deter progress in too many Catholic colleges and universities...
...But the prospect of loss of control by Jesuits over the institutions they founded seems to .have produced a panic in some Jesuit .minds...
...21 January 1977:46 Brookline, Mass...
...Yet I am not pessimistic, partly because I am aware of the signs of hope at places like the College of New Rochelle...
...St...
...Injustices held over from bygone days are nonetheless inexcusable, but let them not be held against the majority of college religious who earnestly continue to redefine their role on campus in the context of collegiality...
...I could not help feeling, however, that O'Brien's explanation points to a certain disingenuousness in the topic phrase itself, "a Catholic Amherst...
...On a recent visit to the Jesuit community at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, for example, I found that it had already been read by almost every Jesuit there...
...His followers, he said, should he breaking new ground, going where others cannot go, doing what others cannot do...
...Understandably, O'Brien must confine his description of recent faculty grievances at Holy Cross to a brief Commonweal...
...To the Editors: As one who helped to design Project One for Jesuits in the apostolate of education, I would like to clear up a basic misunderstanding in David O'Brien's otherwise excellent article, '~Fne Holy Cross Case" [Oct...
...WILLIAM G. GUINDON, S.J...
...If the documents of the Congregation are "among the most creative and exciting to emerge from the post-Conciliar Church," is it fair to conclude, that, precisely when no one knew which of them would be approved, and with what alterations, one should have expected a weary group of men to have instantly applied them in an important area...
...Let us at least permit Catholic higher education the same awkwardness as higher education in general as both confront changing characters in a time of retrenchment...
...To the Editors: The thesis of Professor O'Brien [Oct...
...O'Brien's article...
...Rather the invitation to the vision of Catholic higher education in the future, despite O'Brien's perceptions of religious/lay competition at Worcester, will come from individual faculty, religious and lay, who have thoroughly addressed their own mission and now eagerly join their colleagues in extending this sense of mission throughout their colleges...
...O'Brien uses these local situations at Worcester, shorn of their inherent complexities, to point the finger at the Jesuits and other orders who sponsor colleges and universities...
...But this optimism is conditioned by a con...
...If O'Brien will not concede that religious communities no longer wish control, then sheer numbers should convince him that there is little possibility for successful conspiracies to seize or maintain power...
...To the Editors: David O'Brien's "The Holy Cross Case" [Oct...
...It will never come from a faculty "ordinarily passive" or "conflict ridden," as O'Brien describes his colleagues...
...8] has imposed history after the manner of Eusebius of Caesarea...
...It can never come from faculty members who find bogeymen under the bed to explain away their own inaction...
...The many faculty members who have already quietly accepted this responsibility are for me a source of hope in the future of Catholic higher education...
...What might work would be an attitude of respectful attention to the needs of the Catholic people, combined with a willing...
...It is ironic that a layman should play the prophet for the institutional priesthood...
...For those concerned with a uniqueness for Catholic higher education and its future prosperity, there is little return in putting horns back on the Jesuits or flogging them or other religious orders with their own documents...
...One by-product of this approach is the certainty that it will be widely read by the Jesuits of the United States and Canada as well as by the Father General and others at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome...
...However, one would think that such facts clearly undermine any charge of preferential status...
...The thought is that Jesuits must be considered on an equal footing with all other faculty members or administrative personnel in the competition for every position at Holy Cross which will assure a first-rate academic program and that this is desirable and will lead to what Professor O'Brien suggests .might become a "Catholic Amherst...
...And all that requires is that we begin...
...The premise that a strong lay faculty cannot function as such with Jesuit influence and direction at Holy Cross is in my judgment not acceptable and instead, I believe, that such a faculty can and will work in partnership with the Jesuit Fathers and the combination will I predict, with the support of a loyal alumni, supply us with the strong Holy Cross of the future which is the aim of Professor O'Brien...
...Holy Cross is well on its way to becoming famous as something other than Bob Cousy's alma mater...
...Ignatius also said that if his Society were to be dissolved, it would take him about 15 minutes to be reconciled to this loss...
...There is an historical aspect deserving fairer emphasis...
...JAMES OAFFNEY Associate Professor Religious Studies Program Loyola University Newton, ,Mass...
...8] succinctly stated is that if Holy Cross is to deserve the reputation it proclaims as a quality fiberal arts college, and if it is to attract first-rate students on this basis, it must set aside the influence of the Jesuit Fathers and the role which the Jesuits play in the conduct of the affairs of the college...
...8], is generally fair and balanced, raising fundacommonweat: 47 mental issues...
...It is within the scope of our vocation to go to various places, and to live in any part of the world, where there is hope for God's greater service and the help of souls (Summary of the Jesuit Constitution, No...
...This has already become evident in a number of Jesuit colleges and universities...
...That religious have been equally subject to regular academic procedures for the past few years is not a cause for boasting, for justice does not tolerate any other course of action...
...However, enough sound evidence across the country not only denies O'Brien's indictment of sponsoring religious as seeking to maintain privileged status but clearly indicates a collegial atmosphere in the best interest of unencmnbered academic pursuit...
...That Church needs its universities, perhaps today more than ever, but those universities need the Church, the support, confidence and respect of the Catholic community...
...And that in turn, will require the same combination of mutual support and vigorous dialogue on the campus itself...
...Office of the Provincial Society of Jesus New Orleans, La...
...To the Editors: Upon the soft credulity of Commonweal David O'Brien ["The Holy Cross Case," Oct...
...Clearly these decrees were approved a/ter the Provincials' tentative conclusions on Project One...
...The case for a "Catholic Amherst" is the same as that made for years, that the Catholic college or university should seek to become an excellent college or university, no more, no less...
...Now that there are others equally compctent to carry on this work--many of whom .have been educated in these very institutions---the time has come for the Jesuits to leave these institutions behind and go to the countries of the third world, for example, where Jesuit expertise and dedication are needed...
...This has to be the primary task of the Jesuit presence...
...Catholic higher education has largely moved from narrow parochial concerns in cleric-dominated institutions to serious open-ended academic search in a collegial context...
...I think that Professor O'Brien has stimulated provocative discussion, but I am personally convinced that his proposals simply would not result, as he suggests, in a stronger Holy Cross, but indeed would ultimately result in the disappearance of Holy Cross...
...Clearly, no one welcomes the erosion of academic decision-making by the encroachment of federal intervention, judicial review or financial exigency...
...Earlier this month the trustees of the University of San Francisco fired its Jesuit president (he had recently been president of Fairfield University) because of his "inability to communicate with the faculty and serious deficiencies in his administration," according to board chairman Goodwin...
...On 10 May 1975, eight days after the Holy See had released the Congregation's Decrees, the Provincials published them in provisional translation...
...But, despite Jesuit apprehension, there is no real problem here, at least as far as St...
...9 . ." Yet, O'Brien sweeps away the impressive progress that has been achieved...
...If O'Brien's vision of Catholic higher education is based on the promotion of justice as an absolute requirement, then let that vision include an awareness in justice of the enormous personal and corporate investment of time, expertise and financial resources by religious orders, of which present-day Catholic higher education is the beneficiary...
...I do not intend these comments either as uncritical approval of Holy Cross administrative decisions or negative criticism of Dr...
...45 summary...
...hess to challenge them in the name of the wider tradition and reality with which the Church's intellectual leadership should be familiar...
...Readers of Commonweal will recall the strong argument made for this position by the late John Cogley...
...Yes, we Jesuits are trying to get our act together again in a world that has changed quite a lot...
...They will not win or preserve that respect by ignoring the teachings of the modem Church or the needs of the American Catholic community, nor by catering to the biases and self-interest of its most conservative members...
...This frenzy gave birth to the plan for a Jesuit presence in these old Jesuit colleges and universities on the assumption that the alumni would abandon all support of their Jesuit alma maters if the Jesuits should lose control...
...There are other aspects to the plan of a Jesuit presence, but this is the one that concerns us here...
...If we are unable to redirect the entire institution to a new collective consensus on what its Catholic identity means, then we will simply do nothing at all which challenges faculty, students, alumni, or anyone else...
...WILLIAM VAN ETTEN CASEY, S.J...
...Other Jesuit institutions that have had serious Jesuit presidential problems within the past five years are Georgetown, Boston College, Fairfield, Detroit, St...
...JOHN W. HOWARD Chicago, Ill...
...It should suggest that t~e questions stirring the Church should find their place on campus, that Church people should look to the campus for assistance in the work of renewal and the mission of justice, that schools which call themselves Catholic should attempt to do some things which will he of help to persons in the Church trying to fulfill their responsibilties in the concrete conditions of the United States in the 1970s...
...The figures, I believe, tell us that we have almost 45,000,000 Catholics in America, approximately four times as many as the next largest religious denomination and it would therefore, seem reasonable that a Catholic college aspiring to supply a quality liberal arts education patterned after the Amhersts, the Williams', Bowdoins, etc...
...for the quality students of the future...
...Such progress should not be lightly dismissed...
...Obviously, many good students will not be at all persuaded by this additional aspect and many might well be turned away because of it, but nevertheless its availability to those who feel that it represents a plus instead of a minus is the important consideration...
Vol. 104 • January 1977 • No. 2
