Editorials
Verdicts yet to come As a practical and legal matter, the Curran case is over. The trial of Catholic University and, in a broader perspective, Catholic higher education and the Catholic church is...
...Among many reasons to be grateful for the quiet persistence of Father Curran has been his insistence that a good deal more than his professorial status.is at stake in this fight...
...Thus Catholic University's definition of the church...
...Adverting to Curran's reasoning at the conclusion of his decision, Weisberg said, "Maybe Professor Curran is right," [about the good of the church], but that is not a matter "the court has either the right or the competence to decide....[What] is ultimately good for the University or for the Church is some-thing they have a right to decide for themselves...
...Asked, in the course of this trial, why he had turned to the court to order Catholic University to permit him to teach theology there, he responded: "In the last analysis, I think it's not only good for me, but I think it's good for Catholic University...
...But the price of that finding was the judge's conclusion that when it came to academic freedom, Catholic University had never decided to be "a full-fledged American university...
...The Code of Canon Law provides that the Pope usually conducts the business of the entire Church through the Roman Curia, which consists of a number of institutions, including Congregations...
...Insiders are often more aware that Catholic history is replete with cases of individuals and institutions that have rightfully and successfully challenged hierarchical or papal authority and have been hon-ored for it (although too seldom in their own lifetimes...
...No bishops, no sacraments, no worshiping communities, no bap-tized people, none of that mysterious communion currently emphasized in official documents...
...The university and the church...
...But isn 't that to confess that when push comes to shove, theological reflection on the mys-tery of the church is just so much inspirational rhetoric, and that, in the opinion of some people, including CU's chancellor and board, the church can be defined far more economically: It's pope and curia...
...The victory of Catholic University over Father Charles E. Curran was distinctly Pyrrhic...
...There is neither appeal nor recourse from a decision or decree of the Roman Pontiff...
...In evaluating Curran's contract, Weisberg may have been overly impressed-as outsiders often are-with the hierarchical and papal aspect of the church and unduly swayed by a simplified notion of "religious conviction" said to have "compelled" the university to follow Cardinal orders...
...Nothing of the hierarchy of truths...
...Nor should the bishops allow to pass uncontested the university's facile sacrifice of episcopal au-thority...
...The trial of Catholic University and, in a broader perspective, Catholic higher education and the Catholic church is not...
...It is easy to argue that the university provided that definition for the purposes of a legal dispute...
...The Church's Code of Canon Law provides that the Pope s or Roman Pontiff "enjoys supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power in the Church which he can always freely exercise...
...In the judge's eyes, this was true at the very least in the area of theology although both his reasoning and certain questions raised during the trial suggest that the limits to academic freedom at CU may not stop with theology...
...Not a word about conscience...
...So does the Congregation for Catholic Education's second draft on higher education, to be discussed in April by the congregation and some two hundred delegates representing Catholic colleges and universities (see Commonweal, January 27,1989...
...Catholicism will not be strengthened if its creative, thinkers find it necessary or prudent to locate themselves in non-Catholic institutions, or if Catholic schools are given the choice of either becoming seminaries or becoming secularized...
...God's copyright holders are busy with new protections, new norms, and new permission fees...
...Being "a full-fledged American university" is not necessarily the final prize for Catholic higher education...
...He is the universal legislator and judge...
...Essentially, the question turned on what a reasonable person could have expected to be the degree of academic freedom incorporated into the contents of a Catholic University theology professor's contract in the early 1970s...
...The church needs a sounder, more generous notion of orthodoxy than has been defined by Cardinal Ratzing-er, one that contains within it the principles of correction and development as well as continuity...
...The term "Holy See" refers to the Pope and the various institutions of the Roman Curia...
...He avoided the shoals of First Amendment issues, neither accepting CU's argument that it had sweeping exemption from court review because of its religious character (hence his refusal to dismiss the case), nor intervening in any way that would have impinged on a school's right to define its religious character (hence his observation that even had the court found for Curran it was "unthinkable" that the settlement would have required his reinstatement in the classroom...
...The church and orthodoxy need independent nodes of thought, checks and balances, self-' criticism...
...Canon 360...
...In other words, the responsibility comes back to those of us who believe that neither Catholic University, nor Catholic higher education, nor the church itself can be defined simply as the pope and his aides...
...But a definition of the church shaped by lawyers in the context of a civil trial should not be acceptable to the People of God-including the faculty of Catholic University and their academic peers elsewhere...
...What is lament-able about the Curran case is not that the university sacrificed the good of Father Curran out of its concern for orthodoxy but that it sacrificed the good of orthodoxy out of its concern over Father Curran...
...Canon 331...
...And the issues are sharpened still more by the imposition of an oath of fidelity to all official church teaching for teachers of Catholic theology as well as church officials, which went into effect March 1 unbeknownst to anyone but its authors at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith...
...This is the point that shouldn't be forgotten...
...Indeed, that reasoning-based as it is on CU's own self-description at trial-creates some painful issues for all of Catholic higher education...
...Robust inquiry, full debate, honest admission of error are the marks of mature belief and healthy orthodoxy...
...District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg found that the university did not violate Curran's contract as a tenured professor when it barred him from teaching Catholic theology on orders from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (excerpts from the decision begin on page 164...
...Judge Weisberg was faced with a difficult case and resolved it plausibly, though as with many hard cases, it is not hard to imagine how a contrary conclusion could have been reached...
...EVen academic freedom for the Catholic theologian...in the last analysis, aca-demic freedom, itself, is for the good of the church...
...But insofar as the academic freedom of full-fledged universities means that intellectual supervision is not handed over to forces outside the academy, Catholic higher education should prize it, precisely for the sake of Catholicity...
...Weisberg may have been relying on a general impression or on Catholic University's description of the church, hammered home throughout the trial, and nowhere expressed in more concentrated form than in the "findings of fact," which sum up CU's case and legal conclusion: The Roman Catholic Church is a hierarchical church...
...He is correct...
Vol. 116 • March 1989 • No. 6
