REFORGING CATHOLIC IDENTITY

...It draws young men and women of Catholic identity...

...But it would be foolish for ferance of those who rightfully belong...

...In the first Workshops and Institutes place, it is an internally generated one arising out of the suc- 23rd Annual Aging Religious and Diocesan cessful development of U.S...

...This to Catholic intellectual life as a criterion for faculty posi- is not an easy thing for an administration to achieve in any tions across the board...

...Among its benefactors are Jews, development...

...standing, on the other...

...ty, tolerance, and support for nonconformity...

...The best language for an administration to lay down competence in these matters our dealings in this area is probably the language of partas a universal or general requirement...

...D. John L. White, Ph...

...tributors to its growth and well-being...

...They could sense collegiality JAnniversary and even affection in their relationships with committed Catholics and members of religious orders, with whom they Center for Professional Development could also have vigorous disagreements...

...and (2) that a department should understand that giving serious weight to this consideration is one of the consequences of its place in a Catholic institution...

...The Catholic Web site: www.miseri.edu/adulted university for them, and for many of those who work in it, has Commonweal 2 1 April 21, 2000 become a marbled reality, both secular and Catholic...

...John Langan trengthening and renewing the Catholic iden- ity in the contemporary academic world...

...town University...

...Commonweal 20 April 21, 2000 ties have arrived at a point of crisis...

...June 10.15, 2000 July 29-August 3, 2000 After 1965, American Catholicism became more assimilated Dallas, Pennsylvania Madison, Wisconsin to the American mainstream, less dependent on European intellectual models, more conscious of itself as sharing in the • 7th Annual Institute of Law and Religious Life political and cultural life of the dominant world power, less responsive to discipline from Rome and appeals to tradition...

...Clearly, proposals which insistence on the fulfillment of contractual obligations...

...On the other side, institutions need presenting the Catholic tradition to its students...

...An outside In any given university, one is unlikely to find all these observer may well harbor serious doubts about this, given people...

...The college forms an im- university needs to sustain is a core body of scholars who are portant part of the life of the civic community...

...n this new phase of their history, Catholic colleges and universities found that the massive May 25-31, 2000 expansion of public higher education did not • College Misericordia, Dallas, PA I put them out of business...

...The faculty's priority of all faculty members, and that those who do not share in the governance of the university, which is a widely share this priority are members of the university commuvariable factor, is not diminished by a commitment of the nity in good standing and very often are significant conCatholic college or university to provide a Catholic education...

...Its task is not to sion, it can then offer a wider range of considerations, op- supplant the judgment of the faculty but to raise critical portunities, and exemplary experiences than the secular uni- questions about the criteria and the conclusions of faculty Commonweal 2 2 April 21, 2000 processes of deliberation...

...During the twenty years after the Second World War, American Catholic colleges and universi- Only workshop of its kind for religious, diocesan priests ties, along with all other areas of higher education, grew in re- and laity working with the aged...

...On the one side, it pushes in the direction of quisition and the role of missionaries in colonization, a more secularization...

...that document had never been written...

...The civic knowledgeable about the Catholic tradition, who pursue culture expects the Catholic college to exemplify the diver- their various disciplines in a way that puts contemporary sity of American society in a distinctively Catholic mode, questions to the tradition, and who turn to the tradition for and to show that it has internalized the American traditions light on contemporary problems...

...In many cases before arriving at Saint Mart's the margins, and it offers a definite answer to the question of or Loyola, they have no more experience with Catholic edu- how the Catholic identity of the institution is to be maincation than with Tibetan Buddhism...

...Partnership recognizes the distinctiveness and teachers concerned about Catholic issues leave non- and the autonomy of the partners and is compatible with Catholic members of the faculty...

...Historically, it has drawn stu- sent the Catholic intellectual tradition, and to extend it by dents from a diversity of religious backgrounds, though the academic processes of interpretation, criticism, and creative majority have been Catholic...

...They would need to be addressed even if ligion is bound to miss this kind of enriching diversity...

...meaning of the lives of Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa as The tensions created by such a project are, I want to em- well as Eleanor Roosevelt, Edith Wharton, Margaret Thatchphasize, an internal result of the development of Catholic er, Marilyn Monroe, and Hannah Arendt...

...f neither comprehensive secularization nor an There is a wider civic culture in which Catholic colleges and effort to establish a permanent Catholic mauniversities are embedded...

...They are not equates pluralism with secularism and which assumes that created by Rome or by the norms intended to implement the protection of pluralism requires the marginalization of reEx corde ecclesiae...

...Its job is to underscore that the Catholic contribution to the educational process is not con- sldft fined solely to the theology department...

...Indeed, many Catholic faculty members The concern over Catholic identity shows up in many dif- will judge that it is also an affront to a Catholic understandferent areas: the content of theology and philosophy cours- ing of the university...

...In- and Corporate Ministries stitutions experienced both pressures and satisfactions in conforming to dominant American models and practices...

...Here the administration needs to be consistent and fair in the At the same time, the administration should ways in which it applies standards of evaluation and in the recognize that it is not appropriate to insist on a contribution ways in which it distributes benefits and opportunities...

...These people often developed into fine teachers and scholars and Biblical Scholars: Amy-Jill Levine, Ph...

...In more recent decades, as the academic job market got A week of hospitality, spirituality, and thought-provoking tighter, positions at Catholic institutions became more at- scripture addressed by scholars...

...primary agenda is not academic...

...It has to provide a peda- themselves...

...As a result, they 301 Lake Street, Dallas, PA 18612-1098 came to be more comfortable with Sisters of Mercy or Jesuits, Religious of the Sacred Heart or Benedictines, than (570)674-6161 fax (570)674-6232 with Catholics in general, or with what they often referred to e-mail: conted@miseri.edu with aversion and anxiety as "The Church...

...Can a university which gives religious considerations a central place in its hiring process retain credibilJohn Langan, S.J., is Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of "Aren't you a little hard on your flock, Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, George- calling them a bunch of sheep...

...Such a means of imates in addition to training future scientists and profession- plementing and maintaining a Catholic identity would damal persons...

...Tests of orthodoxy and reCatholic colleges and universities is felt within the spon- ligious practice will have to be instituted...

...It threaten the academic freedom of non-Catholic professors avoids paternalism and allows for real differences about are not acceptable...

...REFORGING CATHOLIC IDENTITY How will non-Catholic faculty fit in...

...ple the depth of these issues and raise the possibility of a The administration, however, has to play an active role commitment to transcendent goods...

...Catholic scholars and teachers, largely trained in Catholic One possibility, considered at the highest levels of the colleges and graduate schools, retires...

...the college has done for them, their family, their employ- Rather, it falls on the faculty taken as a whole...

...Madeline Welch, OSU, JD, ably less...

...in phi- the long-term control of the institution will remain in losophy, from Brown and Pittsburgh...

...But it should vision in the faculty...

...What the ees, their neighbors, and their city...

...But the administration of a Catholic university must committed Catholics, they may well judge, as they look at make strenuous efforts to meet high standards of justice and their areas of competence and interest, that attempting to fairness in its treatment of faculty members...

...ments on other faculty members does not curtail their Finally, administrators, donors, parents, alumni, and academic freedom...

...Can a university which has no effective Catholic presence in its faculty truly be a Catholic university...

...By offering something distinctive, which could JCL...

...themes and issues are well covered in the offerings and programs of the college as a whole...

...Highly focused on sponse to the G.I...

...rist who argues within natural-law categories, a historian But doesn't the value of pluralism point in two different of the Iberian peninsula who thinks carefully about the Indirections...

...A Catholic college or university should be to strike most of these academics negatively: as regressive, pressing its students, both male and female, to think about the ungrateful, demeaning, threatening, intrusive, or unjust...

...An administration should be justifiably concerned age the credibility of the project and of the administration, if no one in its science departments can address such issues and would harm the careers even of well qualified scholars as the environmental impact of science, the conflicts be- and teachers who were identified with it...

...Even if they are tions...

...The not be taken as constituting the whole reality of a Catholic first is by treating those faculty members who are seen as university, which must exist and flourish in the overlapcontributing to the Catholic identity of the school in a high- ping worlds of free and disciplined inquiry, on the one hand, ly favorable way which discriminates against other mem- and religious commitment which seeks further underbers, Catholic and non-Catholic, who are not so involved...

...But a view that universities and colleges over the last fifty years...

...D. contributed significantly to the improved academic standing • Gina Hens-Piazza, Ph...

...In theology, they are tained, namely, by recruiting Catholics...

...higher education...

...Their work for the Another concern, not so easily addressed, is whether this university and for their students is something that should be sort of proposal will produce something like a two-tier di- highly valued and appropriately rewarded...

...Catholic universities over the Priests last two generations...

...El Commonweal 2 3 April 21, 2000...

...which required serious professionalization...

...This could happen in two ways...

...This allows for some pluralism at gious traditions...

...If it is faithful to its mis- in the development of such a faculty core...

...But as nearly everyone acknowledges, the heart of the matter lies with the faculty and in particular with the priorities the faculty brings to the task of choosing and hiring its own members...

...Given these ex- ber of such scholars and teachers in the theology and phipectations, it is very likely that a sustained effort to impose losophy departments...

...D. of Catholic institutions...

...They achieved a size and complexity holistic approaches, solutions and practical applications...

...What place will a priority for S ical concern on many Catholic campuses...

...A religious college or university has to maintain free and This core faculty of scholars and teachers who maintain open discussion of the major ideas and issues of what is our the Catholic identity of the university need not be Catholic common, though divided, world...

...and in other disci- Catholic hands and that this can be done without affronting plines, from better graduate schools across the country, in the majority of the university community, who will themwhich sympathy for the Catholic tradition is usually minimal...

...versity, precisely because it has the freedom to include the reToday the project of turning around this history and try- ligious dimension of human life in central parts of the eduing to make a Catholic university more Catholic is bound cational process...

...tractive...

...make such a contribution is not the best use of their talents The second way in which such a proposal could be proor their research opportunities...

...Many, probably most, facEvery college president today understands that the refash- ulty members will conclude that such an approach is an afioning of Catholic identity in a way that will be effective in front to the American academic tradition, that it is simply a new social and demographic context is an essential part of incompatible with the pursuit of excellence in American his or her work...

...But a proposal which aims at recruiting values and ends, even while it provides a framework for faculty who will engage with Catholic issues in an academ- people to work together for shared goals and to work sepaic and scholarly way without imposing additional require- rately when that seems best...

...Can it cope with tity of Catholic colleges and universities is a crit- legal challenges to doing so...

...object of study and as a vital concern of scholars...

...Co-Directors Bernadette Kenny, RSHM, JD and range from a smaller, less impersonal setting to the contin- • Cecilia Meighan, RSM, Ed.D, JD uing presence of religious symbols and practices, they could attract people unsatisfied by public higher education or who 32 Annual Institute on Sacred Scripture were neither financially nor socially comfortable in entering elite private higher education...

...selves be Catholic...

...Re- Catholics leave for non-Catholic members of the faculty, flection and planning on the topic have become many of whom have served, often with distinction, for long more focused as the number of religious men and women periods of time and who understandably resist any hint of teaching in them has declined and as an earlier generation of second-class status...

...Priests and religious church, is to require that the majority of the faculty as well have been replaced by a younger generation that includes as of the administration and the board of trustees should far more women and is drawn from a wide range of reli- be "faithful Catholics...

...Indeed secular universities common- chemist who reflects on environmental problems in the light ly pride themselves on being bastions of pluralism, diversi- of religious values...

...Many faculty members, including case, for decisions about tenure and promotion often inhighly distinguished scholars, will lack the training and the volve incommensurable factors and confidential considerainclination to make such a contribution...

...nership rather than the language of family or of citizenship Where would such a proposal for a faculty core of scholars or of ownership...

...It also implies that more likely to be recruited from Yale and Chicago...

...But it is not only the faculty that might react anxiously...

...They tended to share the values of academic liberalism, to accept abortion as both a woman's right and a personal tragedy, to support gay M ISERICORDIA rights, and to be religiously reticent, regardless of their per- 1924-199975th sonal beliefs and backgrounds...

...Focus: Religious Institutes: Corporate Structure Many emblems of Catholic distinctiveness were jettisoned...

...he administration must see to it that Catholic Couldn't you expose something else...

...Designed for those in positions of leadership in Roman Catholic congregations...

...The typical school is located in a I jority on the faculty is an appropriate or feasicity or in a region where it has become a focus of accom- ble response, what can be done about the crisis plishment and aspiration...

...They make Catholicism effectively present both as identity of a university...

...Doctoral graduates from secular campuses might not have much sympathy with or understanding of the Catholic July 30-August 4, 2000 faith, but they needed jobs, and they came to appreciate the College Misericordia, Dallas, PA scale and the order of the Catholic educational world...

...a distinct need not be organized in a particular program...

...Ellen nancial resources and that charged their students consider- • M. O'Hara, CSJ, JCL, JD...

...These faculty to be pluralistic and tolerant in different ways...

...but one also hopes for a good Dante Catholic uniformity will not be persuasive to the larger civic scholar, a sociologist of religion who can look at Catholicommunity, and that such an effort will damage the college cism as a global phenomenon, an economist who knows as a locus of civic cooperation and estrange it from important how to interpret Catholic social teaching, a political theoconstituencies...

...the secular side in the culture wars...

...tween scientific and humanistic accounts of the human per- Non-Catholic faculty are not to be regarded as secondson, the social responsibility of scientists, the implications of class citizens or hired hands or guests who live on the sufvarious sciences for epistemology...

...but one needs a certain number of them, a "critical the high degree of uniformity which actually marks their mass," who will talk with each other, read papers, refer stubehavior and attitudes, and the recent pressures for political dents back and forth, and sustain a broad interdisciplinary correctness which have led various universities to restrict conversation that meets the university's responsibility for certain forms of speech...

...The essential task which the faculty from inner-city schools and middle-income suburbs, from has to carry on with regard to Catholic identity is to prefarms and country towns...

...Concern about the increasingly secular character of But who are faithful Catholics...

...Noel Keller, RSM, Ph.D., director They also came to feel at home in the individual institutions in which they worked, even though they usually remained on Call for Brochure and Register Today...

...They could do well even when competing against institutions that had greater fi- Distinguished faculty: Mary Louis Miller, RSM, JD...

...You had to expose religion...

...This, of course, is not a task for each and every Protestants, and nonbelievers who appreciate the work that faculty member...

...foundly divisive and destructive would be for an adminisOne can draw a parallel here with the administration's tration to hire candidates for the purpose of maintaining desire that each department in a college of liberal arts be Catholic identity who are consistently or conspicuously less able to contribute to the liberal education of undergradu- well qualified than their colleagues...

...Their task is good is accomplished when a major moral and religious tra- to work as scholars and teachers in a university, not as prodition as exemplified, for instance, in Catholicism or in fessors in a seminary or in a program of religious formaMethodism or in Judaism, plays a constitutive role in the tion...

...The crucial criterion is intellectual interest and gogy which will open up for a new generation of young peo- competence in matters that form part of the Catholic tradition...

...So it seems clear that on this question of es, the behavior tolerated or forbidden in residence halls, maintaining a Catholic faculty, American Catholic universithe interpretation and fulfillment of the academic and religious commitment to social justice and community service, the choice of candidates for honorary degrees, the sorts of speakers who appear on campus, and relationships with church authorities...

...This reduced the contribution of the founding religious community or dio- Two convenient locations: cese to a small percentage of both the faculty and the budget...

...Efforts to deal with this promising faculty candidates...

...Intrusive and emsoring religious communities, by alumni and parents, in barrassing questions will be asked which will deter many diocesan offices, and at the Vatican...

...It must remind i members of all departments that (1) the contribution to matters of Catholic concern should be identified as one of the considerations to be weighed for some of the positions which become open...

...Bill...

...The ultimate assessment of concern in a realistic and effective way are part of the regu- the candidate's suitability will be made by persons whose lar agenda of boards of directors and councils of deans...

...Two things should be noted about this crisis...

...The faculty will not lose its share of power church authorities need to bear in mind that working to dein the hiring process, which will continue to be a matter of ne- velop Catholic intellectual and academic life is not a shared gotiation between faculty and administration...

...One expects to find a numof academic freedom and open controversy...