Media headlines suggest that bishops are no more welcome in undergraduate theology departments than PETA would be at NRA’s headquarters. But maybe that’s old news. 

Last week, I took a break from the keyboard and attended a Washington, D.C. symposium on “The Intellectual Tasks of the New Evangelization,” organized by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine. He invited a group of 54 young, untenured theologians to spend time with Church leaders and prominent theologians.

The subtext was that this younger generation would still be open to new ways of transmitting the Church’s teaching to poorly catechized undergraduates.

I wrote about the symposium in this article posted earlier this week.
First Things linked to the story, and other news sites have also taken notice of the bishops’ striking effort to confront problematic scholars or textbooks that may foster dissent — or at least confuse — students at Catholic universities.

Many theologians take a dim view of a more assertive role by bishops who want to tighten up the standards and content of university courses. Earlier this year, when the USCCB Committee on Doctrine criticized a popular theological work by Sister Elizabeth Johnson that has been assigned as a textbook in many college classes.  The Catholic Theological Society of America took the USCCB Committee on Doctrine to task for issuing a public critique of the text.

But there may well be a growing, if still silent minority of young theologians who welcome leadership from our episcopal shepherds. After my article on the symposium was posted, I received the following e-mailed message from one of the symposium’s invitees:  Ryan N.S. Topping,, a visiting Chair in Studies in Catholic Theology at the John XXIII Centre for Catholic Thought at St. Thomas University in Canada. He wrote:

“Much of the animosity felt by older theologians toward the Vatican or, more generally, toward episcopal authority, has simply disappeared. …. To young eyes media events that play up the conflict between freedom and authority look tired, and to be a pastime for the retiring.
“By contrast, the majority of young Catholic philosophers and theologians that I have met through my teaching — in England, Canada and America - are eager to serve the Church, to imbibe her customs, and to perpetuate her faith. For the most part, where frustration is felt it is not at being restricted by authority; it is at not being confidently commissioned, that is to say, at the reluctance of some bishop’s to celebrate the faith they are entrusted to proclaim and the reluctance of some bishop’s to correct those who would distort Catholic teaching.
Topping pronounced the symposium to be “inspiring.”

“It was encouraging to be in the presence of leaders — lay and ordained — who called us to return with confidence to the sources of our faith.” On a personal level, he was inspired that “a number of the young participants I met this weekend had growing families of four or five children (I have four of my own). I observed once more that what younger believers are increasingly experiencing is not a rebellion against their seniors — for that is old; but a rebellion against rebellion, a revolt against intellectual anarchy and a return to tradition. The conference put on by the U.S. Bishops’ Conference is a herald of these new times. And I am grateful for it.”

It’s not the kind of message that will spark a headline in The New York Times, but his statement suggests that we must take all the press releases generated by media-friendly theological dissidents with a grain of salt. There’s another story brewing in our undergraduate theology departments and one day the “rebellion against the rebellion” will hit the headlines.