WASHINGTON — An organization that has been calling for stronger Catholic identity in colleges and universities is charging that another organization for Catholic higher education is undermining its work in a document about student life on campuses.

The Cardinal Newman Society is planning to finalize a document on student life at its annual conference here on Nov. 9.

But Monika Hellwig, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), in a Sept. 25 letter to college presidents, campus ministers and directors of student life, warned that the proposed guidelines are unrealistic and punitive.

Hellwig said in an interview that the Cardinal Newman Society does not speak for Catholic higher education. A letter inviting college officials to its conference has them worried that colleges soon will be subjected to even more guidelines from the bishops, in addition to those issued in 1999. She also invited college officials to the ACCU's own conference on student life in Washington, D.C., which drew 70 participants Oct. 9.

Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, charged that the invitation was intended to draw people away from his conference, but Hellwig said the ACCU conference was planned during the last academic year.

The ACCU president noted that the Newman Society conference will take place at a hotel across the street from where U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is having its annual fall meeting. “As always many bishops have been invited to attend, a number of whom have little if any contact with Catholic colleges and could easily be persuaded that our campuses are places of reckless immorality and corruption of the young,” Hellwig said.

The two organizations have different ideas on how colleges should shape Catholic life on campus. The Newman Society's guidelines propose minimum expectations for Catholic colleges in the areas of residence life, campus ministry, student activities, student conduct and other aspects of college life outside the classroom. It takes a hard line on topics such as overnight visitation in dorms and sexual activity in residence halls, as well as invitations to campus speakers who are abortion-rights politicians and activists.

But the “tenor” of the guidelines is “punitive and rests on the assumption that there is little moral education on our campuses, and that the culture is one of thoughtlessness and recklessness,” Hellwig wrote.

“That nicely describes many Catholic colleges today,” Reilly retorted.

The Newman Society says it will encourage the bishops to develop a document on Catholic campus life as a companion to their 1999 guidelines to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education.

Hellwig believes the Newman proposals, which can be viewed at www.cardinalnewmansociety.org under “documents,” assume an unrealistic control a college has over students on and off campus.

She said the ACCU and the Newman Society have the same understanding of Catholic morality and Catholic life but differ in their understanding of the formation of a d u l t Catholics. The N e w m a n Society, she contends, wants students kept under tight control, while the ACCU favors teaching students to discern the proper response to moral choices, especially when they are in situations where there is “no external enforcement.”

“You can't teach moral standards without minimal expectations and real consequences for violating them,” Reilly said. “But our guidelines strongly emphasize teaching and helping students develop in positive ways. I'd question the extent to which many Catholic colleges are serious about doing this.”

He said many Catholic colleges sponsor sexuality programs that are “not in line with Church teaching,” encourage contraceptive use and remain neutral or condone homosexuality. Many campus health centers, he said, refer pregnant students to Planned Parenthood.

Although programs addressing alcohol usage are common, very few positive programs encourage sexual abstinence, he said.

Hellwig said ACCU conference participants discussed ways to coax young people into seeing the reasons for Christian moral values. The answer is in a combination of curriculum, campus ministry, student affairs and “the kinds of people we hire and the examples they give,” she said.

“Those are all issues we're addressing in our conference,” said Reilly, who criticized the ACCU's approach as being too laissezfaire.