Here’s what Fordham said to the New York Post about its honoring of pro-abortion Mayor Michael Bloomberg at its undergraduate commencement ceremony and its refusal to advise Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York about its actions:

Fordham said the fact that “it hosts speakers . . . across the political spectrum points to a vibrant culture of engagement with the real world, rather than an insufficiency of Catholic teaching.”

It added, “The quality of a Catholic education at the university can’t be measured by trying to parse the positions of speakers or honorees in relation to Church teachings.”

These comments can only be construed as contemptuous of the opinions and authority of the U.S. bishops, who in their 2004 document “Catholics in Political Life” stated, “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

Fordham’s actions were equally contemptuous of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York. As we noted in today’s first Daily Blog entry about Fordham’s scandalous commencement ceremony, last weekend’s honoring of Bloomberg contradicted the understanding Cardinal Edward Egan thought he had reached with the Jesuit university only a few months ago: that it would not confer such honors without discussing its actions beforehand with its archbishop.

And Fordham’s honoring of Bloomberg is made even more dismissive of the bishops’ authority by the fact that it occurred one day before the University of Notre Dame honored pro-abortion President Barack Obama at its own commencement. Given that more than 80 U.S. bishops have publicly denounced Notre Dame’s decision as scandalous, it’s not as though Fordham’s administration had the slightest misconception about how its actions would be viewed.

But as in the case of Notre Dame — which has been equally contemptuous of its own local bishop, Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind. — Fordham isn’t slightly apologetic about what it has done.

In both cases, Fordham and Notre Dame have declared in the bluntest terms possible that they, and not the American bishops, are the arbiters of what is acceptable conduct for an institution that calls itself a Catholic university. And as a consequence, the administrations of both colleges don’t appear amenable even to any self-examination of their actions, let alone to any correction undertaken by the Church hierarchy.

This attitude comes as confirmation of the gloomy assessment of one American archbishop, who privately told Russell Shaw that he sees little likelihood the controversy over Notre Dame will prompt a change of heart among America’s Catholic universities.

Shaw recounts the archbishop’s comments in a May 18 entry at OSV’s Daily Take blog:

Ten days before the May 17 Notre Dame University commencement at which President Barack Obama was to speak and receive an honorary degree, I told an archbishop who’s a friend that I thought this was a watershed. One reason for that, I explained, lay in the remarkably large number of individual bishops — approaching 80 as this is written — who took the initiative to speak up in protest against Notre Dame’s bestowal of honors upon our aggressively pro-abortion chief executive.

The archbishop smiled sadly and shook his head. “Six months from now it will all be forgotten, and everything will be business as usual,” he said. It was clear that by “business as usual” he wasn’t suggesting that the state of American Catholicism had been all that good before the Notre Dame-Obama flap.

Shaw is a bit less gloomy than his friend the archbishop. He suggests progress is possible, in terms of restoring Catholic identity on Catholic campuses, if the necessary lessons are drawn from the Notre Dame fiasco. According to Shaw, who is a former spokesman for the U.S. bishops’ conference, those lessons are that American Catholics are deeply divided; that Catholic colleges must accept accountability to the bishops if they want to claim an authentic Catholic identity; and that the bishops must act vigorously to defend Catholic identity vigorously when it is undermined by the actions of individual colleges.

Concluded Shaw, “If these lessons are learned, the Notre Dame controversy may do some good. But if my friend the archbishop is right in predicting business as usual within six months, the future of Catholic identity in higher education and other areas of the Church’s infrastructure isn’t bright. How very sad if it turns out like that.”