Catholic Universities

The sources for your front page article “Academic Institute to Sidestep Bishops” (March 28-April 3, 1999) may have been less than well informed themselves. The title of the article is misleading because it suggests evasion or opposition to the bishops, which is contrary to the fact.

As to what happened at the annual meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities the facts are rather simple. We are in the midst of lengthy discussions with our bishops, both nationally and locally, about the most appropriate way of translating the General Norms of the Apostolic Constitution Ex corde ecclesiae into the required local ordinances for the United States. Other episcopal conferences are similarly engaged with the universities under their jurisdiction. As far as we know, none have yet completed the process and received approval from Rome, because the process is complex. Last October a proposal was presented not by but to the bishops' implementation committee, which sent out to all involved a request for comments on the workability of the proposal. There is a general sense that there would be serious problems with this proposal. When the ACCU board met before the annual meeting, it passed a resolution requesting that the implementation committee proceed by way of seeking from Rome a five year ad experimentum period with the document the bishops had passed in November 1996, which the Holy See found needed further specifics. The resolution asked this on the grounds that the ongoing dialogues with the bishops were proving very productive.

This resolution was not rejected by the members at the business meeting. In fact it was never presented to them. The reason for this was that in the meantime the speech given by Cardinal George the previous evening suggested another, more attractive possibility that had not occurred to us, namely to offer some suggestions of ways that the further specifics of the Holy See might be formulated to avoid the problems. It was one of the suggestions that came from the floor at that business meeting, and we have been acting on it.

Concerning the institute that is planned, your source may be under the impression that it is to be a theological institute. This is not the case. It is to be an institute of Catholic studies in a much broader sense, dealing with the whole range of the Catholic intellectual tradition, involving the keeping alive of the heritage in literature, art, political theory, philosophy, music and drama, and so forth, and bringing the Catholic heritage and expertise into conversation with modern natural and social sciences and with the great social and human questions of our times. A broad interdisciplinary exchange of scholarship is envisaged. Hence the Commission that your source finds so threatening includes a mathematician, some sociologists, several historians, some philosophers, some people with expertise in running research institutes, representatives of religious congregations, a judge, a litterateur, a journal editor and so forth. Most of us in this group now serve or have in the past served on various committees of the USCC.

Concerning the talk given by Father Heft, SM, at the university of Dayton, it seems extraordinary to launch an attack in the name of orthodoxy on a text published in Origins. This journal is published by the USCC and ordinarily publishes statements of the Holy See, the NCCB or individual bishops or other church officials.

Monika K. Hellwig

Executive Director

Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities

On the Other Hand...

Thank you for the most informative article by Brian Caulfield titled “Academic institute To Sidestep Bishops” (Register, March 28 – April 3).

I have researched the “gilded age” legacy of American foundations such as the Carnegie and Rockefeller efforts. These foundations and others like them amounted to a creation of secular materialist power machines, some called Institutes. They manufactured a product cadre of secular materialist experts who were funneled into Protestant universities, and eventually government of the time, to interpret the truths of Scripture and atheist science for human consumption. These elite philanthropies sidestepped the governing authorities of the time to compete with their own interpretation of truths. Sure they accepted the truths, but just saw them differently; like killing didn't include pre-born life; and like religion was real, but just a real fantasy of the mind.

Now I see a parallel effort against the Faithful Church Teaching Magisterium and Ex Corde Ecclesiae, to mimic the great earlier success of secular materialism in wrecking Protestant school traditions such as at Yale, Harvard, etc.

The flaunting of big money, $50 million dollar endowment to start, in itself says something about the worldly power security of the Ex Corde Ecclesiae adversaries. I bet they will get plenty of money; every enemy of the Faithful Church can surely be counted upon to contribute to such a wonderful “funnel.”

In effect the Academic Institute sounds like a new “Super-School” to oversee funneling of AmChurch agendas into Bishops' authorized schools, and eventually Church government. It sounds like direct competition with the Pope and Teaching Magisterium. It sounds to me like the same old message: “I will not serve!”

Frank Strelchun, Ph.D.

Canaan, CT

Images of Mary Pregnant

Although the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe can be interpreted as looking pregnant (“Annunciation 1999 Means Nine Months Until Jubilee,” Register, March 21-27), she is by no means unique in that respect. Every depiction of the Visitation shows Mary pregnant. Catholic art from the Middle Ages to the baroque era made this Maria Gravida theme quite explicit through several different conventions: Mary's abdomen is as swollen as St. Elizabeth's; the women touch each other's bodies; tiny figures of unborn Christ and St. John are shown in their mothers' wombs; sometimes the initials of Jesus (IHS) glow on Mary's breast. There are even statues with niches or compartments that hold an image of Our Lord and monstrance's where the Host is inserted into the middle of Mary's body. Piero della Francesca's Madonna of Confinement shows her as a fifteenth century Tuscan lady with unbuttoned gown.

The concept of Mary as an expectant mother has not been neglected by the Eastern Church, either. But the motif is treated symbolically in icons, with a Christchild's image appearing on a medallion in front of Mary's body. Variants of the formula, including the widely popular “Mother of God of the Sign,” derive from a painting in the Church of the Blachernai, an ancient Marian shrine in Constantinople.

Those looking for images of the pregnant Madonna will find almost 300 examples pictured in Maria Gravida by Gregor Martin Lechner published by the Munich Kunsthistoriche Abhandlungen in 1981.

Sandra Miesel

Indianapolis, Indiana