WASHINGTON— When presidents of Catholic colleges and universities gather here this weekend, their discussions are certain to include the hot-button issue of the U.S. application of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which requires theologians to apply for a Church sanction to teach at Catholic institutions.

The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities is meeting Feb. 2–4 to consider the Catholic intellectual tradition in the public square. But at a business meeting Feb. 4, many of the college administrators will be swapping stories about their relationship, and that of the theologians at their institutions, with the local bishop.

The U.S. bishops, at their meeting in June 2001, approved guidelines to be followed by theologians applying for the man-datum— a statement from the local bishop that a Catholic professor of theology is teaching in accord with Church doctrine. The mandatum is required by Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), Pope John Paul II's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education.

The bishops' guidelines specify that it is the obligation of the professor, not the university, to apply for the mandatum. A bishop also has the right to offer it on his own initiative.

“In most cases, it's being done discreetly and low-key,” said Monika Hellwig, executive director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

“Some theologians won't apply for it because it will harm their standing among their academic colleagues.”

The association believes that it would be legally risky to incorporate the mandatum into hiring contracts or constitutional documents of the university.

Professors have until June 1 to obtain a mandatum. “After a year or two, we'll see people not applying for it,” predicted Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, which seeks to promote Catholic identity at Catholic universities. “And we'll be vocal about that.”

While Ex Corde incorporated the man-datum requirement, it was based on the earlier 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law. Canon 812 of the revised Code states, “It is necessary that those who teach theological disciplines in any institute of higher learning have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority.”

Many observers agree that the mandate is a vital component in beginning to clear up the confusion among students about Catholic faith and morals, to which many college theologians have contributed by promoting teachings contrary to the magisterium of the Church.

Regarding the trend among universities sponsored by his own order, Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Society of Jesus, recently commented that secularization is rampant in Jesuit universities.

“For some [Jesuit] universities,” he told Father Richard John Neuhaus during the Special Assembly for America of the Synod of Bishops in Rome in late 1997, “it is probably too late to restore their Catholic character.”

No Overnight Changes

“It will take time,” said Father Matthew Lamb, a priest of the Diocese of Milwaukee who teaches theology at Boston College. “It's not something you can change overnight. The key element of Ex Corde Ecclesiae is establishing the important point that any institution calling itself Catholic cannot treat the ordinary as an agent extrinsic to the institution.”

Father Lamb sees hope in the fact that many younger theologians regard their vocations in the service of the truth and the Church, not in dissent.

Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl said he has gotten a “steady stream” of requests for the mandatum from professors in the three institutions in his diocese: Duquesne University, Carlow College and La Roche College. He feels the process is going smoothly because he began meeting with presidents and faculty of the universities there and the major superiors of the religious orders that sponsor them soon after the 1990 publication of Ex Corde, laying out a structure for dialogue and review of the institutions' mission.

When the U.S. bishops eventually approved an American application of Ex Corde, Bishop Wuerl said, “we gathered all the faculty that required a mandate … and agreed that we'd use the materials put out by the bishops.”

Bishop Wuerl, who is chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Education, said that in dioceses where the mandatum is “presented as one more credential” that a professor needs, there are few problems in acceptance of the requirement.

He also said that because the work of devising guidelines is finished, a committee of bishops and college presidents can take up other issues, such as strengthening the Catholic identity of the colleges through such means as increasing the presence of campus ministry and offering more information on religious vocations.

“There is a variety of things we can do,” said the bishop. “Here in Pittsburgh, each of the Catholic colleges begins the year with a Mass of the Holy Spirit, and I go to each campus. It's a way to say, ‘This campus approaches life differently.’”

Focus on Students

That is what the Newman Society would also like to foster, not only through periodic events like a yearly Mass, but also through attention to elements of daily campus life. “Our concern is that there has been very little attention paid to student life outside of class, where students are even more affected in their spiritual life,” Reilly said.

For example, too many Catholic college campuses are little different from their secular counterparts in their loose attitude toward sexuality, he said. Consequently, the Newman Society wants to help college administrators design residence hall policies and programs to discourage sexual activity.

The society was disturbed by a report last year by the pro-abortion lobby, Catholics for a Free Choice, that a significant number of Catholic colleges provide contraceptives and abortion referrals to students. (Catholics for a Free Choice has been repeatedly denounced by the U.S. bishops for misrepresenting itself as an authentically Catholic group). To remedy that situation, the Cardinal Newman Society is offering help in developing on-campus education programs that promote Catholic teaching on the dignity of life and the human body and encourage chastity and responsible dating.

This broader attention to Catholic identity is a central theme of Ex Corde Ecclesiae. “Catholic teaching and discipline are to influence all university activities,” the document states in its section on General Norms. Later in that section, it states, “The education of students is to combine academic and professional development with formation in moral and religious principles and the social teachings of the Church.”

Adds the document, “If problems should arise concerning this Catholic character, the local Bishop is to take the initiatives necessary to resolve the matter.”

That Catholic character seems to be contradicted by the presence of campus organizations that espouse views contrary to Church teaching. Reilly wants to focus attention on such clubs, citing as one example a “Gay and Lesbian Law Association” that has existed for years at Fordham Law School in Manhattan.

The Hoya, the Georgetown University newspaper, reported on two demonstrations Jan. 22, the 29th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Twenty-one students stood throughout a Mass celebrated at the university by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington to draw attention to their efforts to establish a homosexual “resource center” on campus. The same day, a pro-abortion student group hung coat hangers in classrooms across the campus.

Reilly said his organization promotes the position of Ex Corde that any official action or commitment of the university, including those of authorized student groups, must accord with its Catholic identity. Said Reilly, “Access to facilities and funding [of clubs] comes under that.”