Campus Notes

Mercy Sister Theresa Kane, now an associate professor at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, may have been one of the most famous nuns in the world in the 1980s.

In her capacity as president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious—the object of a recent Vatican investigation and attempts to reform—in 1979 Sister Kane made headlines around the world when she publicly confronted Pope John Paul II over the issue of women’s ordination at a prayer service at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

Speaking to the National Catholic Reporter, the associate professor shared her perspective on the Vatican’s recent efforts to reform some groups of women religious in the U.S., including addressing doctrinal problems, and reminisced about her glory days.

Sister Kane is quoted saying that she was “shocked” by the Vatican’s intervention. Sister Kane apparently regards Rome’s action as stemming from a “gender” issue:

 I also think that my big concern is that there is great hostility toward the LCWR. I think it’s probably woven among the American bishops as well as the men in the Vatican, and I don’t know how we get through that kind of a blockage.

It just seems to be a real blockage. It’s almost as if they really do not like us. And don’t appreciate what we’ve done. And don’t see the value and the wisdom to what sisters have been doing all these years.

It’s very, very frustrating. I really think it is a gender issue here. It is a matter of the men in the Vatican still thinking they can control the women, especially control the women religious because we are pontifical and we are canonical.

And they don’t realize that we have moved to another whole point of tremendous equality and mutuality. And that we have much to say about our future and what’s going on.

We’re calling for full participation of women in the church. That means that women have to fully participate and have an equal voice. I don’t see that reflected in this whole direction. I do think that’s a very serious problem.

Sister Kane has no regrets about publicly confronting the late Holy Father:

I would not change it, no. And, if anything I guess I’ve realized after I had said it that it was probably much more urgent than I realized at the time. It was a very urgent message for our times.

I think what happened in some aspects of the Catholic community is that we became defensive about it. Even among sisters — we are still hesitant to talk about ordination. We don’t want to upset the priests or bishops too much because we’ve worked very closely with them for so long. And we have a nice, comfortable relationship.

As for the idea, bruited about in some quarters, that nuns who don’t want to obey the Vatican should seek noncanonical status, which would remove it from Rome’s authority, Sister Kane seems to see the whole issue as a matter of power. ‘’t's almost like you’re saying that if you go noncanonical, you remove yourself as the thorn in the Vatican’s side,” says the interviewer. The nun replies:

 That’s correct. That’s absolutely right. And I think that we do give up the power that we’ve had.

Catholic University of America President John Garvey had a fascinating article in the Washington Post on the current dispute with the Department of Health and Human Services over the HHS mandate that seeks to force Catholic institutions to violate Church teaching by providing health insurance coverage that includes contraception and abortion-inducing drugs.

The Catholic University of America is one of the 43 Catholic plaintiffs that have filed 12 separate, federal lawsuits against HHS because of the mandate.

Garvey recognizes that the issue of religious liberty is at the heart of the suits but he takes another tact in the piece, focusing on the separation of church and state.

Garvey recalls that both Thomas Jefferson and Roger Williams, who established the colony of Rhode Island, were firm believers in the separation of church and state. But for different reasons.

Jefferson thought that religion was bad for government. Williams thought that mixing church and state was bad for the church.

These two perspectives often give us the same results. They both warn against tax support for churches and against prayers composed by public school boards. But Williams’s theological metaphor may have been more influential than Jefferson’s political one in the adoption of the First Amendment.

I think this has a bearing on a neglected aspect of the HHS rules — not the mandate itself, but the exemption for a “religious employer.” It defines that term to mean an organization that exists to inculcate religious values, that is exempt from filing a tax return and that primarily employs and serves people who share its religious tenets. It excludes the social service organization Catholic Charities, Catholic hospitals and Catholic University. It excludes the Little Sisters of the Poor, who care for the aged of all faiths, and some Cristo Rey Catholic high schools, which admit students of all faiths. These institutions exist to perform what Catholics call “corporal works of mercy” — to care for the poor, hungry, sick and homeless — and to preach the Gospel not just to their baptized members but “to all nations,” as the Gospel says.

Those religious groups that don’t fall within the exemption — and that’s many of them — are subject to governmental regulation of their internal affairs. This might not have bothered Jefferson. But I suspect Williams would have said that it violates the separation of church and state, that the government had “broken down the wall . . . and made [God’s] garden a wilderness.”

Garvey writes that the “invasive approach” is becoming increasingly common, citing the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and two National Labor Relations Board cases that have held that two Catholic colleges aren’t Catholic for the purposes of exemption from collective bargaining with unions. The NRLB cases argued, among other things, that the two universities weren’t sufficiently Catholic because they don’t require students to attend Mass or have boards of trustees composed mostly of clergy!

In a bang-up conclusion, Garvey writes:

Notice the similarity to HHS’s view of what counts as Catholic. A “real” Catholic college would be inward-looking. It would inculcate religious values and censor contrary views. It would hire Catholics and not other people. Its board would be dominated by clergy. It would admit Catholic students but not others.

There is a pattern to these cases. The government has been eager to regulate the behavior of churches in ways more to its liking. It does this by defining religion down, so that only the most rigid and separatist groups are exempt. The rest are, for constitutional purposes, no different from the Jaycees or the Elks Club. We might say that the wall of separation is intact, but the government has made it so small that it encloses nothing more than a flower bed.

How distressed Roger Williams would have been.

Georgetown University’s invitation to pro-abortion rights HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak commencement day triggered a barrage of negative publicity and a statement calling the invitation “shocking” from the Archdiocese of Washington.

But that same Sebelius invitation seems to have been the inspiration for a sympathetic profile of Georgetown President John DiGioia in the Washington Post.

DiGioia is described as a “jovial philosopher,” who “wasn’t a wavemaker—until now.”  The article notes that, in addition to standing by the Sebelius invitation, DiGioia staunchly defended Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who testified in favor of the HHS mandate that seeks to force Catholic institutions to pay for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs.

While issues of religious freedom and Catholic identity are paramount in both these affairs, the Washington Post frames the issue solely in terms of “polarization:”

DeGioia declined to be interviewed for this article, a reflection of his discomfort with the controversy over Sebelius’s appearance and the reaction of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Washington archbishop, who called the invitation by Georgetown “shocking.” DeGioia also cautioned some associates not to speak.

But friends say he knows he is operating in polarizing times.

The most interesting–and disheartening–comment comes from Tim Shriver, scion of two of the country’s best-known Catholic families. Shriver seems to regard such matters as inviting an HHS secretary who would force Catholic institutions to violate their consciences as not worthy of discussion:

Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics and a Catholic acquaintance of DeGioia’s, said the two “had a couple eye-rolling moments about chaos in the church” at dinner a few weeks ago. “I hear Jack saying, ‘We need people [at Georgetown] who stimulate our ability to find God, not people to come and repeat formulas.’ . . . Whether one Catholic or another should be allowed to speak is just background noise in the larger search.”

Background noise? Eye rolling? There are many things worse than polarization. A disregard for Catholic identity is one.

If you thought requiring Catholic colleges to provide health insurance policies that cover contraception and abortifacients was about as bad as it gets, you haven’t been paying attention.

There is already an undercurrent of a move afoot to try to get campus health centers to dispense the so-called “morning after pill” free.

You can almost hear the special pleading in this story from InsideHigherEd:

As campus debates have played out over whether and to what extent student health centers should provide access to emergency contraception such as Plan B, opponents of the idea often point out that students can easily obtain it elsewhere — that all they have to do is walk down the street to the local pharmacy.

But a new study suggests that when the health center is not a viable resource, many students might not know how to go about getting emergency contraception — which could be problematic, since in the event of a potential pregnancy, time is of the essence.

The improbable gist of the study: Kids don’t know enough about contraception. Ergo: The college nurse should be handing it out, presumably with a neon sign announcing that Plan B is available.

The study in question is “Searching for a ‘Plan B’: Young Adults Strategies for Finding Information about Emergency Contraception Online,” conducted by Eszter Hargittai, professor of communications studies at Northwestern University, and Heather Young, a Ph.D. candidate in Northwestern’s media, technology and society program. Hargittai and Young visited campuses and asked questions in person:

During the in-person observation sessions, students explored a hypothetical scenario: “You are at home in the middle of summer. A friend calls you frantically on a Friday at midnight. The condom broke while she was with her boyfriend. What can she do to prevent pregnancy? Remember, neither of you is on campus. She lives in South Bend, Indiana.”

Needless to say, the correct answer, in the eyes of Hargittai and Young, wasn’t: “Hope you’re not pregnant, accept responsibility if you are, and, how can I help with the baby?”

Instead:

Two in three students gave successful final answers, and 40 percent of those gave the “ideal” answer — that the friend should go to the pharmacy and purchase the pills over the counter. But 34 percent gave “unsuccessful” answers that made no mention of emergency contraception. Nineteen percent, meanwhile, simply suggested that their friend “should seek medical care.” Three percent arrived at no conclusion at all.

Hargittai, the lead researcher in this study, seems quite biased in support of “emergency” contraception, judging from her online posts and blogs (here and here). She denies that Plan B causes abortion, in accord with the irrational argument that killing a human being before uterine implantation is not killing a human being. So it’s no surprise that her research fits neatly with efforts by Planned Parenthood to promote “emergency” contraception to high school and college students, including distribution on college campuses.

There was a time, not so long ago, when we might have been able to say that, sad as this development may be, it will have no effect on Catholic colleges.

That is no longer the case. As we wait for the legality of the HHS contraceptive mandate to be decided in court, we now have to worry that, if it is upheld, the next step could be requiring Catholic colleges to provide not only coverage for abortifacients but abortifacients themselves.

As if one great saint wasn’t enough, the College of St. Thomas More in Fort Worth, Texas has added another saint to its name: it will now be known as the College of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More.

Former Episcopal clergyman, Dr. Taylor Marshall, now a Catholic layman and newly installed dean at Fisher More College (as the college is called colloquially), noted the change on his blog Canterbury Tales:

Beginning on May 5th, the College began a new chapter by expanding the name of the College and creating a new website. The Board of Visitors of the College has approved the elevation of Saint John Fisher—the great contemporary, co-martyr, friend, and confidant of Saint Thomas More—to the official name. The name recognizes the thirty-year legacy under the patronage of Saint Thomas More, but also brings distinction and clarity with the priestly and academic patronage of Saint John Fisher.

Fisher More College was recommended in The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College.

St. Thomas Aquinas, please forgive the slight… and the irony.

A Jesuit theology professor at Georgetown University — which is the object of a planned canon law suit alleging Georgetown’s failure to live up to its Catholic label — would have us doubt that medieval universities like the University of Paris, where Saint Thomas taught theology, were ever ”authentically Catholic.” He writes in America magazine:

But would medieval universities satisfy the norms held up today to qualify as “authentically Catholic”? A composite profile of such norms drawn from documents such as Ex corde Ecclesiae, would run something like this: the university explicitly professes the Catholic faith, is unquestioning of the Magisterium, installs theology as a core subject, contributes to “the common good” of the church and of society at large and professedly fosters the students’ moral and religious formation as well as their commitment to the church. A Catholic university is a religious university.

One difficulty in answering the question is that medieval universities, unlike many universities in the United States today, did not issue mission statements. Moreover, unlike the humanist schools that developed later, they did not profess to operate out of a clearly articulated philosophy of education. They just did what they did. And what they did was engage in intellectual problem solving, which entailed the development of professional skills that led to career advancement. Intellectual problem solving and career advancement were the core values of the medieval university. …

Were medieval universities Catholic universities? It is a question easier to ask than to answer. One thing, however, is certain: the contemporary grid for an “authentically Catholic” university does not neatly fit the medieval reality. There are even grounds for asserting that in their core values medieval universities more closely resemble the contemporary secular university than they do today’s Catholic model. If we are looking for historical precedents for that model, we do not find it clearly in the Middle Ages.

The author is Father John W. O’Malley, university professor in the theology department at Georgetown University. It is impossible not to read Father O’Malley’s article without thinking about Georgetown’s invitation to pro-abortion rights HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak on commencement day, a debacle that raised anew questions about whether Georgetown can call itself “authentically Catholic.”

There was a great deal of variety among the medieval universities, but it takes incredible revisionism to see them as resembling Georgetown in having a lack of fidelity to the Church.

A well-worth-reading entry on universities in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia both anticipates and refutes Father O’Malley’s arguments. It outlines the many ways in which universities, often chartered by ecclesial authority, functioned under the guidance and care of the Church. The role of the papacy was paramount:

Once the oldest universities, especially Paris and Bologna, had grown to fame and influence so that their graduates enjoyed the licentia ubique docenti, it was recognized that a new institution, in order to become a studium generale, required the authorization of the supreme authority, i.e. of the pope as head of the Church or of the emperor as protector of all Christendom. Thus in “Las Siete Patridas” (1256-1263), Alfonso of Sabio declares that a “studium generale must be established by mandate of the pope, the emperor, or the king”); and St. Thomas (Op. contra impugn. relig., c. iii): “ordinare de studio pertinet ad eum qi praest reipublicae, et praecipue ad authoritatem apostolicae sedis qua universalis ecclesia gubernatur, cui per generale studium providetus”, i.e. in the matter of universities the authority belongs to the chief ruler of the commonwealth and especially to the Apostolic See, the head of the universal Church, “the interest of which is furthered by the university”.

These last words contain the essential reason for seeking authorization from the pope: the university was not to be a merely local or national institution; its teaching and its degrees were to be recognized throughout the Christian world. On the other hand, in the civil order, the emperor was supreme; hence he conferred on the universities founded by him, without any papal charter, the right to grant degrees in all the faculties, theology and canon law included. The imperial charters were recognized by the popes and, whenever necessary, additional privileges were granted. It cannot then be said that the action of Maximilian I in founding (1502) the University of Wittenbergwas an epoch-making event; Charles IV had long before done the same for Siena, Arezzo, an Orange, and the charters with which he founded Pavia and Lucca preceeded by twenty years the papal grants.

For an engrossing account of how the universities and Church authority complimented each other, you can do no better than James Hannam’s The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. Particularly interesting is how the universities dealt with the incorporation of the philosophy of Aristotle into Christian thought, the triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas, without veering beyond Church authority. (Here is Tom Bethell’s review of the book to whet your appetite.)    

It’s always welcome whenever anybody has a good word for the much-maligned Scholastic philosophers and theologians, and Father O’Malley does…but maybe not for the right reasons.

Logical, left-brain, agonistic, analytic, restless and relentless questioning was the method’s hallmark, in which the resolution of every question led only to further questions. It is no wonder that virtually all the heretics from the 13th until the 16th century were Scholastic theologians.