For Catholic Educators, Eagerness and Angst Attend Pope's Visit

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By RICHARD BYRNE

Next week's visit to the United States by Pope Benedict XVI has created anticipation — and anxiety — among the leaders of Roman Catholic higher education in this country.

On April 17, Pope Benedict will speak to more than 200 presidents of Catholic colleges and universities and other key Catholic educators at the Catholic University of America.

As a former professor and a vigorous participant in theological debate, Pope Benedict has an intimate knowledge of academe. Yet his audience is wondering: Has he prepared a pep talk? A critique? Something in between?

The Chronicle talked about the visit with two presidents of Catholic universities and two observers of Catholic higher education. None of them would predict what Pope Benedict would say, but they all believed that it would probably not be a papal scolding. Yet their expectations of his message are largely bound up in how they view the context in which it is situated.

Catholic educators still grapple with the legacy of battles over theology, doctrine, and the status of Catholic colleges and universities in the past 40 years. Those years included waves of increasing liberalization, after the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965, and a swing toward greater conservatism in doctrinal matters during the long tenure of Pope John Paul II (1978-2005).

In his role as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005, Pope Benedict was a key figure in his predecessor's papacy, most notably the drafting of John Paul II's "apostolic constitution" for Catholic universities, Ex corde Ecclesiae, in 1990.

Enacting that document in the United States caused bitter divisions during the 1990s, including the Vatican's 1997 rejection of guidelines agreed upon by U.S. bishops. (A subsequent draft was approved in 1999.)

The tumultuous four decades have had consequences. The numbers of priests and other religious vocations have declined, with dire implications for institutions that relied upon those men and women as faculty members and administrators. Watchdog groups have created headaches by ranking institutions by their adherence to conservative norms. Liberal critics insist that recent changes threaten academic freedom and autonomy.

Melanie M. Morey, a co-author of Catholic Higher Education: A Culture in Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2006), says that Pope Benedict understands the difference between his former role as a doctrinal gatekeeper and his present mission.

"If you want to understand who he is, look at his two pastoral letters, who he is as pope, what he's saying to us as pope," says Ms. Morey. "He's not a Rottweiler."

Bonds and Battles

The location chosen by the pope for the address has multiple resonances. First and foremost is the fact that Catholic University was founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1887, and is governed largely by the bishops of the United States. It is, as its president, the Very Rev. David M. O'Connell, says, "really his university in the United States, as a pontifical university."

But the visit resonates in other ways as well. In the late 1980s, the university witnessed one of the greatest clashes between the Vatican and higher education when the Rev. Charles A. Curran, a prominent theologian, was removed from his teaching post.

Father Curran was a leader of theological opposition to church teaching on artificial birth control, articulated in 1968 in the papal encyclical Humanae vitae. And the signature on the order removing him from the theology department at Catholic University? That of the current pope, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The ripples can still be felt today. One key provision of Ex corde Ecclesiae was that theologians at Catholic universities should obtain a "mandatum," or approval, from their local bishop. The American Association of University Professors still has the university on its censure list over the Curran firing.

"I wear it as a badge of honor," says Father O'Connell, who became president eight years after the censure.

Will the pope revisit such controversies explicitly? Observers agree that it's not likely, but for different reasons.

Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative Catholic group, argues that "there has been a dramatic shift in the discussion, and almost no one questions the need for the renewal of Catholic identity."

But the Rev. Paul Locatelli, president of Santa Clara University, says the pope has a more fundamental mission for Catholic universities. "He'd like universities to help address the root cause of problems in today's world," he says. "He has high expectations of universities — sometimes higher than we can deliver."