The Catholic New World: Cardinal's Column, Calendar & Appointments

During the past year, I gave a “mandatum” to about 20 Catholics who teach Catholic theology in the four Catholic universities in the Archdiocese of Chicago. A “mandatum” is a recognition by the bishop that a Catholic professor teaching Catholic theology in a Catholic university is doing so in communion with the Catholic Church. The “mandatum” is not a litmus test for correctness, for theologians are often enough mistaken in their opinions. The “mandatum” does not say that a professor teaches in the name of the Church but only from within her visible communion. The “mandatum” recognizes the importance of Catholic theologians in the life of the Church. The “mandatum” makes public the relationship between a bishop and a theologian and between the Catholic faith community and the discipline of Catholic theology. The “mandatum” seems straightforward enough, but granting and accepting it have been controversial. Why?

Back when even grade school students were sometimes made aware of what the bishops were teaching, I read and puzzled over a 1948 statement by the U.S. Catholic bishops about our country becoming a “secular society.” Historically, the United States had been a country where the public practice of religion was protected. Many faiths flourished, including the Catholic faith. Religion was a major piece of a society concerned about being good. In the late ’40s and early ’50s, however, the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court began to change the interpretation of the First Amendment so that it became not a way to protect the free exercise of religion in society but rather a way to protect society from religious influence. America was becoming secularized.

What is a secular society? It is one where personal rights are granted by the government, a society where human rights from the Creator are reduced to civil rights from the Constitution. It is one where values and moral norms are personal preferences, without any objective base to determine right from wrong. It is one where religion is thought of as being no more beneficial to society than its lack. It is one where religion is considered an entirely private matter, sectarian, antiquated, dangerous and divisive, not welcome in public life. It is one where society’s highest value is individual autonomy, which trumps fidelity to family, community, country and God.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s a prominent and persuasive vision of what our country should be. It’s a vision embraced by powerful organizations, foundations, some unions and political parties, many in the media and in universities and even some officially religious individuals and movements. Catholicism’s argument with secularism is not on this or that point of our teaching. Rather, the argument turns on our conviction that religion is a way of life, that faith influences every dimension of life, public and private, and that faith cannot be compartmentalized into individual experiences unrelated to the rest of life.

A social faith expresses itself publicly in institutions such as hospitals and schools, not only to serve individuals who are sick and ignorant but also to show the nature of the faith itself as both healing and liberating. Both Catholic hospitals and Catholic universities are under great pressure in a secularized society often intolerant of public religion and its claims.

The pressure on Catholic hospitals that I’ve already written about in this column, pressure especially from abortion rights advocacy groups, will try to remove the protections of the conscience clause in Illinois law from hospitals and limit it to individuals. Institutions that receive tax support, such as hospitals, will be forced to offer the full range of “reproductive services.” Contraception will be defined as a universal health need, like immunization. Above all, the Catholic Church will be castigated as the enemy of women, as if abortion were a woman-friendly procedure, and a danger to society. Sound familiar? It should. You’ll be hearing a lot more in this line in the months to come.

The pressure on Catholic colleges and universities arises in part from the conviction on the part of some theologians that any academic discipline, even theology, requires professors who are not related to any group other than their own. Some Catholic administrators and professors have come to believe sincerely that neither the universities nor the academic disciplines in them can be internally related to the faith without loss of their own prestige and participation in academic life and in American society. The independence that supposedly defines teaching and research has become incompatible with public recognition that the Catholic faith shapes even the search for truth and its transmission in teaching. Sounds familiar? It should. It’s the “official” understanding of academic freedom.

The Church’s response to this pressure toward the secularization of Catholic universities is a document which describes the universities not as extrinsic to the life of faith but as institutions in “the heart of the Church.” For the last several years, controversies and conversations about ways to implement this vision of “communion”, of the inter-dependence of faith and learning, of Church and university, have continued and have been written about here and elsewhere.

One element among others in relating the Catholic university to the Catholic Church, the professors to the bishops, is the “mandatum.” In talking to those who have asked to receive it, I’ve learned about the talents, interests and dedication of men and women who teach theology in the four Catholic universities in the Archdiocese. Almost all the Catholics who teach Catholic theology at the two smaller Catholic universities in the Archdiocese, Dominican (formerly Rosary) and St. Xavier, have received the mandatum. At DePaul University, no one needs a “mandatum” because DePaul does not have a department of Catholic theology. While there are courses about Catholicism, as there are courses about Hinduism or Buddhism, there are no courses offered in Catholic theology. This might seem somewhat strange for a Catholic university, but there are historical reasons for this development and conversations are going on about possible future courses in Catholic theology in the DePaul Religious Studies department.

At Loyola University, most of the Catholic professors in the Institute for Pastoral Studies have received the “mandatum,” but many of the Catholic professors in the theology department have not. Again, there are reasons for such a development. The IPS helps train pastoral workers for the Archdiocese, and it makes no sense to have professors who are themselves unwilling to express their relationship to the Church engaged in teaching pastoral workers for that same Church. On the other hand, professors who see themselves primarily as serving an academic discipline and in training other professors will regard the “mandatum” as interference and a threat to academic freedom. In a secularizing university, there are tensions between being a professional academic and being a public believer, even in a theology department. The irony in this discussion lies in its being couched, not only by the secular media but even by some theologians, only in terms of control, as if political discourse were the highest conversation possible for human beings. This is a secularist presupposition, and it makes ecclesial communion difficult.

Both in Catholic hospitals and in Catholic universities, the effectiveness of the mission given an institution by the Church depends upon there being a critical mass of administrators, physicians, professors and staff whose lives are shaped in every dimension by the Catholic faith. Is there such a critical mass today? Secularization in society at large and in institutions has no effective opposition if the hearts and minds of Catholics and other believers are already secularized. It seems to me that some Catholics in the past 20 years have even confused the renewal of the Church with her internal secularization. But in the Church and in her hospitals and universities, there are so many who understand and combat secularism that we would be foolish to lose hope. In spite of cultural pressures toward secularism, much is being done to focus the identity of Catholic hospitals and Catholic universities. I am grateful for this conversation. It will go on for the sake of the Church and her mission in the world. God bless you.