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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

NEWS
APRIL 1999

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THE CAPITAL RESOURCE INSTITUTE in Sacramento is asking for help in its campaign to stop upcoming homosexual marriage legislation in California. Institute official Randy Thomasson says that six bills are pending: "AB 222 which will promote homosexuality in public schools and harm private schools, a total of four bills creating homosexual-marriage 'partnerships' and awarding various marriage benefits to homosexuals...and now there is AB 1001 which will elevate homosexuality to the same level as race, and launch tax-funded investigations against property owners, business owners, and even churches that are morally opposed to homosexuality and bisexuality." Thomasson exhorts "churches, companies and organizations {to} write brief letters opposing each bill, and fax the letters on organizational letterdhead to 916-448-2888. Capitol Research Institute will deliver the letters to legislative committees so that organizations will be listed as opposing these bills."


MORE AMERICAN THAN CATHOLIC? Officials at the University of San Francisco, Santa Clara, and St. Mary's refuse to comply with the Pope's document on higher education, unless the document is "Americanized," say sources.

"Our policy is to avoid Ex Corde Ecclesiae," says a St. Mary's source, referring to the Christian Brothers stance towards the Pope's apostolic constitution on Catholic colleges. "Ex Corde Ecclesiae is a dead letter here," according to a Santa Clara source. Father Paul Locatelli, president of Santa Clara, has told his faculty that he does not want Santa Clara to become a "confessional" Catholic college.

But it is USF which has taken the most out-front stand against a pure application of the document. USF president John Schlegel is arguing that any implementation of the document must respect "the culture of American higher education with its emphasis on institutional autonomy and academic freedom." He agrees with America magazine's description of the latest implementation plan as "dangerous and unworkable."

He objects strongly to the requirement that theologians take an oath to the magisterium of the Church. "This is a very complex issue which has engaged us for almost 20 years," he has written. "This mandate could discourage Catholic theologians from teaching in Catholic schools and even discourage young scholars from entering the field in the first place." The Church, according to Schlegel, should not "make the task of the theologian even more difficult or compromise the essential integrity of our schools.... One of the great accomplishments of Catholic higher education in our time is the way in which theology and theologians are integral, not adjunct, parts of the education we offer. In dialogue with the bishops, we will be trying to find an alternative to the mandate that combines freedom with responsibility, and that allows both bishop and theologian to discharge their mutual responsibilities."

Schlegel calls the Pope's expectation that faculties and boards achieve a majority of faithful Catholics potentially "divisive": "One of our greatest strengths is the sense of community, partnership, and colleagueship we have developed in the joint pursuit of our identity and mission. Many of the most effective and generous contributors have been colleagues who do not share our faith, but share our mission with great enthusiasm. The draft provision calling for a majority of 'faithful Catholics' could seriously damage that solidarity."

A third objection Schlegel raises is that Catholic colleges could lose access to government money if they recovered a strong Catholic identity. "The courts have held that public funding depends on institutions not being 'pervasively sectarian'."

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January, Schlegel showed his hand even more clearly, telling Don Lattin that USF and other Catholic colleges could "be perceived as fundamentalist schools that are doctrinaire and represent only a small segment of society" if they assume a confessional character. Talk about "faithful Catholics" is particularly disturbing, Schlegel told Lattin. "What does that [phrase] mean? Does that mean you look into someone's private life? Given what's going on in Washington, I don't think we want a special prosecutor looking into the religious lives of our board members."

"We have Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Buddhists on our faculty.... I'd hate to have non-Catholics at the school perceived as second-class citizens."

In the same Chronicle story, USF theologian Frather Francis Buckley asserted, presumably without irony or humor, that "Our Jewish faculty members are often more committed to the Jesuit mission than some of our Catholic members." Buckley recalled that USF once hired an atheist philosopher who team-taught "with members of our theology department and was an absolutely wonderful teacher." "Even an atheist can advance the Jesuit Mission," concluded Buckley.

Patrick Reilly, executive director of the Cardinal Newman Society, expressed dismay at the resistance to Ex Corde Ecclesiae in an interview with this reporter. The loss of Catholic identity is a serious problem, says Reilly, dating to the disastrous Land O' Lakes statement in 1967 which laid the groundwork for the secularized Catholic university. Reilly says that if Catholic colleges continue to obstruct Ex Corde Ecclesiae the Vatican will have no choice but to declare them non-Catholic. Reilly says that the efforts of Schlegel and others to neuter Ex Corde Ecclesiae will fail in Rome. "There is really not much room to change this."

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