The Pope Praises Catholic Educators

There was no ultimatum or finger-wagging, as some commentators had expected, but when Pope Benedict XVI met with about 400 Roman Catholic educators yesterday at the Catholic University of America, he made it clear that he expected basic standards of religious identity to be upheld by all schools and colleges that call themselves Catholic. At the same time, he was unstinting in his praise and encouragement for the men and women who carry on what he called an "outstanding apostolate of hope," noting in particular their work in helping educate America's least advantaged children.

Pope Benedict XVI speaks on the importance of Catholic education to the heads of more than 200 Catholic colleges and universities.

(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Still, Benedict made it clear that Catholic identity was more than "the number of Catholic students" attending a school but the extent to which faith is "tangible" in its life and teaching. Developing one of his familiar themes, Benedict asserted that today's "crisis of truth" was really a "crisis of faith," and that what made the contribution of Catholic education distinctive was its insistence that truth is more than the accumulation of knowledge but the "discovery of the good." And in what were possibly the most closely followed words of his address, the pope warned that "any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify a position that contradicts the faith and the teaching of the church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission...."

While clear in their intent, those and other words from the pope were a far cry from what conservatives like Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a Catholic education watchdog group, had anticipated. He and other conservative Catholics had hoped that Benedict would call on the educators—particularly the some 213 college and university presidents who had been summoned to the talk—to come up with a set of guidelines establishing minimal standards of "Catholicity."

Such guidelines, called for originally by Pope John Paul II in his 1990 statement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, are seen by conservatives as necessary to rein in a heedless disregard for church teachings and morality in matters relating both to curriculum (and particularly the teaching of theology) and to student life. Those standards included the much discussed mandatum: an agreement by which professors of theology in Catholic colleges would require certification by local bishops. Guidelines would also include clearer policies about campus life, from the kind of student organizations that should, or should not, receive university sanction to the question of which speakers should be allowed on campus.

Not surprisingly, many heads of Catholic universities were concerned that such guidelines might directly contravene the spirit of the 1967 statement of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, which affirmed fidelity to Catholicism but asserted its institutions' autonomy from any external control, including that of the church. (The Catholic University of America is the only American college founded and run by the American bishops.)

But most of the presidents and diocesan school directors who gathered in Catholic University's Edward J. Pryzbyla Center were hopeful that their leader, a former and distinguished academic himself, would define a workable middle ground. "The majority of us don't see a conflict between academic freedom and orthodoxy," said Nancy Wilgenbusch, president of Marylhurst University in Portland, Ore., minutes before the pontiff arrived to speak. And after the address, Wilgenbusch sounded reassured: "I think that he found that space," she said. "And I particularly like his calling the apostolate of hope the center of Catholic education."

"I felt very encouraged by it," said the Rev. Kris Stubna, the secretary of education in the diocese of Pittsburgh, a man who deals daily with the crushing financial and personnel challenges facing parochial schools across the nation, particularly those in big cities. He and other educators were particularly happy that the pontiff urged his audience to try even harder to keep Catholic education accessible to the least affluent members of society.

"He asked us to be faithful to Ex Corde," said Margaret Fitzpatrick, president of St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York, "but as he as a scholar would. Rather than a list of do's and don't's, it was an inspirational message to the church and bringing hope to the hopeless."