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Faith Sacrificed On The Altar Of Secular Academia?

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Frank Shannon

Published: March 29, 2007

The point of providing your children a faith-based higher education is not to undermine the basic tenets of the faith in which you've raised them. Quite the contrary.

The University of Notre Dame. To most, the name might invoke thoughts of the greatest program in the history of college football, a sports dynasty if ever there was one. To a serious Roman Catholic, however, it's about much more than just football. Notre Dame, "Our Lady" in French, one of the customary titles for Mary, the mother of Jesus.

In keeping with such a name, there was a time that Notre Dame also stood for higher education according to long-Catholic traditions reflecting the teachings of the church. These days, however, one might find it difficult to discern anything Catholic about Notre Dame, and a lot of other Catholic institutions of higher learning for that matter. For example, Notre Dame has a Core Council for Gay and Lesbian Students that functions as "a resource to the vice president for student affairs in identifying the ongoing needs of gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual students, and assists in implementing campus-wide educational programming on gay and lesbian issues."
Educational programming?

Just what are they "educating" students to do, to engage in behavior contrary to church teaching? And are they "programming" other students to be more "tolerant and accepting" of such behavior?
I'll hazard a guess that the parents footing the bill for a Catholic education aren't paying for their kids to have the values they instilled contradicted and diminished.

And it's not just homosexuality that's the problem. That's just one of a number of issues in which Catholic institutions of higher learning are coming up short in advancing and articulating church teaching. In academia, it seems, secularism has become more welcome than Jesus.

And, not to pick on just Notre Dame, the problem extends throughout a good number of Catholic schools such as Georgetown, Loyola University of Chicago, Boston College and others.

Two years ago, the Archdiocese of New York declared Marymount Manhattan College to no longer be a Catholic institution. The school had been under protest for inviting Sen. Hillary Clinton to give a commencement address, and for bestowing an honorary degree on the pro-abortion, pro-gay presidential candidate. Marymount was the fourth Catholic university or college that has been declared to be no longer Catholic since the late Pope John Paul II released the papal document Ex Corde Ecclesiae (Out of the Heart of the Church) in 1991.

Thank God for Edward Cardinal Egan of the Archdiocese of New York, and his courage in upholding Catholic principle. The Catholic Church in America would be well served if every bishop were so inclined. Prior to Marymount, three other New York colleges -- Marist, Nazareth and St. John Fisher -- had their Catholic designation stripped.

Shortly after becoming Speaker of the House, liberal Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco attended Mass at Trinity University in Washington, D.C. In the case of this pro-abortion, pro-gay "Catholic" legislator, I've heard of no sanctions being leveled at Trinity by the Archdiocese of Washington or of Archbishop Donald Wuerl taking the opportunity to articulate Catholic teaching in contrast to Pelosi's self-serving sham.

Meanwhile, there's a little matter called the mandatum, a requirement laid out in Ex Corde Ecclesiae that all professors of theology, sacred Scripture, canon law, liturgy and church history in Catholic colleges and universities are bound to teaching in accord with the church.

U.S. bishops began requiring the mandatum in 2001, but there's resistance from renegade professors who claim that it would infringe on their intellectual freedom. Sounds more like a deficit in the humility department.

Many academic types set more store in their own "intellects" than in 2,000 years of theology and faith, and thereby refuse to subjugate their own political agendas to their obligations as Catholics.

And one can't just point the finger at Catholic academic institutions and academics. Similar problems afflicting Catholic schools are rearing their ugly heads on campuses of other Christian denominations.
In 2001, the North Carolina Baptist Convention severed ties to Wake Forest University and Meredith College. In 2005, the College of William & Mary, founded as an Anglican institution in Virginia in 1693, lost a $12 million pledge from a longtime donor in response to the removal of a cross in order to make the campus chapel "more welcoming to students of all faiths."

Just last year the Georgia Baptist Convention severed its 173-year-old ties to Mercer University after a homosexual symposium was held on campus. The split cost Mercer more than $3 million in scholarships previously provided by the convention.

So what's to be done about this dilemma? If you're the parent of a college-bound student staring at the prospect of dropping a big pile of bucks on a college education, particularly if it's a private religious school, be discerning as to what you're getting for your money.

The point of providing your children a faith-based higher education is not to undermine the basic tenets of the faith in which you've raised them. Difficult as it may be, seek out a school that reflects your family's values.

For Catholics, there are longtime solidly Catholic institutions like Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. More recently, Southern Catholic College opened in Dawsonville, Ga., in 2000, and in 2003, Domino's Pizza founder and former Detroit Tigers owner Thomas S. Monaghan opened Ave Maria University right down Interstate 75 in Naples. The campus and surrounding town that is currently developing could ultimately cover 4,300 acres.

In accord with Monaghan's own especially orthodox devotion to Catholicism, Ave Maria is strictly adherent to church teaching.

As for institutions of higher learning themselves, we should cut off the secularists from the legitimacy they enjoy through association with Christian organizations, and as in the cases of Mercer and William & Mary, cut them off from the funding they've proven they don't deserve.

Additionally, whether a school is Catholic or of another Christian faith, serious efforts should be made by church authorities to exert full control over who sits on boards of trustees and who is hired to teach. In the specific cases of Catholic colleges and universities, how difficult would it be to make the mandatum a condition of employment? Any bishop unwilling to uphold church teachings should, ideally, soon find himself shipped off to a Third World mission, or excommunicated with all due haste, replaced by someone devoted to properly executing his apostolic duties.

Frank Shannon can be reached at FXShannon@aol.com.

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