Religion & Law

From page 834 of The Dying of the Light: "It became a commonplace to classify both church and state as outside forces whose inclination to meddle in the academy must be fearlessly resisted.  The church has compliantly withdrawn to an important distance, while civil authorities at every level now make no apology for imposing their laws and regulations on zoning, gender and ethnic imperatives for enrollment, occupational safety, hiring and faculty appointments, the positioning of chapels, the array of varsity sports, et cetera.  Colleges that for fifty years have refused to disclose to their patronal presbyteries how many Presbyterians they enroll are faithfully reporting to the federal government how many students of Samoan extraction they enroll. . . .   The critical turn . . .   often involved forcing those who spoke for the church out of college governance."

I'll stipulate here that the Marquette matter was botched; I don't know the facts; for all I know, damages may be owed.  I do, though, want to resist the strain that suggests that "Jesuit and Catholic" universities (or similarly self-describing institutions) should be in any meaningful sense "independent" of Church governance.  There are degrees and kinds of such governance, to be sure, and universities and colleges are (and should be) subject to ecclesial (and non-ecclesial) norms that will militate in favor of a different sort of dependence (as opposed to independence) than properly pertains to other manifestations of the ecclesia.

Not to be coy, I'll just say again: If the governing offices of the Catholic Church have (or should have!) no decisive role in the life of "Jesuit and Catholic" (or even "Augustinian and Catholic") institutions, then the quoted adjectives should be removed from those institutions' self-descriptions.

I recommend Francis George's "Being through Others in Christ: 'esse per' and Ecclesial Communion," which I happened to read before tuning in to MOJ this evening.  The recommened essay concludes the Cardinal's book The Difference God Makes.