THEOLOGY, THE UNIVERSITY, AND THE CHURCH 

In 1990, Pope John Paul II issued the encyclical, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, (From The Heart Of The Church). In this letter, the Pope laid out the parameters for Catholic Colleges and Universities. But why was such an encyclical necessary? Are not Catholic Universities automatically “Catholic”?

In March and April of 1986, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, gave lectures in Italy and Canada where he spoke of the relationship between Theology and the Church. He opened his presentation with the following quote: It is unlikely that any sensible Christian would contest that the care for the Word of God among men is entrusted to the  church alone. Cardinal Ratzinger then noted that the source of this quote was not a functionary of the Vatican Curia. The statement was made by Heinrich Schlier in 1935 to the Confessing Evangelical Lutheran Church in Nazi Germany. This was a time when the Nazi state was attempting to subvert theology and convert Lutheran Christianity into a German Christianity which then could be easily molded to Nazi purposes. Professor Schlier was forced to resign his university professorship because of National Socialist persecution. He understood that the purpose of theology was “to acquire knowledge of the Word of God with order and clarity” and the church is needed for this to happen. Later, this search for the Word of God brought Heinrich Schlier into the Catholic Church.  

Cardinal Ratzinger then goes on to note that, if there is no ecclesiastical magisterium, theology is just another academic discipline which could be the subject of debate, but one would never stake one’s life on it. Nevertheless, ecclesiastical authority appears to many to be “wholly foreign to the nature of scientific scholarship”. Only reasonable, objective argument can decide disputes and not any outside authority. He then goes on to say that, if the Church and her authority constitute a factor alien to scientific scholarship, then both theology and the Church are in equal danger. In fact, a church without theology impoverishes and blinds, while a churchless theology melts into caprice. 

This cleavage is especially apparent in Catholic Colleges and Universities in the USA. Some Catholic Colleges do think of themselves as coming from the “Heart of the Church” and try to conform to Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Others follow the lead of the famous Land O’Lakes conference held in Land O’ Lakes Wisconsin in July 1967. This conference did consider ecclesiastical authority to be, in Cardinal Ratzinger’s words “wholly foreign to the nature of scientific scholarship”.

The Catholic University today must be a university in the full modern sense of the word, with a strong commitment to and concern for academic excellence. To perform its teaching and research functions effectively, the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself. To say this is simply to assert that institutional autonomy and academic freedom are essential conditions of life and growth and indeed of survival for Catholic universities as for all universities. Later on, the statement refers to the Catholic University as the “Critical Reflective Intelligence of the Church”. Every university, Catholic or not, serves as the critical reflective intelligence of its society. In keeping with this general function, the Catholic university has the added obligation of performing this same service for the Church. Hence, the university should carry on a continual examination of all aspects and all activities of the Church and should objectively evaluate them. The Church would thus have the benefit of continual counsel from Catholic universities.

Catholic universities in the recent past have hardly played this role at all. It may well be one of the most important functions of the Catholic university of the future.

Does this mean that we now have what some have called a “parallel magisterium” in the Church? Does the Catholic individual follow the teachings of the Catholic Bishop or the Catholic Professor? Also, could this “Critical Reflective Intelligence” be subverted by the lure of grants and funding from the government? 

Cardinal Ratzinger recognized that the Church and theological study as carried out in Catholic Universities need each other. Yet he saw that there are problems when Catholic Universities, and the theological studies which they harbor, assert independence from the Church authority. We should understand that this tension between the Church’s magisterium and the Academy is not new. In the sixteenth century, Doctor Martin Luther also rejected the teachings of the Catholic Church and ended up founding the Lutheran Church.  

Even in the thirteenth century, during the early days of Catholic Universities, St. Francis could see problems here. It is well known that St. Francis had a great distrust of book learning. He could see that learning could easily lead to pride. Of course, there are many examples of humble scholars such as St. Anthony of Padua, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, and many others right down to the present, including Joseph Ratzinger who was an academic theologian at various German universities before he became a bishop. These all recognized that the theologian was the servant of the magisterium which ultimately gets its authority from Jesus Christ Himself. 

Unfortunately, the lure of pride and money does seduce academics from the time of St. Francis down to the present. St. Francis was trying to protect his friars from all of that. Let us pray that all who are called to academic careers in the theological sciences have the humility to see that they are servants of those whose authority comes from the Lord Himself.

NO GREATER LOVE