By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN
The Coup at Catholic University, by Peter M. Mitchell (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 2015), 311 pages; $19.95. Available through www.ignatius.com.
Can Catholics be American and remain Catholic, rendering to Caesar the things that belong to him and rendering to God what is due to the Lord? Can Catholic universities be both bona fide centers of higher education and faithful to the Magisterium, reconciling the standards of the American University of University Professors with the Oath of Fidelity to the Church?
This compelling book recreates the dramatic events of 1967 at Catholic University with scrupulous documentation from all the available records of personal papers, correspondence, and committee reports that represented the views and arguments of both sides of the controversy — one that divided the Church, confused the faithful, and undermined papal authority.
These questions about loyalty and obedience naturally arose during the wake of Pope Paul VI’s controversial encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968 that led to the “coup” that is the subject of this book. Led by theology professor Fr. Charles Curran, the theology faculty at Catholic University, and 500 dissenters who signed a “Statement of Dissent,” the protesters claimed: “The Encyclical is not an infallible teaching.”
In their formal declaration of July 30, 1968, they argued: “It is common teaching in the Church that Catholics may dissent from authoritative, noninfallible teachings of the magisterium when sufficient reasons for so doing exist.”
Fr. Mitchell’s book explains how the delicate resolution of this conflict proved to be a fatal error or tragic mistake with profound consequences. A Catholic University that attempted to negotiate a tentative peace between two irreconcilable views of the papacy eventually advanced the cause of dissent and division in the Church.
Among those sufficient reasons for dissent, the protesters cited the testimony of many Catholic couples, the experience of Protestant denominations, and the evidence of modern science. Posing as an alternative tribunal equal in authority to papal magisterial teaching, the dissenters acted like a superior court overturning a lower court’s flawed decision: “. . . we conclude that spouses may responsibly decide according to their conscience that artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible and indeed necessary to preserve and foster the values and sacredness of marriage.”
This view of contraception had already appeared on the scene in the Anglican Church’s Lambeth Conference in the 1930s when a similar argument justified contraception in some rare cases and urgent necessities — a seemingly cautious approach that soon, however, ignored all inhibitions and accepted contraception as a modern way of life.
Despite the flagrant disobedience to magisterial teaching, the protesters claimed fidelity to the Church in the guise of “loyal dissent.” They argued in their statement that Humanae Vitae reflected major defects such as invalid ideas about “the evil consequences of methods of birth control” and “an almost total disregard for the dignity of millions of human beings brought into the world without the slightest possibility of being fed and educated decently.”
In short, Fr. Mitchell’s book illustrates with luminous clarity the chain of reasoning used by the dissenters to make their cause sound righteous and enlightened. The School of Theology at Catholic University and other theologians at Catholic colleges, in effect, instigated a revolt in the Church under the pretext of academic freedom and theological expertise.
Always avowing obedience, cooperation, and a love of the Church, the dissenters acted morally justified by their disinterested pursuit of truth, their commitment to academic excellence and scholarship, and their concern for the institution of marriage. The theologians, however, de facto chose to submit to the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) as their final judge rather than to the Magisterium.
Nonetheless, as the book reveals by its careful review of all the official statements of the major figures involved in the controversy — Msgr. Kevane, Archbishop Krol, Archbishop O’Boyle, Charles Curran, Bishop McDonald, Archbishop Hannan — the commitment to American democratic principles, the approval of the AAUP, and an emulation of the empirical methodology of the secular university informed the real unspoken agenda of the dissenters.
Catholic University wanted to be created in the image of the Ivy League schools, and its theology professors desired to be governed by the norms of an academic establishment notorious for its skepticism of religious knowledge. The zeitgeist of the radical 1960s had infiltrated the Church, and the protesters imagined themselves both devoted Catholics and loyal Americans.
The Strike
When Fr. Curran’s contract was allowed to lapse without renewal because of his unorthodox teaching, Catholic University protested by a weeklong strike in April 1967 that involved the Schools of Philosophy, Law, Theology, and Music. They stated, “We cannot and will not function as members of our respective faculties unless and until Father Curran is reinstated.”
The Board of Trustees’ decision not to rehire Fr. Curran for violating fidelity to the Church’s teaching provoked not only dissension at Catholic University but also throughout the entire Catholic world. To the dissenters Curran’s abrupt dismissal caused public embarrassment and marginalized Catholic University’s reputation throughout the entire American academic community. The rejection of “loyal dissent,” to quote Fr. Carl Peter’s words, stifled the scholar’s “never-ending search for the truth that will make man’s future better than his past.”
In the view of The School of Theology, the Board of Trustees knew nothing about the governance of a modern university, for Curran’s dismissal did not follow due process or allow him a fair hearing. These criticisms of the protestors gave the impression that they were updating a rigid, authoritarian Church dominated by clericalism in dire need of more democratic governance.
In this internal battle between an intransigent faculty and a loyal board of trustees, the popular sentiment of the radical 1960s, the cultural bias of the media, and the consensus of the academic world made a cause célèbre of the episode that forced the Board of Trustees to rescind its decision on Curran’s dismissal and reinstate him. Divided about the wisest course of action, the majority of members compromised because, in Fr. Mitchell’s words, “for the sake of victory in the greater struggle for control of Catholic University, they needed to admit defeat in this smaller battle over Curran’s teaching position.”
Archbishop Krol, however, warned of the dangers of capitulation. In Fr. Mitchell’s words, if Catholic bishops wavered and consented to tolerance of unorthodox teaching because of the clamor of the media or the judgment of the AAUP, “there would be no end in sight to the demands that would be made by professors at CUA and elsewhere in the name of the ‘right to dissent’ and academic freedom.”
The book identifies the crisis at Catholic University as the issue of authority: the consensus of the theologians versus the authoritative teaching of the Magisterium; the ideals of Catholic universities dedicated to the transmission of the perennial truths of divine Revelation and human wisdom versus the secular college’s commitment to “research” and the empirical method of the sciences; and the guidelines of the AAUP versus the tradition of Catholic universities that integrated faith and reason.
In the aftermath of the controversy, academic freedom came to designate independence of thought from Church authority, the absence of censorship, and the right to reject and disobey religious doctrine for the sake of so-called objective truth verified by scholarly research — as if the Church’s narrow-mindedness inhibited intellectual growth and opposed scientific knowledge and as if theology were the handmaiden to science.
Rejecting The
Profession Of Faith
In short, the upshot of the matter at Catholic University advanced the criterion of tolerance for dissent, a need for the Church to conform to the world, and for the Magisterium to learn from the secular university.
Fr. Mitchell explains: “In fact, this redefinition of both academic freedom and the Magisterium is exactly what the professors of the CUA School of Theology would succeed in doing. . . .” That is, the Church’s view of sexual morality or contraception was merely one view competing with many others, not authoritative or infallible.
The legacy from the Curran affair at Catholic University undermined the rock on which the Church was founded. The opinion of the AAUP carried greater weight than magisterial teaching. The consensus of the Catholic Theological Society of America possessed more expertise than the bishops who governed the Board of Trustees and the encyclicals of Popes. Prestige and respectability in the eyes of the world mattered more than fidelity to one’s oath or obedience to the Pope. The liberal ideology of the 1960s outweighed the two-thousand year tradition of the Church.
However, as Msgr. Kevane argued from the beginning in his refusal to protest, “Neither the adjective ‘Catholic’ nor the adjective ‘Pontifical’ derogates from or destroys the noun ‘University’.”
As Fr. Mitchell’s exhaustive, balanced account illustrates, for all the cant about “the free pursuit of truth,” scholarship and research, and intellectual respectability, the crux of matter from the beginning to the end of the controversy was the Magisterium.
Theologians assumed that only their peers, not their bishops or the Bishop of Rome, had any right to evaluate their teaching or question their theology. Their profession of faith, a condition of their teaching contract, somehow carried no obligations.
The capitulation of the Board of Trustees to the leaders of dissent once again proved that the integrity of Catholic truth cannot accommodate the world, the spirit of the times, the hue and cry of the media, or the desires of the multitude lest it compromise its vocation as a sign of contradiction, the light of the world, the pearl of great price, and the infallible teacher of God’s revealed word.
+ + +
(Dr. Kalpakgian is a professor emeritus of humanities.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress