WASHINGTON -- Professors and administrators at Catholic colleges and universities are watching warily as the nation's Roman Catholic bishops consider Vatican-ordered guidelines that would give the church more control over the schools.
At issue before a meeting Monday of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops were proposed requirements that Catholic theologians get a mandate from a bishop to teach and that, wherever possible, a majority of college board members and faculty be committed Catholics.A committee of the bishops conference will recommend approval of its latest draft of the guidelines, said the panel's chairman, Bishop John Leibrecht of Springfield, Mo. He said they will prevent a gradual erosion of Catholic identity at the schools but will not sacrifice academic freedom.
The rules would affect 235 schools, enrolling some 670,000 students. Many leading Catholic educators see efforts to impose them as a threat.
Bishop John D'Arcy of the Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., diocese, has called for continuing "a structured dialogue" between the prelates and college presidents and theologians.
The hope, D'Arcy wrote in a message to his diocese, is for "a solution which protects the pastoral responsibility of the bishop and the theologian's freedom of inquiry."
The Rev. Charles Currie, executive director of the Jesuit college association, is among opponents of the guidelines. No mandate from the bishop is needed, he said, because theologians have expressed a desire to work with bishops. And he objected to the requirement concerning professors' religion, which he called "insulting" to non-Catholic faculty.