A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Paying the piper for ‘academic freedom’ June 24, 2011

We have been told, by those sage denizens of Catholic academia, that complete and total academic freedom is an absolute necessity for all ‘Catholic’ universities.  Ever since the infamous ‘Land O’ Lakes’ conference in 1967, this has meant in practice that nominally Catholic univesities have shed any distinctive Catholic identity, have hired and promoted professors and staff that publicly reject Church Doctrine, and have generally experienced a marked moral collapse.  Many feel that Catholic universities have been in the vanguard in the loss of a distinctive Catholic identity – and practice of the Faith – in this country. 

But now there is an interesting turn of events.  Catholic colleges have long tried to have it both ways – proclaiming their complete need to have total academic freedom and absolutely no oversight from the Magisterium, essentially behaving as completely secularized institutions, while at the same time proclaiming their “profound religious character” when it suits their purposes – perhaps when fundraising from alumni with fond memories of a much different institution of their youth.  Or, perhaps, when being sued by the federal government for failing to follow federal labor guidelines.  But, now, the federal government is saying: “you claim to be Catholic, but don’t look very Catholic to us.  Prove it.”  Ooops:

It’s not just Boeing that the National Labor Relations Board is picking on: For the second time this year, the NLRB has ruled against a Catholic college.

The Chicago office of the NLRB said that St. Xavier University had failed to demonstrate the “substantial religious character” necessary to qualify for exemption from federal labor law. As a result, adjunct professors in its employ will be allowed to organize, even though the school has argued that a faculty union would interfere with the school’s autonomy as a religious institution by ceding “jurisdiction over important matters to a third party.”

In January, the NLRB’s New York office made the same determination about Manhattan College, a Christian Brothers institution, which has since appealed.

Both cases hinge on the Supreme Court’s ruling in NLRB v. The Catholic Bishop of Chicago, et al. (1979), which found that the NLRB had violated the First Amendment’s free exercise clause by requiring Catholic schools to comply with federal labor laws, thereby possibly interfering with religious decision-making. But that ruling didn’t stop the NLRB from claiming authority over most Catholic colleges and universities by arguing that Catholic Bishop protects only “church-controlled” institutions that are “substantially religious,” a phrase taken from Chief Justice Warren Burger’s majority opinion in the case. Many of the nation’s 224 Catholic colleges and universities are legally independent of the Catholic bishops or the religious orders that founded them.

So the NLRB has put itself in the position of judging schools’ religious character, and it has concluded over the years that many Catholic institutions are inconsistent in their application of Catholic principles to teaching, course requirements, campus life and faculty hiring. It’s a serious overreach by the government, though many Catholics would agree that colleges and universities often demonstrate inconsistent religious observation.

The erosion of religious identity in Catholic higher education over the past 50 years has been marked by theological dissent, hostility toward the bishops, and increasingly liberal campus-life arrangements such as co-ed dorms and lax visitation rules. These issues fueled the 2009 confrontation at Notre Dame, for example, when pro-life Catholics objected to the school honoring President Barack Obama. This year the U.S. bishops are engaged in a review of Catholic educators’ compliance with church rules for colleges and universities.

Colleges that have deliberately watered down their Catholic identity, in part to help themselves compete for government aid, now face church pressure to strengthen their religious identity. The choice for Catholic educators is increasingly clear: defend religious liberty and stand up for a strong Catholic identity—or give up the pretense.

I agree that the Obama Administration – always willing to go to the mat for their union supporters, without whose donations the democrat party could not compete – is massively over-reaching in their rulings in favor of college professors forming unions.  But what is schaudenfruede-licious is seeing many formerly, or nominally, Catholic universities hoisted on their own petard.  That this hoisting is being done by the man whom the vast majority of academics and staff at these universities absolutely adore, is even more deliciously ironic. I probably shouldn’t be enjoying myself so much – I’m certain I’m straying into vice doing so. 

It would be highly ironic if the secular idol of so  many in Catholic higher education were the source of its eventual revitalization.

RELATED.  Catholic University of America tries to reinstate some virtue in campus life, and is sued by a secularist professor for ‘human rights’ violation.  Apparently, facilitating drunken sex among co-eds through mixed sex residence halls is now a fundamental human right.