Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, might not enjoy the pope's visit to America next month. Pope Benedict XVI will address an audience that includes the presidents from every American Catholic university at a meeting at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. A gathering like this has not occurred in 29 years, and there is quite a bit of speculation about what the pope will say.
According to a March 7 article in the New York Sun, Catholic University's president, David O'Connell, thinks that the pope will both encourage Catholic educators and stress the importance of "promoting and strengthening" Catholic identity.
Father Terence Henry, president of Franciscan University in Ohio, believes that the pope will go further in his talk and "challenge Catholic universities to get back to the spirit of why they were founded."
These conjectures about the potential criticism of Pope Benedict's CUA talk are supported to some extent by his actions when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger and visited America to defend a papal law that exercised tighter control over Catholic universities and colleges. The law was criticized for stifling academic freedom. However, many Catholic educators believe that academic freedom may not be as important as indoctrinating students with Catholic values. As Henry points out, "[Catholic universities] were not founded to be another Penn State."
Father Henry described Pope Benedict as "a true educator" who is "looking at western Europe, and [who's] looking at the United States, and [who's] not seeing a vibrant faith among the intelligentsia, among the elites of our culture…I think he's probably going to attribute that to maybe Catholic universities needing to put more emphasis on their primary identity."
Catholic universities consistently struggle with how much their campuses should be governed by Catholic morals. Whether or not crucifixes should be displayed, gay and lesbian support groups allowed, and condoms distributed are all contested issues on Catholic campuses across the nation. A Catholic university must also choose its commencement speaker with care; Marymount Manhattan College was harshly criticized for deciding to make New York Senator Hillary Clinton its commencement speaker, despite her support for abortion rights.
2008 Woodie Awards
Be the first to comment on this story