Robert Araujo. SJ comments on two recent addresses by Archbishop Michael Miller, Secretary for the Congregation for Catholic Education, in the US – at BC and Creighton. At the moment he wrote his post, the texts of the speeches hadn’t been published, so he reflects within the context of the news reports:

The archbishop was not hesitant to point out that some dimensions of the problems he investigated emerge from the Catholic community itself when it opposes certain teachings of the Church and fails to examine objectively its content. It would seem from the thrust of his remarks that this sort of enterprise is counter-productive to the endeavor of the Catholic renewal he has in mind. It is clear that those who promote these critiques of the Catholic faith and its teachings have found a home in institutions where the vital relationship between faith and reason may receive lip service but not substantive endorsement and support. The institution which chooses to be Catholic, along with the members of its community, must recall that they are a witness for, not an adversary to, the Church and its intellectual tradition. Relying on the cloak of “academic freedom” does little to conceal the reality of the betrayal of the institution’s raison d’être. To be true to its identity, the Catholic institution must be free to pursue the truth—God’s truth—and not a weak human counterpart riddled with subjectivity or the skepticism that this truth cannot be discovered.

Related: At the conference at which I spoke last weekend – the Legatus National Fall Summit (Legatus being, for those of who not familiar with it, an organization for Catholic business and professional leaders started by Tom Monaghan of DominosTigersAveMaria fame.)  – Fr. John Jenkins, CSC, president of Notre Dame, spoke, and apparently fielded some tough questions after his talk. (I wasn’t there for that)

On Saturday morning, I sat at a breakfast table with Fr. Spitzer, SJ, president of Gonzaga, who is having a bit more success in dealing with difficult forces at his university. He forbade productions of the play back in 2002) He pointed out that he had more time to prepare the ground for the VMonologue-related decisions he had to make, while Fr. Jenkins came into the situation cold, following many years in which those forces were not only tolerated but encouraged to take root. Despite the disappointment at Jenkins’ decision – as expressed even by Bishop D’Arcy as well as many other fine commentors – I’ll just add one other point I heard on the controversy, from a very plain-spoken woman I met – she felt fairly strongly that the Jenkins Approach was going to work, that interest in the play was greatly fading, the groups sponsoring it were not able to make money off of it, were relegated to doing it in a classroom, etc. Who knows…only time will tell.

(Finally, would that more involved in these controversies also take the advice of Catherine O’Donnell, wife of Christendom prez Timothy, with whom I had a delightful and sadly much-too-brief conversation, who vigorously asked…why don’t they encourage something positive as an antitode? It’s not as if Catholic culture is lacking in artistic and cultural expressions of what it means to be fully human, male or female, is it?)