The shock expressed at the idea that universities should be subject to an authority external to them is forced. Accrediting associations, federal bureaucracies, professional societies, state examining boards, etc., etc., are taken to be compatible with academic freedom at both secular and Catholic institutions. Of course an institution need not seek accreditation, or funding, or choose to prepare its graduates to meet the requirements of state examiners in engineering and the like. But neither Notre Dame nor Boston College has chosen this austere consequence of its stated conception of academic freedom. One need not be a Catholic, just as one need not seek membership in a profession with standards, but one can no more be a Catholic and deny the teaching authority of the Church than he can remain a doctor while rejecting the standards of the medical profession.
Catholic universities embody the collective act of faith of their founders and members.
But this is the absurdity Frs. Malloy and Monan, in the name of their universities, have adopted. This sad article is only the latest event in a drama that has been unfolding in the Church since 1968. What is at issue is not the research and teaching of the majority of the faculty, but the dissenting stance of theologians. It is the theologians who have led Catholic universities down the path to effective apostasy.