Law said his basic criterion for issuing a permit will be the intent of a theologian. The combination of the lack of punishment for failure to seek permission and Law's assertion of his own open-mindedness seem to go a long way to answering the concerns raised by faculty members at Boston College and other Catholic universities. They had feared their academic freedom was threatened by the suggestion that professors seek license from a church to teach. The requirement to seek permission is supposed to go into effect next year, after another debate by the bishops. Yesterday, the bishops reviewed a proposed set of guidelines for granting permission.
Many academics are still concerned.
Daniel Finn, a theologian at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., who is consulting to the bishops' committee, said he fears that conservative groups of alumni, trustees, and financial supporters will pressure Catholic colleges to oust theologians who do not have approval from their local bishops. And Finn said that some theologians, perhaps including some in Boston, would be denied a seal of approval to teach if they sought it. Finn said there is at least one theologian at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge already under investigation by the Vatican. She added that, as a college president, she does not expect to fire faculty members who refuse to seek church approval, or even those denied it. Boston College's president, the Rev. William P. Leahy, who had not yet seen a transcript of the bishops' debate or reviewed the document, declined to comment, according to a spokesman.