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Pope John Paul II issued Ex Corde Ecclesiae in 1990 stressing the importance of the Catholic character of Catholic institutions of higher learning. How has Ex Corde Ecclesiae influenced this current debate?

I think the statement has given them a template to look at the relationship between Catholic theology and the university. If places like Notre Dame took it seriously, an invitation to be the commencement speaker and receive an honorary doctorate would not have gone out. For instance, I would welcome Barack Obama to speak at Baylor. But in this case, the honorary doctorate doesn't go to the office of the President. It goes to Barack Obama, even after he ceases to be president. In a way, that gives an imprimatur on him and his views that I don't think Notre Dame should give him. I think if he were just the commencement speaker and not receiving the honorary doctorate, it would tone down the criticism. How can Notre Dame give him an honorary doctorate for excellence in something that our own theology teaches he isn't excellent in?

The real debate is whether theological claims can count as knowledge. I think that's what the Pope is saying: if we think theology is true and knowable, that means it's no different than what we learn in literature or sociology or philosophy. If that's the case, the university is where we should integrate these areas of knowledge. Theology shouldn't be an after thought. It shouldn't be relegated to campus ministry. It's like in the evangelical world, tagging on a Bible verse. You'll have a book on Christianity and science and it'll be regular science and a section of Bible verses. You think, "This isn't integration, this is weird."

Would there have been similar outrage if Obama had been invited to a nondenominational Christian school?

At places like Biola and Westmont, I suspect that he would be welcomed as a speaker, but I can't imagine with their constituencies that he would go over well as a commencement speaker. But in Catholicism, you have an identifiable body of moral theology that's in the Catechism. It's not ambiguous. You can't say different people interpret the Bible differently on this matter. That's not an option.

It depends on the evangelical school. A lot of evangelical institutions came into being as a reaction against modernism in the Protestant world. In a way, they can point to their history coming into being as a reaction to theological liberalism. Catholic schools don't have that luxury because a lot of them pre-date modernism. For many of them, they've had many in their ranks for years who are not traditional Catholics. I think it's more difficult for Catholic institutions to start saying, "We're going to start being more strict." Evangelical schools like Biola, Westmont, Calvin, and Wheaton can point to a history as a reaction to modernist-fundamentalist debates in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

How do battles within Catholic higher education differ from the disagreements at evangelical colleges over maintaining the identity or the mission of a school?

There are different issues because they have different histories. Catholics, at least those who came in the 19th or early 20th centuries, came to America as ethnic and religious minorities. There's a desire for upward mobility that maybe evangelicals don't have as strongly. Much of evangelicalism is connected to traditional Protestantism, which of course had been dominant in America.

But I don't think they differ all that much. The university faces pressures from the wider academic world, which has a particular understanding of what academic life has got to be about. If, for example, Notre Dame were to terminate a faculty member for denying the Apostle's Creed, you would hear claims that the faculty member's academic freedom had been violated. Yet, if the university had terminated a chemistry professor because he denied the periodic table, nobody would object. That means that theology in some circles is not thought to be knowledge. Can one legitimately claim that one's theological tradition is knowledge? Not only Catholic but evangelical institutions—can one legitimately claim that certain issues are settled? That's really the issue. What are we to think of theology? Is it something we can know? I think it is.

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March (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53