Comments

1. Bill Mazzella 08/10/2007 - 12:35 pm  subscriber

   This is probably what Ex Corde Ecclesia would have looked like when implemented were it nof for the courage and good sense of Catholic Universities to reject it. Not to mention the unique clairvoyance of Ted Hesburgh to make Catholic universities independent.

   Maybe the Cardinal Newman society can help Ave Maria.

2. william collier 08/10/2007 - 2:02 pm  subscriber

   Such a shame. Obviously, it’s the students who are hurt the most. As Prof. Rice’s letter mentions, hundreds of them rearranged their lives, with many no doubt taking on substantial debt, in the hope of obtaining a Catholic legal education. It’s hard to tell how much personality issues, change of location, and standards of orthodoxy are playing in the implosion of the institution, but if I were a student there, I’d start weighing my options for moving on to another law school.

3. F. C. Bauerschmidt 08/10/2007 - 4:09 pm  subscriber

   This is probably what Ex Corde Ecclesia would have looked like when implemented were it nof for the courage and good sense of Catholic Universities to reject it. Not to mention the unique clairvoyance of Ted Hesburgh to make Catholic universities independent.

   This is just silly. Ave Maria’s whole problem stems from the fact that it is independent. It has nothing whatsoever to do with ecclesiastical control of universities.

   But, hey, don’t let reality keep your knee from jerking.

4. Andrew Savarese 08/10/2007 - 5:42 pm

   If you establish a school which demands that the only view that can be proponded is the arch-conservative orthodox view of the old Roman Catholic Church, you don’t have a dean you have a pope. If you don’t allow freedom of thought, and even the right that everyone has to be wrong, and if you don’t allow your professors to explore the existential reality of things and show the possibility of different conclusion, what else would expect other than this?

5. Bill Mazzella 08/10/2007 - 7:43 pm  subscriber

   F.C.

   Andrew seems to have answered your critique. My point was exactly that. When you have dogmatic leaders, academic freedom and scholarship will suffer.

   Secondly, independent means that professors are allowed to pursue subject matter according to scientific principles. It certainly helps enormously if those professors are imbued with the spirit of God. The Spirit of God has no problem with science.

6. cathleen kaveny 08/11/2007 - 7:17 am

   Is a university –or a law school– a business? To what extent should it be run like a business? That is for me the key question.

   If this were a corporation, one would have no problem with the CEO getting rid of regional managers for brand loyalty issues. At the same time, the higher people are in the company, the more golden are their parachutes. There’s no tenure, but there is a sweet parting deal. If Prof. Safranek were legal counsel to Mr. Monahan’s business corporation, I wouldn’t be quite as worried about his kids.

   Ex Corde, whether you agree with it or not: 1) saw itself as operating in a university context, not a commercial context; and 2) saw itself as facilitating the discovery of truth, not a kind of brand loyalty to Catholicism a la coke v. pepsi. .

   But as I read the article, the fundamental problem is that the Catholicism at Ave Maria is viewed as a brand. That’s not a problem with its Catholicism per se, that’s a problem with its operating model–the way it mixes business and university life.

   More specifically, I think the trouble with mixing Catholicism, corporatization, and university life is that Catholicism (indeed a certain stripe of Catholicism) becomes like a brand–a selling point, an item of loyalty. It’s not a matrix of intellectual and spiritual commitments.

   But it’s not an essentially conservative/liberal issue. This can happen on either end of the political or ecclesiastically spectrum. It’s what happens when you don’t let an academic community be an academic community, and want it to be a business.

7. Bill Mazzella 08/11/2007 - 12:19 pm  subscriber

   However one views the situation it is startling. I find it rather refreshing and a compliment to Catholic educators. I don’t think one would see this at Liberty University.

   They certainly destroyed my stereotype of them. Who would have thunk it?

8. Bill Mazzella 08/11/2007 - 5:24 pm  subscriber

   Relevant comments from people involved at Ave Maria.

   http://www.insidehighered.com:80/news/2007/08/09/avemaria

9. F. C. Bauerschmidt 08/13/2007 - 10:00 am  subscriber

   “If you establish a school which demands that the only view that can be proponded is the arch-conservative orthodox view of the old Roman Catholic Church, you don’t have a dean you have a pope.”

   Well, I’m not sure exactly what “the old Roman Catholic Church” is, but the problems at Ave Maria seem to have almost nothing to do with Catholicism and everything to do with Mr. Monaghan megalomania. The firing-rehiring of Fr. Fessio — hardly a flaming liberal — would seem to show this.

   I do find Prof. Kaveny’s suggestion about the “braning” of Catholicism an interesting one.

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