The latest document on Catholic universities stresses that they must be places of research. This requirement raises crucial questions both for the institutions themselves and for the authorities in charge of them. The implications are examined by the former president of St Jerome?s University at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

TRADITIONAL Jesuit theory posits a four-fold objective for the educational apostolate: practical preparation for the world of work, the betterment of society, individual human perfection, and a pathway to the next life. This paradigm has found expression in various Catholic educational documents and is generally reflected in John Paul II?s apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, Ex corde ecclesiae, although in his statement the Pope quite naturally stresses those elements of Catholic education most appropriate to the university scene. Ex corde ecclesiae, therefore, has much to say about the academic?s pursuit of truth and of the university?s role in the advancement of the common good, and the papal document positions these objectives within the framework of a professionally responsible academic freedom. John Paul states that the distinctively Catholic university will achieve these ends by providing a forum for reflection upon the ever-expanding treasury of human knowledge, to which it seeks to contribute by its own research in fidelity to the Christian message and in light of the Catholic faith. There is in Ex corde ecclesiae an appropriate concern for questions of scholarship, research, and the quest for new knowledge which emphasises the final three of the Jesuit objectives and which virtually ignores the first, the world of work.

In fact, the Vatican insistence on responsible research expands the thesis in two significant directions which all Catholic universities and university colleges, but especially the smaller ones in countries like Canada and England, would do well to reflect upon. The first is the essential and inseparable connection between teaching and research, and the second is the insistence that the Catholic university must have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion, but which are necessary to safeguard the authentic good of society.

Take first the connection between teaching and research. The history of Catholic universities in Canada and England, as well as of scores of smaller Catholic universities in the United States, is precisely that they have been seen to be ? and for the most part actually have been ? centres for the former rather than the latter. In fact, many bishops and a not insignificant number of the laity seem to prefer things that way. Given the traditional emphasis on Catholic education as a process stretching from the primary through secondary levels of schooling and given the traditional catechetical approach to learning, it is hardly surprising that those post-secondary institutions which are content to function merely as contemporary conduits for the expounding of long-established truths rather than as searchers of and contributors towards new knowledge are more comfortably accepted.

By persistently stressing the university?s research function, however, Ex corde ecclesiae implicitly places mere disseminators of information outside the university circle as such. Indeed, the emphasis on research within the Catholic university and the omission of professional training from among the essential characteristics specifically enumerated of the Catholic university pose very real challenges to England?s Catholic university system. In England, professional training schools for Catholic teachers have evolved into four (arguably five) Catholic colleges all of which are engaged in a life-and-death quest for respectability and all of which are understandably anxious to be formally recognised as university colleges. The transition will not be an easy one.

Given their history as Roman Catholic teacher-training centres, is it possible for England?s denominational colleges to effect a successful conversion to university colleges and hence to fulfil the university mission articulated within Ex corde ecclesiae? Can they in fact become meaningful components of a secular university structure whose raison d??tre is rooted in research activity, much of which is quantitative and value-neutral?

As for the responsibility of the Catholic university to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion, Ignacio Ellacur?a and the five Jesuit companions who were martyred with him at the University of Central America in San Salvador on 16 November 1989 precisely because they were working for social change in El Salvador stand out as beacons of a selfless commitment to the Vatican ideal. While recognising that the heroism exhibited by the Jesuit faculty of the Jos? Sim?on Ca?as campus of UCA was extraordinary, one might wonder nonetheless how many faculty members of Catholic colleges and universities in Canada, the United States, or England are even contemplating more modest expressions of uncomfortable truths.

Perhaps a more vexing question: why does the expounding of uncomfortable truths as a professorial responsibility not extend beyond civil society to the ecclesial one? Does Rome have nothing to learn from the collective wisdom of committed Catholic academics, and does the Catholic professorial body not have a similar responsibility to add to the growing treasury of human knowledge as a means of making the Catholic Church more meaningfully present in the modern world? Indeed, if Catholic professors do not engage in such reflections and disseminate the results of their research, how will the Church mature as Ecclesia semper reformanda; that is, how will it remain faithful to the conciliar vision of a pilgrim Church committed to the necessary process of reformation?

Yet the Vatican has let it be known that several areas of human interest are essentially out-of-bounds as subjects of further inquiry: the issue of women priests and certain aspects of human sexuality are obvious examples. Surely these are precisely the kinds of topics for research, reflection, and articulation which ought to be on the active agenda of every Catholic university? They should not be assigned by default to the exclusive jurisdiction of the secular university, or left without challenge to the judgement of a celibate ecclesiastical hierarchy which has been widely discredited in the debate because of the narrowly cerebral and decidedly doctrinaire manner with which it has approached the issues.

ON the Canadian scene, the only professorial voice of note willing to address such topics, Andr? Guindon?s, was under review by the Vatican when Guindon suffered a fatal heart attack in 1993. Guindon, a priest-professor at St Paul University in Ottawa, died a disheartened academic, and with him died the only credible Catholic voice in a Canadian university with the potential to foster a meaningful dialogue within the Canadian community on sensitive issues of a sexual nature. In England, the commitment to teach teachers brings with it as a pedagogical imperative the transmission of information, seldom a critique of the information. As a result, England?s most eloquent and most respected voice on Catholic matters relating to sex and marriage is not that of a Catholic professor but of a Catholic practitioner, author, and frequent contributor to the pages of The Tablet, Jack Dominian. In fact, one has to wonder if there is any realistic prospect of the Catholic academy?s being heard on sensitive topics either in Canada or in England.

At the same time, one would have to wonder why anyone would actually want to teach in any sensitive discipline which is by definition destined to be subjected to critical review by an ecclesiastical hierarchy apparently committed to dissemination at the expense of examination. In the United States, there have been years of haggling over the canonical right of the competent ecclesiastical authority to issue (or withhold, or withdraw) an episcopal mandate (mandatum) authenticating the magisterial communion of any Roman Catholic faculty member teaching theology in a Catholic department or faculty of theology. In drafting their ordinances implementing Ex corde ecclesiae, the Canadians too have had to contend with the Vatican?s repeated insistence on mandatum. While co-operating with the bishops in formulating the required procedures for the mandatum, an ad hoc sub-committee of the Catholic Theological Society of America stated for the record its view that this juridical instrument is a threat to Catholic higher education.

Ex corde ecclesiae, in other words, is not one document but two, in fundamental conflict with each other. The general norms and their accompanying process for implementation on the local scene (that is, the ordinances) effectively attempt to undercut the philosophical heart of the text as a whole. The question is clear enough, and the implications ought also to be self-evident. Do we relinquish the field to George Bernard Shaw and declare that the Catholic university is in fact a contradiction in terms, that its mission is avowedly catechetical rather than analytical; or do we follow the Pope?s urgings in Ex corde ecclesiae and aim to provide a continuing reflection in the light of the Catholic faith upon the growing treasury of human knowledge, to which the Catholic university seeks to contribute by its own research?

If the Catholic university and the Catholic university college are to assume their requisite roles, a basic reshaping is essential. Yesterday?s answers and yesterday?s structures must of necessity be revised to fit today?s realities. And that includes the realities with which the Catholic university must contend. In Canada, there are 17 Catholic colleges and universities located variously over some 5,000 kilometres and within seven different provinces. All of these institutions are small and virtually all have their own local political structure, ranging from free-standing to various forms of federation with large secular universities. In a world of amalgamated structures, entrepreneurial euphoria, bureaucratic proliferation, and pragmatic ideals, the future for these institutions as independently Catholic voices has to be doubtful at best. As for their influence on Canadian society, it is seldom if ever rooted in the research of their faculty; for that we must turn to their graduates, many of whom embody the ideals of a tradition in a way in which we can take justifiable pride. But if the colleges? future as institutions is in doubt, it follows of necessity that even the shaping of future agents of social change is also in doubt.

As institutions, we are individually too small to achieve the educational ends envisaged by Ex corde ecclesiae. New forms and new approaches are necessary. Characteristically, colleges and universities in the United States exist as an array of variously-sized and individually operated institutions scattered from coast to coast. The Canadian scene is by nature generally more co-operative in its institutional structures, usually preferring formal affiliation with a host university and locating physically on the host campus. Reaching into the secular university has immense advantages from an economic and even a logistical point of view and the arrangement may even support our continued existence.

Experience suggests, however, that the association brings no assurance of survival as a Catholic university. Such alliances can, in fact, underline the tenuous nature of our Catholic identity, either by consuming us academically by integrating our faculty into university departments, or by determining our future through external control of our programmes, or even by casting doubts on our professionalism as though we were comparative inferiors as academics, either dabbling in soft research or instilling a predetermined script. The Canadian penchant for federation, it seems to me, is somewhat akin to the Digby Stuart route in England, and it is not too distant a version of the road being travelled by those other English Catholic colleges, Newman, Trinity and All Saint?s, and St Mary?s Strawberry Hill ? all of which, however, have retained at least their geographical independence.

In Canada, education is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, a complexity augmented by the regionalism spawned by so vast a country. England?s geography is also a barrier to co-operation, as, no doubt, is the local jurisdiction of the educational authority, including that of the bishop. But surely it is time to take seriously our much-vaunted Catholic sense of community and extend it beyond the limits of our individual campuses. Perhaps traditional Australian mateship combined more naturally with the Catholic philosophy of community ? or maybe it was the haunting alternative of certain demise ?to inspire the collaborative birthing of the Australian Catholic University (ACU).

AUSTRALIA?S Catholic colleges were facing obstacles as daunting as any in Canada or England. Their centres of population and their regional differences are as extreme as any which exist in Canada or in the British Isles. But the Australians have grasped the concept that collaboration creates opportunities for academic programme development and joint research which do not exist in the isolation of our smaller academic centres. In addition, though the actual production of quality research remains their Achilles? heel at this point in ACU?s young history, the ACU mission statement makes clear its commitment to a scholarship characterised by intellectual honesty, academic excellence and freedom of investigation: theirs is an unequivocal aspiration to become a university in every sense of that word.

As the Australians have shown, questions of geography can be overcome by the technical opportunities offered by today?s information and high-tech environment. It is a matter of will and imagination. The Australians have taken eight small colleges located north to south along their eastern seaboard and fused them into a single institutional unit operating out of six separate campuses. Given today?s technology, it is surely possible to talk not only of co-operative academic units located in disparate communities specifically within Canada, England, or Australia, but even of extended international communities. We are limited only by will and vision. Who, for example, is better positioned to engage in cross-cultural research than faculty members at Catholic universities?

The multi-disciplinary research potential which resides within the various Catholic university colleges chimes well with the theoretical exhortation of the Second Vatican Council?s pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes. This explained that not just the theological disciplines but psychology, sociology, literature, and the arts are of great importance to the life of the Church since they examine the struggle of humankind as we strive to perfect ourselves and our world. Moreover, Gaudium et Spes urges a collaboration which embodies the sacred and the secular ? seminaries, universities, and colleges ? which is to be pursued with due consideration for lawful freedom of inquiry and of thought coupled with a freedom for academics to express their findings humbly and courageously about those matters in which they enjoy competence. It is precisely this cross-fertilisation which Donald Cozzens has in mind when in his book The Changing Face of the Priesthood he suggests that an engagement with poetry, novels, film and the theatre will revitalise not only the clerical imagination but the heart, the soul, the homily, and general pastoral care as well.

The Catholic university ought to be a specific resource available to the Church, the bishops and the media, as well as a value-based source of insight for society at large. Yet the English Catholic colleges? 1994 submission to the Bishops? Conference of England and Wales cautioned that their dilution and dissolution were distinct possibilities. In Canada, the threat is more dilution than dissolution, though it is difficult to discern the functional difference between the two options.

Ex corde ecclesiae is a call to action. It outlines a challenging role for the Catholic university to play, both for a post-modern society in need of reasoned direction and for a pilgrim Church which has declared itself to be in constant need of reformation. Time will tell soon enough, perhaps sooner than we might expect, whether we have had the temerity to meet the challenge.

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