05-13-2011, 06:54 PM
Grace62 wrote:
Back in 1967, Catholic universities in the US issued what they refer to as their "declaration of indepence" on the matter of academic freedom. It's an approach that helped them become some of the more outstanding institutions of higher learning in the world.
Thanks for posting this, Grace62 - it's a good read.
This statement was developed in no small part because of the saga of Charlie Curran, a priest and theologian at Catholic U. As a tenured faculty member, he was suspended from teaching in April '67; after five days of unrelenting protest by students and other faculty, the university relented and reinstated him. The university's rector (equivalent to president at a Catholic school) resigned shortly thereafter.
Curran, who had been sanctioned for questioning the church's moral teaching on birth control (this is the era preceding the Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's encyclical that cemented the church's views on the pill), continued his dissent on matters of personal and sexual morality. He was eventually removed from his position by order of the Vatican's Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), who declared him unfit to teach in 1986. For many Catholics who believed that a lively, respectful, contentious debate on theological matters was good for the Church, this was a depressing moment. In the decades since, the Church hierarchy has been unrelentingly conservative and restrictive on matters of doctrine, quashing and silencing dissent where it arises.