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“The general tone from my colleagues was that this was very hopeful, very encouraging,” Artman said from Washington, D.C., during a Friday morning telephone interview. “It was kind of a shot in the arm to continue to focus on our Catholic identity.”
Artman was among more than 400 educators who listened to the pope’s address on Catholic education at The Catholic University of America.
The address, part of the pope’s six-day visit to the U.S., received extensive pre-coverage in the April 11 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, a national publication aimed at college and university faculty and administrators.
The Vatican and Catholic colleges and universities in the U.S. have experienced tension in the past, particularly after Pope John Paul II’s “Ex Corde Ecclesiae,” issued in 1990. Part of enacting that document meant theologians at Catholic universities had to receive formal approval from bishops.
It was telling, Artman said, that the pope Thursday never mentioned “Ex Corde Ecclesiae.”
“We’re so much further along in our dialogue and communion than we were in the ’90s,” Artman said. “There’s certainly a great swing toward more affirmation of Catholic identity in American higher education, and the negativity and divisiveness about the mandatum and bishops is gone.”
In the address, the pope praised Catholic educators’ history of helping immigrants rise out of poverty, and said intellectual charity calls on “educators to recognize that the profound responsibility to lead the young to truth is nothing less than an act of love.”
But while the pope reaffirmed the value of academic freedom, he also said educators “have the duty and privilege to ensure that students receive instruction in Catholic doctrine and practice.
“... any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the church would obstruct or even betray the university’s identity and mission,” the pope said.
Artman said he sometimes had to strain to understand the pope’s words due to his heavy accent, and he plans to read and reflect on the text of the address, available on The Catholic University of America’s Web site, over the next days.
Next week, he will post his reaction to the address on Viterbo’s Web site, Artman said.
“I am confident there is nothing in the text that will cause us to rethink our direction,” Artman said. “It’s very affirming with what we at Viterbo have been looking at in terms of our Catholic identity.”
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
