Pursuing Jesuit, Catholic Identity and Mission at U.S. Jesuit Colleges and Universities

Abstract

D iscussion on just what makes a university Catholic, and how a Catholic university should relate to the Church and the local bishop, date long before Ex corde Ecclesiae, and indeed go back to the early universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, including St. Thomas Aquinas and his troubles with the Archbishop of Paris. More recently, we can cite 1949 and the establishment of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU), in collaboration with the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Educa- tion (Gallin, 1992, 1996; Gleason, 1995; Leahy, 1991; O’Brien, 1994; O’Keefe, 1997). Under the leadership of Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., and with the support of Pope Paul VI, IFCU evolved into an organization increasingly in- dependent of the Congregation. This foreshadowed the tensions accompany- ing the development of Ex corde Ecclesiae. Meeting in Tokyo in 1965, IFCU decided to develop a document on the distinctive character of a Catholic uni- versity in the context of the recently published Vatican Council II (1965) docu- ment The Church in the Modern World.