NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

    WASHINGTON, DC (CWNews.com) - Despite warnings of a close vote, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops overwhelmingly decided to adopt new guidelines regarding Catholic colleges and universities.

    The 223-31 vote sends the guidelines on to the Vatican for final approval. An earlier version of the rules was rejected by the Vatican in 1996. The guidelines, based on Pope John Paul II's 1990 letter "Ex Corde Ecclesia," require theologians to receive a mandate from the local bishop to teach at Catholic colleges, state that a university president should be a practicing Catholics, and that a majority of faculty and board members, where possible, should also be Catholic.

    Opponents charged that the rules will suppress academic freedom and endanger government funding. Supporters said the academic freedom guaranteed by the guidelines are actually wider than that championed by secular US higher education groups, and that the guidelines will prevent an erosion of Catholic identity.

    The theology teachers' mandate requires them to "be faithful to the Church's magisterium as the authoritative interpreter of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition." It also gives the bishop the right to not only refuse to issue a mandate, but to also revoke that mandate at a later date.

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