Catholic University

The plight of most Catholic Universities—including my alma mater I am sad to say—is that they are hardly Catholic at all, a fact made painfully, but necessarily, clear by the recent book by Alice Hendershott, Status Envy: The Politics of Catholic Higher Education, which is a must read book.

In this story from the Washington Times about one university that has turned around, much hope stirs in the hearts of the faithful who realize just how important our Catholic universities are.

An excerpt.

“Catholic University President the Rev. David M. O'Connell, credited with raising at least $180 million for the institution and steering the school back into Catholic orthodoxy, announced Friday he will resign in August to pursue other interests.

“The 54-year-old president, who arrived 11 years ago to a campus divided over the firing of dissident theologian Charles Curran more than a decade earlier, has had a tenure that has included a major growth spurt and a 2008 papal visit.

"I am feeling a little bit tired," said Father O'Connell, who lost 80 pounds this past year while battling diabetes. "There is a time when it's good for the institution to have a change and that time has arrived. I helped do a lot of things Catholic University desperately needed at the time and there is a momentum going now that there was not going before.

"But I don't want it to get to the place where things get complacent."

“Once he and his Jack Russell terrier "Sweetie" leave the campus, he hopes to take a six-month sabbatical, a benefit he has never enjoyed in his 28 years as a priest. He'd also like to write and study Spanish until either his religious order - the Vincentians - or the Vatican gives him another assignment.

"I've had some bishops say, 'Don't worry about what you're going to do next,' " joked the president who is widely thought to be in consideration for one of several vacant bishoprics across the country.

“When Father O'Connell, then 42, was selected from more than 100 candidates as the university's 14th president in March 1998, he was the second-youngest man to assume the post. He had just come from stints at St. John's University in New York, where he was associate vice president and academic dean, and as interim academic vice president at Niagara University, also in New York.

“He arrived at an institution riven by the tenure of Father Curran, who in 1968 led 600 theologians in a spirited opposition to "Humanae Vitae," Pope Paul VI's encyclical opposing artificial birth control.

"The Charles Curran case branded Catholic University as a hotbed of dissent even though that may have been exaggerated," said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a Manassas group that monitors Catholic colleges' fidelity to church teachings.

"There were serious concerns in the area of student life in the residence halls - a lot of partying and sexual activity there - and then a number of faculty who dissented from Catholic teaching," he added.

"The bishops on the board of Catholic University made a decision years ago that it ought to be a model for the implementation of 'Ex Corde Ecclesiae,' the Vatican mandate for how Catholic universities should be structured and governed. Father O'Connell came in with that mandate."

“Father O'Connell said Friday that CUA's status as a pontifical university, which has the Vatican's authority to issue academic degrees in canon law, theology, Scripture and philosophy that carry the church's imprimatur, spurred him to institute reforms.”