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long-running battle over the fate of the Saint Ignatius Institute,
a small but influential great-books program at the University of
San Francisco, is rapidly turning into a test of the survivability
of traditional Catholicism in America — and of the admissibility
of traditional religious belief to the academy. A year after I reported
on the Saint Ignatius Institute controversy in several pieces for
NRO (for those reports, click
here, here,
and here)
the struggle has expanded to include the founding of a new college,
heated legal jousting between that new college and the University
of San Francisco, and the exile and muzzling of Father Joseph Fessio,
one of the most eminent voices of conservative Catholicism in America
today. More than anything else, the attack on the renowned Father
Fessio by his own Jesuit order gives dramatic proof of the extent
to which Catholic liberal education is endangered by political correctness
— from within the Church itself.
Just over a
year ago, in a move that capped 25 years of tension between the
liberal Jesuits who run the University of San Francisco and the
traditional Catholics who taught in an award-winning great-books
program called the Saint Ignatius Institute, Father Stephen Privett,
the newly installed president of USF, summarily dismissed the directors
of the Saint Ignatius Institute and moved to reorganize the program,
effectively gutting it as an outpost of traditional Catholic teaching
in an otherwise liberal university.
The response
was vigorous and swift. The core faculty of the Saint Ignatius Institute
declined to participate in the new program, while the extensive
network of the Institute's alumni and friends — many of them
prominent Catholic journalists — launched a public campaign
to save the traditional program.
I am not a
Catholic, but I am a defender of classic liberal education, and
of the right of traditional religion to hold a place in such an
education. The specter of an ostensibly Catholic university destroying
the single small center of traditional Catholic learning remaining
on its campus seemed to me to embody the death of fairness and true
intellectual diversity in the contemporary academy. So in addition
to writing several pieces on the controversy for NRO, I joined with
a number of intellectuals, Catholic and otherwise, in a public statement
of protest over the destruction of the Saint Ignatius Institute.
That statement was signed by, among others, William Bennett, Robert
George, Michael Novak, Jean Elshtain, George Weigel, Deal Hudson,
Hadley Arkes, Richard John Neuhaus, and Ralph McInerny. Meanwhile,
students of the Saint Ignatius institute staged that rarity of rarities
— a campus demonstration by conservatives (including protest
chants in Latin), in defense of the traditional program.
Although the
public protests seriously embarrassed Father Privett, his only response
was to hire a slick public relations firm and persist in his plan
to gut the Saint Ignatius Institute. As a result, defenders of the
Institute took their protest to the Pope himself. That is where
I left this story off, in March of last year. What has happened
since?
That is a matter
of considerable controversy. What we know is that, on January 25,
the Congregation for Catholic Education (the Vatican equivalent
of the Department of Education) issued a rather vague letter, susceptible
to divergent interpretation by either side in the dispute. In a
bow to the traditionalists, the letter clearly calls for doctrinal
integrity, and insists that individuals whose lives and teachings
are inconsistent with the explicit teachings of the Church should
not be imported into the Saint Ignatius Institute. At the same time,
the letter calls rather vaguely for "collaboration" between
all parties involved in the tensions over the Saint Ignatius Institute.
President Privett
quickly seized upon the letter's call for "collaboration"
between "all the parties" to declare victory. According
to President Privett, mutual collaboration apparently means, "everyone
must agree with me." And what about the letter's insistence
that the faculty of the Saint Ignatius Institute maintain the integrity
of traditional Catholic doctrine? On that score, Father Privett
seems not to be "collaborating" with the Vatican.
In a clear
indication of the direction of the new Saint Ignatius Institute,
Father Privett has personally hired Albert R. Jonsen as an instructor.
Jonsen is an ex-Jesuit priest, a medical ethicist who has publicly
spoken in defense of human cloning, euthanasia, and tissue banks
using material derived from elective abortions. One wonders how
Father President Privett, whose spokesmen have publicly taunted
the traditionalists for defying the Vatican's order to "collaborate"
with him, can square the continuing presence of Albert Jonsen at
the Saint Ignatius Institute with his newfound discovery of the
joys of obedience to Rome.
So while a
very strong case can be made that the traditional Catholics at the
Saint Ignatius Institute have stood ready for true collaboration
and compromise with Father Privett, it is more than obvious that
President Privett is bound and determined to wipe out any small
remaining center of traditional Catholic teaching at his university
— and to do so in direct violation of admonitions from the
Vatican itself.
The response
of supporters of the Saint Ignatius Institute to President Privett's
evident refusal to compromise or collaborate with them has been
to form an entirely new college. The two-year institution is called
Campion College, and has been founded through the efforts of Father
Joseph Fessio, who founded the original Saint Ignatius Institute,
and who currently directs Ignatius Press, and by John Galten, the
former director of SII summarily dismissed by Father Privett. The
Campion College curriculum will reproduce in substance the curriculum
of the original Saint Ignatius Institute.
The founding
of Campion College has been enthusiastically hailed by Christoph
Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, long a supporter of the Saint Ignatius
Institute and a figure thoroughly conversant with the letter on
the SII controversy produced by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic
Education. Surely if the founding of Campion College had been disallowed
by that letter, Cardinal Schonborn would not have embraced this
new institution with such enthusiasm.
Yet even this
attempt to establish — outside the confines of the University
of San Francisco — a great-books program dedicated to the spirit
of classic Catholic humanism, has been subject to legal assault
by President Privett. Despite his stated commitment to "diversity,"
President Privett apparently cannot tolerate the existence of an
enclave of traditional Catholic teaching, either inside or outside
of his university.
Donna Davis,
general counsel of the University of San Francisco has issued a
letter demanding that Campion College "cease and desist"
from even mentioning on the Campion College website that Campion
"arose" from the Saint Ignatius Institute. Yet Campion
College and its curriculum are virtually identical to the curriculum
of the original institute. Moreover, its faculty will include core
faculty members of the old Saint Ignatius Institute. As a simple
historical fact, it is obvious that Campion College did indeed "arise"
from the Saint Ignatius Institute.
Legalities
aside, what's striking here is the near-tyrannical determination
of an allegedly tolerant liberal Jesuit like President Privett to
wipe out any traditional Catholic program, however small, and whether
inside or outside of his university. Campion College plans to admit
an initial class of only 15 students. With the entire University
of San Francisco as his theological playground, and now with even
the small and formerly traditionalist Saint Ignatius Institute in
the hands of the most blatantly unorthodox Catholic teachers available
on the planet, will Father President Privett begrudge even fifteen
bold souls the privilege of a traditional Catholic education?
But it's worse
than that. The overwhelmingly liberal Jesuit order itself has now
moved to attack Campion College and to block Father Joseph Fessio,
the founder of the original Saint Ignatius Institute, now the founder
of Campion College, and one of the most esteemed and influential
voices of traditional Catholicism in the United States, from any
association with Campion. On Monday, March 11, Father Tom Smolich,
Father Fessio's Jesuit superior, ordered Fessio to break his public
and private ties to Campion College, and went so far as to remove
Father Fessio from San Francisco and effectively demote him to the
post of chaplain at an obscure hospital in Southern California.
Imposing a transfer like that on a man of Fessio's stature is something
like sending a purged Communist leader to Siberia.
The irony is
that Father Fessio and his fellow Catholic conservatives are berated
by liberal Jesuits and their allies for invoking "Papal tyranny."
Yet it is those determined to crush any small outpost of traditional
Catholic education who are acting as the real oppressors here. The
old Saint Ignatius Institute consisted of 150 souls in a university
of 7,000 — a mere two percent of the students at USF. The program
was entirely voluntary, and students at SII could and did take courses
on Catholic theology from the liberal Jesuits at the larger university.
And now, a two-year college offering the same curriculum to a mere
15 students is under assault from the forces of "diversity."
But it is the
muzzling and exile of Father Fessio that tells the ultimate truth
about the death of traditional Catholic education. Those moves may
have been formally initiated by Fessio's superior, but they were
undertaken with the explicit approval of Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach,
the head of the Jesuit order itself. (This fact was confirmed by
Father Fessio, who told me that his superior, Father Smolich, told
him that the reassignment had been approved in advance by the "general"
of the Jesuit order.) Calling the Jesuits "liberal," serves
as a rough sort of shorthand for their ideological sympathies, but
in truth, there is nothing liberal at all about what the Jesuits
have done to Father Fessio.
Traditional
American Catholics should look to the fiasco at the University of
San Francisco with dismay. If Campion College is successfully strangled
at birth by the liberal Jesuits who have already destroyed the Saint
Ignatius Institute, it is obvious that traditional Catholic education
in the United States is in desperate straits. No such program
at any university will be able to withstand the attack of another
President Privett. And be assured that more Father Privett's will
arise.
For non-Catholics,
the tale of the destruction of the Saint Ignatius Institute is part
of the larger story of the death of authentic intellectual diversity
under the regime of bogus "multicultural" diversity. True
liberal education is about exposing students to the fundamental
alternatives in life. Traditional Catholicism, taught in light of
its place in the stream of great Western thought, is surely one
among the fundamental possibilities for living a good life. How
can education for anyone be true and secure if the possibility of
teaching such an alternative is destroyed?
The fight for
Campion College is now the fight for the soul of higher education
in America. Traditional Catholics — and all who care about
liberal education — need to act in support of Campion
College, and to protest the attempt by the University of San
Francisco — and the Jesuit order itself — to destroy it.
Finally, to directly support Campion College, consult the following
link.
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