Ex Corde Ecclesiae and American Catholic Higher Education: The Calm Before the Storm or Dead in the Water?

Abstract

Amid the struggle that Catholic colleges and universities, especially those in the United States, face as they seek to preserve their religious identities, Rome formally entered the fray on August 15, 1990, when Pope John Paul II promulgated the Ex Corde Ecclesiae (Ex Corde) (literally, “from the heart of the Church”). John Paul II wrote Ex Corde in an attempt to reinvigorate the debate over how Catholic colleges and universities can remain true to their religious missions while being viable institutions of higher learning wherein faculty members are free to work as researchers and teachers who can meet the same objective performance evaluation criteria as their professional colleagues in the world of academics. In reviewing the status of Ex Corde over the more than 5 years that expired since the controversy over the adoption of The Application and The Guidelines designed to implement Ex Corde began, this article is divided into three parts. The first part reviews the basic elements of Ex Corde while the second examines both the events surrounding the adoption of The Application and The Guidelines along with their subsequent (non)implementation in the United States. The third part of the article reflects on the current status of Ex Corde in American Catholic colleges and universities, revealing that its critics have little to fear for academic freedom and/or job safety unless its terms are expressly included in employment contracts—a prospect that is not even remotely on the horizon.