“I believe it is essential to the intellectual life of a university that there should be ferment, discussion, and disagreement,” he explained, saying it is “healthy” to include faculty who do not share Catholic beliefs. “But the university cannot be Catholic in its intellectual life unless it includes enough faculty whose teaching and research promote the Catholic intellectual tradition.”
The Catholic University of America has done “a great deal” to implement the apostolic constitution, Garvey reported. He also noted that the institution is the national university of the Catholic Church and was given its charter by Pope Leo XIII.
According to Garvey, the Catholic identity of the school is discussed in the hiring of faculty, while a candidate’s willingness to “respect and contribute to our mission” is a consideration in granting tenure.
“Our Office of Campus Ministry helps students follow Christ and live the values of the Gospel within the context of the Catholic faith,” he added.
In his view, “Ex Corde Ecclesiae” and the bishops’ norms are not “an effort on the part of the Church to recover some golden age of Catholic higher education.”
“There was never a time -- at least not in the past two centuries -- when Catholic colleges and universities were great and distinctively Catholic institutions of learning,” he continued, characterizing Catholic higher education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as relatively attractive.
“There was little graduate instruction before the founding of The Catholic University of America in 1887,” he told CNA.
“In the latter half of the twentieth century, when universities like Georgetown, Boston College, Notre Dame, Fordham, St. John's, and others formed aspirations of greatness, faculties did not give enough thought to how American Catholic schools might be great in a Catholic way. This is the invitation that Ex Corde Ecclesiae sets before us.”