The bishop has a couple or so additional powers by which he can put pressure on the university.
First, the president of the university is a priest. He has faculties only with the permission of the ordinary of the local diocese. As do all the other priests at Notre Dame. Without faculties, they cannot licitly offer Mass, nor VALIDLY hear confessions and give absolution, nor VALIDLY marry persons.
As well, Mass cannot be offered publicly at Notre Dame without permission of the local ordinary.
Then there is the capacity to put part or all of the university community under interdict, including part or all of any boards of trustees, faculty senates, etc.
I suspect that this bishop doesn't have the guts to use any of these tools that are at his disposal, but the fact is, the bishop has more of them than just declaring the university to be no longer Catholic.
sitetest
Much food for thought there, AND food for action.
Personally I wish the BVM would use her own considerable powers and send a natural disaster that would level the University!
(With no loss of life.)
Yes, he has these powers. But given that Ex corde ecclesia EXPLICITLY grants autonomy to Catholic universities as far as the management of their “university-ness” is concerned, for the bishop to revoke the priestly faculties of Holy Cross priests as a penalty for the university’s decision about an honorary doctorate would, in canon law, I think, be rather dubious. I’m no canon lawyer, but it strikes me as dubious.
In the old days (Middle Ages), where the entire population were baptized Catholics, the interdict could be used this way. But universities sought and achieved autonomy,a certain kind of arms-length relationship with the local bishop already in the 1200s, almost as soon as they were founded.
Indeed, technically speaking, what created the universities in the first place was the masters guild (or student guild, at Bologna) claiming a degree of autonomy from the bishop’s chancellor. Prior to that, as cathedral schools, they were directly under the bishop’s chancellor’s authority. But the masters (professors) organized precisely put an arms-length between them and the chancellor and that’s what birthed the university. So when Ex corde ecclesiae says “autonomy,” it’s not making it up out of whole cloth. It’s an ancient prerogative of the universities, back when the culture was still wholly Catholic.
“I suspect that this bishop doesn’t have the guts to use any of these tools that are at his disposal, but the fact is, the bishop has more of them than just declaring the university to be no longer Catholic.”
Have you been following Bishop D’Arcy for the past five years? He’s been far more outspoken against Notre Dame than most bishops are. If you made this assumption without checking out his history, then you are in the wrong—we are not supposed to engage in rash judgment.
Bishop D’Arcy read the riot act to Jenkins over the Vagina Monologues. Now this statement. Like Martino in Scranton, he’s PUBLICLY admonishing the school. (That’s a clear step beyond private jawboning, which is what Cardinal George has so far done in Chicago. He has his reasons for that and I will not second-guess him. It has already had some effect on DePaul.)
But sooner or later, after a bishop (or a parent) draws a line in the sand, he has to be willing to lower the boom when the recalcitrant crosses the line. It’s not for you or me to decide when that line has been crossed or to prejudge the bishop’s guts.
But instead of dumping on the bishop because he hasn’t called down fire from heavn on Notre Dame, we should thank him for publicly chastising the school, pray our hearts out for him, and then let time tell as to how well he deals with the university’s response. As I pointed out in other comments, he only has one real weapon in his arsenal—the nuclear option. Before he uses it, it, simply tactically, has to prepare the battlefield by public readings of the riot act. Since he will bear the brunt of the firestorm that follows the nuclear option, let him be the one to decide when to give the order to fire. We ought not be REMF’s undermining him from safety.
Instead, aim your ire at the board of trustees, the donors etc. Find out who they are and let them have both barrels.