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Fascinating. I had no idea you were a Wheaton alumnus.

Until this morning, Wheaton was on my short list of intellectually solid Christian colleges. Now I'm starting to wonder.

the reason they didn't is that it would raise questions some Protestants don't want to have to confront: are not JPII Catholics today in fact fully evangelical?

How would you define JPII Catholics as "Evangelical"? I agree, but I would like to hear this better articluated by a Catholic.

Those Wheaton studetns (and the broader Evangelical world) who don't have entirely closed minds will be even more curious about why Wheaton was so thin-skinned, so insecure, that they could not tolerate even one Catholic--a Catholic who said he could in good conscience sign the doctrinal statement and more Evangelicals will join those swimming the Tiber.

Precisely. If an Evangelical college isn't secure enough in its beliefs to be able to learn from an evangelically-minded Catholic, one has to wonder why Evangelicalism fears Catholicism. Which leads me to another question - if an evangelical Catholic should be fired from Wheaton, why is Mark Noll still there? He's a lot more Catholic-friendly than Wheaton should be comfortable with, then.

I use the term JPII evangelical Catholics in the sense of George Weigel's language in his Witness to Hope biography. The first of Weigel's 8 accomplishments of JPII is that he returned the practice of being Bishop of Rome to a form more like it had in the earliest centuries (witness, martyr) than in the more recent centuries when it was seen more as administering the huge institution. I think Weigel is unfair to the Piuses and Leos of the 19th and 20th centuries--they did not leave behind the proclamation of the Gospel but I understand Weigel was drawing the contrast for a rhetorical purpose. And it is true that JPII deliberately chose to conduct his entire pontificate as a teacher, proclaimer, witness to Christian truth, to the claim that Christ is Lord over all--the entire Gospel proclamation was there in his first encyclical, which he told he he had been carrying around in his heart long before he was elected, otherwise he could not have written it so quickly.

So, in broad measure, Weigel is right about the characteristics of this shift and its great significance, even if he underestimates previous popes.

Regarding Mark Noll. Mark is a very irenic, honest, tireless scholar. He genuinely is open to conversation but is firm about remaining an Evangelical. That could change, I suppose, but he has the intellectual and spiritual honesty and confidence to study and converse with and be open to Catholics without feeling threatened or pushed to convert. And his circle of Catholic contacts knows that and takes the same attitude--we know who we are, we aren't insecure in our Catholic convictions, we can talk to you clearly and openly and we all gain. This is what lies behind Colson's and Neuhaus's Evangelicals and Catholics together in which Noll has been involved. If you notice the Evangelicals who cooperated with it, they are among the most confident, most learned, most gifted, most secure: Timothy George, J. I. Packer, Noll etc. Those who denounced Packer and others for getting involved in ECT often were the ones who are also critical of the Evangelical mainstream for not being strict 16th-century Protestants. In other words, they are still carrying the polemics of the 16th-century around with chips on their shoulders. It long ago became clear to me that often the 16th-century reformers were talking past their Catholic interlocutors--were shadowboxing, fighting supposed Catholic beliefs that Catholics did not in fact hold. The ECT Evangelicals have realized that and have observed the JPII Evangelical Catholic renewal and see that they can converse with them and learn from them and they from the Evangelicals without either side trying to convert the other. This is very threatening to the 16th-century Reformation purists (I can't name names but I think you know who they are) whose entire case rests on insisting that Catholics are pelagians who have abandoned the true Gospel.

Noll remains at Wheaton becaues he is firmly committed to remaining an Evangelical. It's not really at odds with the firing of Hochschild. One converted, the other has made it clear he has no intention to do so. One can be friendly with Catholics and remain in good standing at Wheaton as long as one doesn't actually become one.