Institute defenders reach pope
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff Rome
Attempts to trigger a papal intervention on behalf of the Ignatius
Institute at the University of San Francisco, where in January a new president
of the Jesuit-run university fired the conservative institutes two
directors, apparently went much farther than previously realized.
NCR has learned that in mid-March Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, the Vaticans top doctrinal official, carried a document
regarding the Ignatius Institute into a meeting with Pope John Paul II. The
popes daily calendar indicates that Ratzinger was received on March
16.
Though the documents precise contents remain unclear, its
thrust was to grant the Ignatius Institute a degree of autonomy. It would have
reversed the decision by the new president of the University of San Francisco,
Jesuit Fr. Stephen Privett, to fire the institutes directors by
authorizing the institute to name its own leadership.
The institute follows a Great Books program and
fosters a traditional Catholic spirituality.
At the time of the firings, Privett said they had been motivated
principally by the fact that the institutes two directors were not
faculty members at the university. He acknowledged, however, being concerned by
suggestions from the institutes leaders and supporters that the
University of San Francisco was not sufficiently orthodox in
comparison with the Ignatius Institute.
The document Ratzinger brought to the pope, according to sources
in Rome, had been prepared by Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fessio, the founder of the
Ignatius Institute, in consultation with Ratzinger and Cardinal Christoph
Schönborn of Vienna, Austria.
Schönborn acknowledged in response to an NCR query
that he had been consulted on the document.
Fessio and Schönborn studied together under Ratzinger at the
University of Regensburg in Bavaria in the early 1970s. Fessio has long enjoyed
a good rapport with Ratzinger. Fessios Ignatius Press, for example, holds
English-language rights to most of Ratzingers books.
During the mid-March audience, according to sources, the pope gave
approval to the document, though it is not clear whether this approval took the
form of a signature or was simply an oral affirmation.
The document then went to the Secretariat of State and eventually
to the Congregation for Catholic Education, where it has, in effect, been
blocked. It has neither been published, nor communicated in an official way to
the Jesuit order or to the University of San Francisco.
Defenders of the institute argue that despite the block, the pope
has signaled his wishes, and university officials should respond. Jesuit
officials and Privetts supporters, however, say that no papal
intervention is ever official until it moves through the proper channels.
According to Fr. Jose de Vera, spokesperson for the Jesuits in
Rome, the orders understanding is that the dispute over the institute is
a matter to be discussed between Privett and William Levada, the archbishop of
San Francisco. The Jesuits, de Vera told NCR, are not currently
expecting Vatican action.
Rumors of a document were first reported in the press in March,
but were hotly denied by Privett, who accused Fessio of McCarthyite
tactics, according to the March 28 San Francisco Chronicle, and
predicted, Hell produce no document.
Neither Fessio nor Privett would comment for this article.
Likewise Ratzinger and the prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education,
Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, declined to be interviewed.
Schönborn, however, told NCR he believes the fate of
the institute is absolutely of importance to the universal church.
Schönborn, a Dominican, once taught at the Swiss University of Fribourg,
and he said his best students came from the Ignatius Insitute.
He said his last doctoral candidate, Margaret Turek, now a
professor at the University of Dallas, came from the institute. She wrote
a beautiful thesis about Hans Urs von Balthasar, he said.
I perceive the Ignatius Institute as one of the most
promising academic institutions with a strong spiritual profile,
Schönborn said. I would regret it very much if the Ignatius
Institute should succumb to the mainstream. In the cultural situation of the
West Coast, alternatives to the mainstream should have their right of
existence.
It would be a deep loss to the church and to the academic
community if an institution like the Ignatius Institute should be forced into
line, Schönborn said.
Schönborn, 56, was the general editor of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church before becoming a cardinal. He is widely considered a
leading papabile, or candidate to become pope.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is
jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, June 29,
2001
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