My regrettable exchange with a Catholic university professor.

Recently, I had an interesting and disheartening email exchange with a professor at a prominent Catholic university. It was my intention to reprint the entire exchange here but the professor has threatened to take legal action against me if I do. Specifically, he will move to have Blogger shut down the Bubble if I show you his words. 


I've struggled a bit with whether or not to write this post at all, but after praying on it for a couple of days, I've decided to go ahead. It's just one more confirmation of what others (including the Vatican) have known for decades: that something has gone horribly awry in Catholic higher education.


Because of the professor's threats of legal action, I will reprint only my emails here, and then summarize what the professor said in response. He will remain unnamed.


My words are in blue, the summary of the professor's words are in red, and my commentary is in black italics.


It all began when I followed a link that was put in the comment section of a post. The linked article was presented as being from a Catholic source, when in fact it was from an anti-Catholic source that has been publicly denounced by the US Bishops. My point in contacting the website's owner was to clarify for him that his source was misleading. I sent the following email:


Greetings Professor!

If this is from your website:

[Here I inserted the web address of the article in question.]

You might want to check out this:

[Here I linked to a post of mine which used official Church teaching to debunk one of the article's main (erroneous) points.]

I am sure you don't want to purposely misrepresent Catholic teaching. Your page (written by "Catholics" For a Free Choice) also says: "Contrary to popular belief, no pope has proclaimed the prohibition of abortion an 'infallible' teaching."


It is also true that the Catholic Church has never declared, ex cathedra, that God exists. That doesn't mean it's not infallibly taught. Again, for more accurate information about Catholicism, you might want to check out this post:

[Doctrinal Quiz Show Answer: Papal Infallibility]

In it, I make clear that "an ex cathedra pronouncement (extraordinary Magisterium) is not the only kind of infallibility on the block, and definitely not the most common. Many dissident, unfaithful 'Catholics' will use the bogus argument that 'the pope only declared two things infallibly!' to justify their rejection of a hundred other Catholic truths."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is another great source for authentic Catholic teaching.


Blessings and Merry Christmas!
Leila 


I did not spend a lot of time looking at the professor's website. I wrote the note quickly, assuming he was a professor in some small school somewhere, probably a Protestant or someone who was very confused about authentic Catholic sources.


The professor wrote back and explained that his website was reading for graduate students and he wished I had explored his website more carefully. In his course, he includes readings from many different religious perspectives, including "liberal Catholics." He teaches a graduate course for university students, and while it is not a catechism class, he does have them read official Catholic teaching. Students in his class (half of whom are Catholic, half not) are expected to use "critical tools" to dissect and evaluate the essays. He is not teaching a Catholic theology course, but a law course. He would not have used that particular article if he were teaching the official Catholic position. He kindly wished me a Merry Christmas and New Year.


I responded:


Dear [Name], 

Thank you for the response! Unfortunately, with eight children I didn't have time to read through your blog carefully. Someone had used the source from your site as a factual reading of Catholic thought and teaching. I imagine that is not uncommon, thus the problem.

I guess I would just hope that, as a professor, you would make sure that a page such as that, from a very anti-Catholic source, would have a very large caveat written across the top, that this source is in fact, not Catholic. That would be the intellectually honest thing to do. Please understand, I'm not accusing you of being intellectually dishonest.... we all have oversights that need to be pointed out.

(And this is just for me, but I'm guessing that the 50% of your class who are Catholic don't have a clue how to discern what is authentic Catholic teaching. I was once one of those Catholics, and it's the norm. So, for the sake of educating Catholics who were once just like me, I hope you will keep your sources very clear.)

Blessings!
Leila


And because I had "one last thought," I sent off one more quick email:


One last thought, [Name]. 

"Catholics for a Free Choice" is not a "liberal Catholic perspective" it is a non-Catholic perspective. Even the US bishops (many liberals among them) have denounced the group publicly for being not Catholic. So, to claim this group as a "liberal Catholic" group is factually incorrect.

Thanks!

Leila

So, at this point I am still naive and hopeful, thinking that I would get a response of understanding, a concession that the article could be misleading. I assumed that an academic would understand that clarity and facts are necessary when guiding students to think their way to truth. I was honestly not expecting the response I got....


The professor informed me that his website was the farthest thing from a blog... it was an academic resource for his university graduate students, and his professorial duty is to stimulate big ideas and have lively discussions [clearly he has not yet read the discussions we have on this blog, but he's welcome to join us!]. If he tells his students what to think in advance, that is not true education. He quotes a priest, Fr. Hesburgh, whom he calls the "greatest Catholic educator of the 20th century." Fr. Hesburgh has said: "The university is where the Church does its thinking." The professor ends by saying that he has rarely seen a blog where much thinking takes place. [Ouch! That seemed unnecessary.]


He also responded to my follow-up email by saying that the group "Catholics for a Free Choice" calls itself that, not he.


I admit that the insulting tone of his note drove me to dash off my next email. I could have been more diplomatic, but it could have been worse, right?


[Name], forgive me, but that attitude is why university education is seen as such a joke by so many these days.


Sadly, the university is where the Church used to do its thinking. Today, most Catholic colleges (not all) are wastelands.


(And I say all that as a summa cum laude graduate of Boston College.)

God bless!

Leila

The professor responded with four Latin words:


Summa veritas summa ignorantia. 


I assumed it was a dig, discussed it with my daughter who studies Latin, and had it later confirmed by two Latin teachers that it certainly could be a dig, depending on the context. The dig about my blog and then about me was so absurd as to be amusing, and I did laugh in disbelief of it all. I'm not proud of it, but I replied with the following:


Thanks for the chuckle, [Name]!  My daughter, a classics major with an emphasis in Latin, enjoyed this exchange of emails. Perhaps you might like the interview I did with her on my blog (we peasants like blogs). Then again, you might not like the interview after all. But it says a lot about academia today:


[Unpacking Liberalism: Interview with my daughter]


God bless!

I quickly sent another email asking him if I had permission to use his emails on my blog. 

The professor responded by saying that since I had written two insulting emails to him, he would not give me permission to use his emails. He told me they are copyrighted. He said he was not sure if I knew how insulting my emails were, and then went on to defend Catholic higher education as being far from a wasteland. He provided me with his teaching and publishing credentials (which are certainly impressive). He took issue with the fact that I denigrated the institutions that he loves. And he felt that my use of the words "that attitude" was a personal attack. He said that the people who read my blog might enjoy the attack on a Catholic university education, but he didn't. After stating that his attempt to have a conversation with me failed, he told me of a prestigious award that he will be receiving soon. [I have absolutely no doubt that he is a learned, effective and beloved teacher.] He said if all his students reacted as I did, he would give up. He also added some nice words about my daughter studying Classics, and wanted to know how she translated the Latin maxim.


I responded:


[Name], 

My understanding is that emails are public domain and I can print them. I will double check. 

The comments you made to me were insulting, actually, which is the only reason I was insulting back. Very elitist, really. I was shocked.

As soon as I looked up Fr. Hesburgh (whom I had never heard of in 17 years of hanging out in faithful Catholic circles) and discovered that he spearheaded Land O Lakes, the biggest rebellion against the Church in forever, I knew all I needed to know. He helped to ruin Catholic universities. Not cool. [Catholic readers! If you are not familiar with the Land O'Lakes Declaration, you must click this link and read what happened there. It is your duty as a Catholic to understand.]

Anyway, I will tell my daughter. Thanks!

Blessings,

Leila

PS:  Are you Catholic? [Turns out he is Catholic.]


The response I got was fairly long and full of insults, and I will not repeat them here, for two reasons: One, I hope that the professor will decide to engage in dialogue with me sometime in the future, when he stops being upset with me. Two, he admitted at the end that it was a nasty email (although he said I "deserved it"), which he regretted writing. I will not embarrass him by summarizing it here. 


This is my response to that nasty email, which I had to pare down before I sent it, as I was pretty heated:


Dear [Name],

This is all so interesting to me, and terribly sad.

I will not use your emails, but I will use mine and summarize yours. I will not use your name, either. Tell me if that's legal. If you say no, I will consult with my lawyer friends just to be sure. 

Anyway, you needn't worry about anyone of importance reading my blog, since people like me and my ilk are non-intellectual peasants, apparently. 

I don't know Fr. Hesburgh, but I do know Land O Lakes and the disaster left in its wake. Fr. Hesburgh is not a name I recognized as an orthodox Catholic, because he is obviously not an orthodox Catholic. I don't spend a lot of time reading dissident Catholics or their publications.

BC didn't teach me elitism, it taught me almost nothing. I realize that truth is no longer the goal of education in most Catholic universities, and that is a shame. Every single one of my friends who was a practicing Catholic going into BC had left the practice of the Faith upon graduating [or soon after]. I include myself in that tally. I am the only one [that I know of] who is currently a practicing Catholic (having come back to the Church in my late twenties). This may please you, as a sign of "progressive thought", but I believe it's a tragedy.

Thankfully, the younger generation of lay faithful (and priests/seminarians/sisters) are increasingly orthodox.

I wrote my "reversion" story years ago, and I called it, "I Was Robbed." 

[My reversion story: I Was Robbed]

Hundreds of people in my generation have written me to tell me that my story is their story, too [okay, "hundreds" was an exaggeration, but the number is well over one hundred]. They feel robbed as well. It is people like Fr. Hesburgh who robbed our generation of the right to know and learn authentic Catholicism. This is a heavy burden he faces.... and you as well, if you are complicit in perpetuating the lie that Magisterial teaching is simply another "opinion" to be evaluated equally with the the voices of dissent.

I sent my daughter to UofA because that's what we could afford. In many ways it is a wasteland, but the Classics department is sound.

You know nothing of my stance on immigration. My position is that of the Arizona bishops. You can read it online.

I would love to know what I misunderstand about papal authority. Which parts of my "blog" are in error? Please advise. My audience is regular Catholics (peasant class, not academics), and I am not writing an undergraduate treatise for them. I am making things clear and understandable, meeting people where they are. Christianity is a religion of the people, and the basics are accessible to all people. [Okay, you all know that I am not actually calling you peasants!!! I was reacting to his elitism with some self-deprecation... the professor was clear that he finds me ignorant and foolish.]

[Oh, this next part is going to sound like bragging, and that makes me cringe a bit, but I hope you can understand why I said it.] I am not a liar. Lying is a sin, and as a Catholic, I avoid sin. Yes, I am a summa cum laude graduate of Boston College, [college and year]. I found the classes there quite simple, and I aced them. In addition, I scored in the 99% percentile in the nation on the logic section of the GMATs. Not that those things impress me, as academic credentials and awards are nothing in the eyes of Heaven. What impresses me are the virtues of humility, obedience and holiness. [And the Good Lord knows that's the truth!]

I also regret this exchange, just as I regret what has happened in the American Church over the past 40+ years, where Truth and Knowledge and Wisdom (and real education) have been traded for 30 pieces of silver.

Final thought.... what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

Blessings to you, my brother in Christ,

Leila

I did not hear from the professor again.  (*I have since discovered that he's been out of town.)


Thinking over the exchange in the past few days, and praying about it, I have gone from the pettiness of wanting to expose the professor out of spite (not pretty, I know), to feeling just plain sad about the whole thing. He felt injured and so do I.


Our interchange is a microcosm of the rift between orthodox Catholics and Catholics who dissent from the teachings of the Magisterium. The Body of Christ is broken, which is heartbreaking and scandalous. Faithful Catholics have long lamented the state of Catholic universities, as has the Church herself: Pope John Paul II tried valiantly to bring nominal Catholic universities back into the fold by issuing Ex Corde Ecclesiae ("From the Heart of the Church") back in 1990.


I would welcome further dialogue with the professor, or with any other academic who holds his views. But for now, I continue to regret what has transpired, both in recent days and recent decades.




"Not in mortification, not in prayer, not in labor, not in rest, but in obedience is the essence and merit of holiness." -- St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, martyr of Auschwitz


For the conclusion and moral of the story, go here.


**UPDATE: This morning I received a thoughtful and lengthy email from the professor, in response to my last email. He was not, at that time, aware of this blog entry. I wrote back and told him that I had already written a post on our exchange. I hope to write a follow-up post in the near future....


**Second UPDATE: Once the professor learned that I had already posted about him, he informed me that he was disappointed, and that our conversation is now over.