Amid a national uproar over the University of Notre Dame’s plans to honor President Barack Obama, The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) today released a ground-breaking collection of proposals for authentic Catholic higher education written by influential Catholic scholars and Church leaders.

The Enduring Nature of the Catholic University, published through the CNS Center for the Study of Catholic Higher Education, commemorates the first anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s address to Catholic educators at The Catholic University of America on April 17, 2008.

The authors’ insights and recommendations for the renewal of Catholic higher education stand in stark contrast to the 1967 Land O’Lakes Statement, officially titled “The Nature of the Contemporary Catholic University,” by which Notre Dame’s then-president Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., and other Catholic college leaders declared their independence from the Vatican and the Catholic bishops.

“The Land O’Lakes Statement heralded a tragic rupture in the Church, threatening to end hundreds of years of leadership in higher education,” said Patrick J. Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society. “Last year Pope Benedict showed college presidents the way back to authentic Catholic education, and now some of the best minds in the Church are taking that vision an important step forward.”

Contributors include:

• Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay, Wisc., on Pope Benedict’s vision for Catholic higher education;

• Father J. Augustine DiNoia, O.P., undersecretary of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on Catholic theologians and universities in communion with the Church;

• Father David O’Connell, C.M., president of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., on the struggles and promise of U.S. Catholic higher education;

• Monsignor Stuart Swetland, vice president for Catholic identity at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md., on Catholic campus ministry;

• Father Joseph Koterski, S.J., philosophy professor at Fordham University in New York City, on the Catholic understanding of academic freedom;

• Dr. John Hittinger, philosophy professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Tex., on the fulfillment of Vatican II in Catholic higher education; and

• The Honorable Kenneth Whitehead, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, with a foreword on the failures of the Land O’Lakes era of secularization and dissent.

The essays echo key themes in Pope Benedict’s address to American college presidents and diocesan education officials during his 2008 visit to the United States. He called on Catholic educators to address the contemporary “crisis of truth” that is rooted in a “crisis of faith.”

“Are we ready to commit our entire self—intellect and will, mind and heart—to God?” the Holy Father asked. “Do we accept the truth Christ reveals? Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice, and respect for God’s creation? Only in this way do we really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold.”

Pope Benedict also affirmed “the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you. Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church’s munus docendi and not somehow autonomous or independent of it.”

The Enduring Nature of the Catholic University is currently available online at CatholicHigherEd.org and will soon be available in book format.