I hope everyone here understands that the bishops have no authority over any university except The Catholic University of America and the Josephenum in Chicago, because these are the property of the Church. All other Catholic universities and colleges are run by boards of trustees or by religious congregations, not by the Church. Even the local bishop cannot place Notre Dame under an interdict, because it’s not part of his diocese. It is not a diocesan university. It is a private university that is Catholic. The Brothers of the Holy Cross are not a diocesan congregation. They do not submit to the bishop’s authority unless they work for him. In this case, they work for the Board of Trustees.
The most the bishops can do is to revoke its Catholic charter. But they cannot stop it from doing whatever the Board allows.
As to Fr. Jenkins, the bishops have no authority over him. He is a Holy Cross Brother. The Holy Cross Brothers are a congregation of Pontifical Right. Pontifical Right means exactly what it says. Only the pope has authority over its members.
Pope Benedict chooses to apply the principle of subsidiarity. That is, to allow the major superior to solve the problem. The only solution that the major superior has is to wait for the contract between the Holy Cross Brothers and the university to run out and not allow Fr. Jenkins to be rehired for the presidency, but propose another candidate.
The issue with that is that the Board can reject any candidate that the Holy Cross Brothers propose. They can choose to put a lay person at the head of the university. You never know what you’re going to get. The Holy Cross Brothers no longer own the university. They are employed by it.
We need to do our research when speaking about Catholic education and Catholic hospitals. Most are not owned by the Church or by religious. The Church never owned them. The religious who founded them could not afford to run them. They had to give them over to lay boards and turn them into non-profit corproations or NGOs to get funding from outside sources and government sources.
This is not an easy situation. Pope Benedict rarely intervenes directly in religious communities or secular institutes. Even in the case of the SSPX, he has turned that over to a Vatican Congregation. He prefers to deal with global issues and allow others to deal with specific problems. There is no way that any pope can deal with every specific situation that comes up, especially in a world as large as is today’s world.
The Bishops’ statement regarding honors to pro-abortion individual is not a law. However, it is a position of the Catholic Church in the USA that every Catholic organization should follow. Even when you do not owe the hierarchy obedience under a vow, you do owe them respect because of their position.
Orthodox religious do pay attention to and comply with these positions. In my own community, we have a different situation because our rule and constitution has it that we must obey the bishops. Not all religious constitutions have this clause. Many founders never thought such a clause was needed. They took it for granted that their spiritual sons and daughters would do so. It goes to prove that life doesn’t always go the way we assume it will go.
Fraternally,
JR
