Board of trustees at Catholic University nixes
tenure for Eastern religions scholar
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff
In a highly unusual move, the board of trustees at the Catholic
University of America has denied tenure to a faculty member despite approval at
every other level of review, including unanimous support from the Academic
Senate.
The June 8 decision came on the application of Michael Stoeber, a
professor in the department of Religion and Religious Education.
Members of the board -- which includes all 8 American cardinals
and 16 other bishops among its 49 members -- apparently took a special interest
in Stoeber. Sources told NCR that Msgr. Richard Malone, currently on the
faculty at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in the Philadelphia archdiocese,
studied Stoebers published work on behalf of board members in advance of
the June 8 vote. Malone is a former theological adviser to the U.S. bishops, as
well as a former staff member for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith in Rome.
Stoeber is a specialist in Eastern religions. Faculty sources, who
asked not to be identified, say the board was especially concerned with
writings by Stoeber that touch on reincarnation and on hell.
While sources said board emembers have investigated other tenure
cases, they could not remember another instance in which the board actually
rejected an application.
A university spokesperson declined to say whether the board had
ever done so following a positive faculty recommendation, calling it an
internal matter. According to the universitys policies the
board does have that prerogative.
A special meeting of the Academic Senate is scheduled for July 8.
University policies allow for the creation of a special joint committee in the
event of a dispute between the Academic Senate and the board, and Fr. Stephen
Happel, interm dean of the School of Religious Studies and Stoebers
department chair, told NCR that he expects the senate to request such a
committee in the July 8 meeting.
In terms of whether hes optimistic that the verdict on
Stoeber can be reversed, Happel said, I dont have a clue what might
happen.
A spokesperson for the American Association of University
Professors, a group that monitors tenure and academic freedom cases, told
NCR that the action was highly unusual and of obvious
concern. Catholic University is already under censure from the AAUP for
its 1987 dismissal of Fr. Charles Curran, who defended a right of dissent from
church teachings. Curran, a moral theologian currently teaching at Southern
Methodist University in Dallas, first drew attention when he objected to
Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal document reaffirming the ban on artificial
birth control.
Stoeber declined to discuss his case. My tenure application
is still ongoing, he said in an e-mail to an NCR reporter. I
have nothing to say publicly or privately about the issue because it is still
in process.
The action against Stoeber comes on the heels of the resignation
of Fr. Raymond Collins as dean of the School of Religious Studies under
pressure from Catholic Universitys president, Vincentian Fr. David
OConnell (NCR, June 18). Though the two matters are not directly
related, Collins had approved Stoebers application and supported it
before the Academic Senate and the board of trustees.
The tenure process at Catholic University requires a faculty
member to make application in the sixth year of service. Stoebers case
began in the fall of 1998. A tenure application moves through three levels of
review -- department, school and Academic Senate. In Stoebers case, most
of these ballots, including the vote of the full Academic Senate, were
unanimous in his favor.
Stoebers application came before the board of trustees at an
early March meeting. The board decided to table it along with several others
until its next session in June.
A faculty member at Catholic University said the timing struck
many of his colleagues as suspicious. Faculty feel set up, that this got
put off until the summer purposefully so no one would be around to protest
it, he said.
Sources told NCR that on April 14, a librarian from St.
Charles Borromeo Seminary contacted Happel seeking information on Stoeber.
According to the sources, the caller said he was acting for Malone, who was
investigating Stoeber on behalf of the board.
Attempts to contact Malone, who was in Rome as NCR went to
press, drew no response. According to sources, Happel went to Collins seeking
advice on how to respond to Malones request.
Sources told NCR that Malone was unlikely to be acting on
behalf of the full board of trustees. Instead, they said Malone was probably
collecting information for one or more of the cardinals. In addition to his
connection with Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua through St. Charles Borromeo
Seminary, Malone also has ties to Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who chairs
the Catholic University board. After coming back from Rome in the 1980s, Malone
worked in an institute in Boston created by Law. Also associated with
Laws institute at the same time was Fr. Francis George before he was
named a bishop and eventually cardinal of the Chicago archdiocese.
Sources told NCR that in a previous tenure case at Catholic
University, George had expressed concern with what a faculty member had written
about reincarnation but had declined to block that application.
George was not present for the June 8 vote on Stoeber.
Bevilacqua, through a spokesperson, declined comment.
Questions on the matter are appropriately answered not by an individual
board member, but rather by the administration of Catholic University,
said Cathy Rossi, the cardinals director of communications.
As a member of the board, Cardinal Bevilacqua takes an
interest in all issues that come before board members. This may include, from
time to time, issues of tenure, Rossi said.
A university spokesperson told NCR the Stoeber case was
a matter internal to the university and it would be inappropriate to
comment further.
I think its a tragedy, Collins said of the
decision to deny Stoebers tenure application. He is a promising
scholar and was part of an effort in the School of Religious Studies to build a
major program in inter-religious dialogue.
Happel told NCR that since he was the one who proposed
Stoeber for tenure, I am obviously in favor of his application, as are
the other members of the department. Like the other faculty who supported him
all the way up the line, I was surprised when the board turned him
down.
Stoeber is the author of two books, Theo-Monistic Mysticism: A
Hindu-Christian Comparison (1994), and Evil and the Mystics God:
Towards a Mystical Theodicy (1991).
Experts in his field said Stoeber enjoys a reputation as a
mainstream scholar. His books were solid on the Indian side and gave
Christian theologians something to think about, said Jesuit Fr. Francis
Clooney of Boston College, who reviewed Stoebers books for The
Thomist, a Catholic journal with a moderate-to-conservative reputation.
They were well-received. No one I know of bashed them as radical or
liberal.
Stoeber addressed reincarnation in a 1990 article in the scholarly
journal Religious Studies, where he distinguished between two strands in
Hindu thinking about reincarnation -- one a retributive model, in
which reincarnation is a reward or punishment, and another a
soul-making model, in which reincarnation gradually leads to moral
and spiritual growth.
This hypothesis of rebirth as a process of soul-making seems
to me to be less fantastic than religious eschatologies which
envision a bodily resurrection in another space and time after only one
arbitrary lifetime in this world, Stoeber wrote.
Clooney said the comment could be taken lots of different
ways.
My experience of studying Indian texts is that their
theological arguments are plausible, carefully argued, Clooney said.
Its very solid theological reflection. If thats what he
meant, its a tenable position.
Happel said the boards concerns have not been officially
expressed. Whatever youre hearing is all speculation, Happel
said. Theres just no information available.
Jordan Kurland, a spokesperson for the American Association of
University Professors, said that although the AAUP cannot censure Catholic
University again, they could issue a supplementary report and make
action on that case a condition for lifting the original censure.
If the June 24 meeting does not lead to positive action on
Stoebers application, Kurland said he was dubious that a lawsuit would
offer much help. The courts wont mess around with someone at a
church institution who teaches religion and gets in trouble for questions of
doctrine, he said.
National Catholic Reporter, July 2,
1999
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