Dear Mateo:

In the 1990's Pope John Paul II issues a "mandate" that had to be taken by all professors. This mandate did not limit academic freedom, but it absolutely required that when a professor is teaching Catholic teaching that he teach Catholic teaching and not some novel notion of his own.

Many professors did not sign this mandate. Some bishops de-certified these professors to teach the faith as a result. Most bishops, I think, did not do much of anything.

It is the bishop's responsibility to ensure that a Catholic college or university maintains fidelity to the Magisterial and to a Catholic identity. When a Catholic college or university fails in this the bishop may pull the Catholic identify from that school. While the bishop has the technical authority to do that I am not sure any bishop has actually done it.

There are many "catholic" schools that are really no longer Catholic, such as Notre Dame, Georgetown, and many, many others.

It is a scandal on the faith to have professors who actively promote heresy or otherwise seek to confuse the students about the genuine Catholic faith. They will be held accountable by God.

We need to pray for our professors to be true to the faith and that any intellectual speculations they propose does not damage the faith of the students or lead them astray. They need to teach what the Church teaches when the subject is Church teaching.

I have a friend who went to seminary to prepare for the priesthood. This seminary had many very liberal, even heretical professors. He told me that in order for him to get a good grade on a term paper he would have to propose heresy. If he wrote a term paper that was loyal to Church teaching he would get a bad grade. The pressure of this was too much for him and he dropped out. He just could not play-act a heretic for four years just to graduate and be ordained. As far as I know he never did return to seminary.

The devil targets schools for obvious reasons -- schools is where our kids, our religious, and our priests are taught and indoctrinated. A school is an excellent place to introduce subtle falsehoods to contaminate the student's thinking. We must pray hard for all Catholic schools at all levels.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary