Clarification: Hochschild & Wheaton

I received this note today from Joshua Hochschild -- and am posting it with his permission -- regarding my post on higher education and religious identity from the other day.

Dear Professor Garnett,

Since your post yesterday on the Mirror of Justice quoted relevant sections of Mr. Oakes’ recent essay on higher education and religious identity, I feel compelled to correct Mr. Oakes’ mistaken description of my own views.  He says that I do not “stand behind Wheaton for courageously affirming its commitment to its own founding principles.”  In fact I do.  As the Wall Street Journal article correctly reports, I expected to lose my job upon converting to Catholicism, and I acknowledged the College’s right to exclude Catholics.  I have never challenged this right, and I have made this position even more clear in interviews with the Chicago Sun-Times, and Inside Higher Ed.

Mr. Oakes apparently concluded otherwise by reading, out of context, this quotation: “I see no reason why I should be dismissed from the College upon joining the Roman Catholic Church.”  I think it is clear from the Journal article that this line is the conclusion of an argument made in response to the position, advanced by Wheaton’s president, that Catholic teaching is inconsistent with what is articulated by Wheaton’s Statement of Faith, and that therefore I should resign.  If I had been shown that Catholic teaching were inconsistent with the faith statement­, or that I had in any other way violated my contract with Wheaton, ­I would have resigned.  But in fact, as I explained in the detailed letter mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article, based on careful consideration of Catholic teaching I could in good conscience affirm Wheaton’s faith statement.  (There are by now several worthwhile conversations on the web, most notably at Amy Welborn’s blog, about the consistency of Wheaton’s faith statement and Catholic teaching.) 

Wheaton’s President was not persuaded, and so I was terminated.  Although I think he misunderstands Catholic teaching and I disagree with his manner of reading Wheaton’s faith statement, the decision was within his right, and that is why I did not fight it.

Mr. Oakes is right to point to my college editorial about the importance of educational institutions vigilantly guarding their founding religious principles.  Far from changing my mind, that is a position that I have maintained consistently to this day.

I hope you will consider making this clarification available on the Mirror of Justice site.

Thank you,
Joshua P. Hochschild
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Mount St. Mary’s University