Bishop Vlazny v. Cardinal Newman Society

A recent issue of America included an editorial, "Measuring Catholic Identity," praising Bishop Vlazny of Portland, Oregon for his sharply critical letter to the "ecclesiastical advisors" of the Cardinal Newman Society.  According to the editorial:

The Bishops and Presidents Committee “has regularly monitored the publications and positions of the Cardinal Newman Society,” Archbishop Vlazny notes, “and has found them often aggressive, inaccurate, or lacking in balance.” The archbishop urges the ecclesiastical advisors to look more closely at the methods of the society, which the committee has found to be “often objectionable in substance and in tone,” misrepresenting the Catholic colleges and universities in the United States that it criticizes.

In the view of the editors of America, the Society has made the mistake of reducing Catholic identity to a litmus-test list of things a real Catholic university or college should not do:

The authenticity of an institution’s Catholic identity can be judged, as the Newman Society sees it, merely by what it does not do: no feminist drama, no unapproved speakers, no heterodox honorees, no support for homosexuals and no backing of left-leaning candidates.

The application of such negative litmus tests distorts and diminishes the importance of the Catholic identity and mission of a college or university. The vitality of life on a Catholic campus should be measured far more by the positive initiatives the institution takes than by the narrow boundaries it observes. The Catholic intellectual and religious tradition should be the source of programs and projects on Catholic campuses that other colleges and universities would have neither the interest nor the resources to promote.

Furthermore, a Catholic institution, confident in the strength of its traditions, will not retreat from the challenge of engaging competing ideas in the dialogue that is at the heart of a lively university culture. Many Catholic institutions have established programs and events that promote the dialogue between Catholic tradition and contemporary culture, between faith and science, that Ex Corde Ecclesiae identified as central to the mission of Catholic institutions. Happily the Bishops and Presidents Committee understands the importance of this mission.

Hmm.  Putting aside the question whether the criticisms or characterization of the Society's work and activities offered in the editorial or in Bishop Vlazny's letter (which I have not seen) are accurate, I take it we can all agree that Catholic identity at universities is about more than a check-list of no-no's or a program of adherence to conservative views; that "[t]he vitality of life on a Catholic campus should be measured . . . by the positive initiatives the institution takes [as well as] the narrow boundaries it observes"; and that "the Catholic intellectual and religious tradition should be the source of programs and projects on Catholic campuses that other colleges and universities would have neither the interest nor the resources to promote." 

Still, surely the "litmus test" items on which the Society is said to focus -- some of them, anyway? -- are relevant and important to the question of Catholic identity?  Also, is the point of the editorial to claim that (a) the Cardinal Newman Society's focus is too narrow; (b) the focus should be broader; and therefore, (c) "go away, stop worrying about Catholic identity issues at Catholic (and, especially, Jesuit) institutions because all is well"?  But is it enough to establish that Catholic universities are doing well to claim (fairly or not) that a vocal critic of Catholic universities has not always done well?  Do the editors of America -- even if they reasonably believe that the question whether things are going well can be reduced to the question whether the Vagina Monologues are being performed -- believe that things are going well?