Cavadini on Notre Dame, Ex Corde, and Gnosticism

Professor John Cavadini, the chair of Notre Dame's Department of Theology, has published an "open letter" in response to Fr. John Jenkins's "Closing Statement on Academic Freedom and Catholic Character" (here).  I am posting this not so much to re-start our conversation about the appropriateness at Catholic universities of performances of the "Vagina Monologues," but because Professor Cavadini has some very interesting things to say about the nature of a Catholic university, and the relationship between such a university and the Church (as opposed to a disembodied "Catholic intellectual tradition").  It strikes me that his thoughts are relevant to the wonderful discussion we've been having, the last few days, about authority and the vocation of a Catholic scholar.

Here is a bit from Professor Cavadini's letter:

. . . Ex Corde Ecclesiae . . . speaks of a relationship not in the first place between the Catholic university and the Catholic intellectual tradition, but between the Catholic university and the Church. And, whether we recognize it or not, this relationship to the Church - to the real, incarnate Body of Christ, the Church as it is with all its blemishes and not the abstract, idealized Church in our minds - is the lifeblood and only guarantee of our identity as a Catholic university. There is no Catholic identity apart from affiliation with the Church. Appeal to "the Catholic intellectual tradition" apart from some explicit relationship to the Church risks reducing the tradition itself to an abstraction. And again, I do not mean an imaginary Church we sometimes might wish existed, but the concrete, visible communion of "hierarchic and charismatic gifts," "at once holy and always in need of purification," in which "each bishop represents his own church and all of [the bishops] together with the Pope represent the whole Church …" (Lumen Gentium 1.4,8; 3.23).

Now, no one would deny that the relationship between University and Church is not a challenging relationship with many attendant difficulties. And there is certainly room for argument about what are the specific, appropriate forms and shapes that the University's relationship with the Church should take. But this relationship, which necessarily involves some measure of accountability, should never be dismissed as an irrelevance[.] . . .

The ancient Gnostic heresy developed an elitist intellectual tradition which eschewed connection to the "fleshly" church of the bishop and devalued or spiritualized the sacraments. Are we in danger of developing a gnosticized version of the "Catholic intellectual tradition," one which floats free of any norming connection and so free of any concrete claim to Catholic identity? Are we - meaning all of us, and not just the President, for this is not just his problem - disowning the problem, rather than facing it honestly as a problem, as a project, as a challenge, as a struggle and yes, as a commitment? There is no commitment if it is not explicitly stated. . . .