The work of Catholic theologians became less and less important to many Catholic leaders (bishops, public intellectuals, big donors), who instead turned their attention to initiatives that addressed the “culture wars.” But even apart from ideology, there was a real turn away from contemporary Catholic theology toward Catholic culture. This means that many Catholic students in America learned about Catholicism not from theology professors, but from Catholic professors of literature, the arts, history, and politics. Such students likely do not appreciate the importance and coherence of theological thinking as such. The influence of the Catholic intellectual tradition on all the disciplines, not just theology, was one of the themes of Ex Corde Ecclesiae. But to many, this meant that one could get a Catholic education without studying much—or indeed any—current Catholic theology. Because of the left-right split that widened during the pontificate of John Paul II, many Catholics, including intellectuals and even academics, wrote theology off as a discipline corrupted by “liberal opinion.” Catholic scholars of literature, art, history, etc., could teach a kind of Catholic studies that focused on the high cultural ideals of the Christian West and largely ignored or rejected post-conciliar theology.

As a consequence, some of the most prominent young commentators on current Catholic affairs have little formal theological formation, though they may know a lot about other elements of the Catholic intellectual tradition. And in a perverse reversal of fortunes, at the very moment many Catholic colleges and universities were freed from episcopal interference, they happily surrendered to the influence of corporate donors, who were eager to fund conservative projects on Catholic campuses—projects that often combined theological traditionalism with neo-liberal or libertarian economic ideology.

This phenomenon should be a wake-up call for Catholic theologians in America, because in the long run it will threaten the intellectual vitality, if not the very survival, of academic theology at Catholic colleges and universities. There are at least two problems that theologians and religious-studies scholars teaching in a Catholic university have to face in light of the present Catholic moment.

The first problem is about the canon. Is there a canon of theology on Catholic campuses in America, or do we now have so many canons that the very idea of a canon has been lost? In light of the fact that Catholic theology in America is being displaced by other voices claiming to represent Catholic culture, should theologians have a clearer sense of what theology at a Catholic university ought to include? The tradition-minded students and professors who reject or just ignore post-conciliar theology certainly have some kind of well-defined canon, defined in part by its rejection of Vatican II and post–Vatican II theology. But I am not sure that post–Vatican II theologians themselves have a real canon. Their syllabuses are usually a compromise between what they are willing to teach (because it is part of their research projects) and what students are willing to take (the credibility of theology departments depends partly on their ability to get a sufficient number of students to major or minor in theology). Too many theology departments try to remain “relevant” by offering courses that I fear will make theology less relevant in the long run. The anxiety for relevance means that Catholic theology is now often reduced to Catholic social teaching. At the same time, the growing irrelevance of academic theology is due to the fact that for a long time aggiornamento Catholic theologians thought that aggiornamento theology did not need to be defended because it was self-evident. The result is that today many conservative Catholic students instead major in “Catholic Studies,” while many progressive Catholic students major in justice-and-peace studies.

The second problem is of what I would call a lack of ecclesial commitment—that is, a lack of awareness that the Catholic academic complex has its place also within the Church, even if its integrity requires a certain intellectual independence. They need the church as much as the church needs them. Today, most members of the hierarchy have not done their studies in a secular university, and lay theologians seldom have the same kind of theological training their bishops have; not surprisingly, they feel alienated from one another. But the institutional church has a resilience to the vicissitudes of history that Catholic academia on its own probably does not. For example, the institutional church can ignore market forces in a way that academia cannot. Reintegrating academic theology with the rest of the church is made complicated by the choice—a very good one, which should not be reversed—to make departments of theology and religious studies on Catholic campuses more diverse by hiring non-Catholic professors. But ecclesial commitment in the sense I have in mind is not only about church membership. At a minimum, theologians and religious studies professors should be more aware of their duty to respond to questions that traditionalist or conservative Catholic students have and for which they often find no answer in liberal-progressive theology departments. More generally, theologians and religious-studies professors teaching on Catholic campuses ignore at their own peril the big shifts happening in church politics and in the relations between the institutional Church and Catholic higher education. I believe that liberal Catholic theologians have to offer an alternative to the current neo-traditionalist vision of the Catholic tradition. But if we want to do that, we’ll need to take into account the ecclesial dimension of what we do. The idea that Catholic academic theology can thrive or even survive independently from what happens in and to the church is an illusion.