[3] Like other private schools, Catholic universities and colleges are generally nondenominational, in that they accept anyone regardless of religious affiliation, nationality, ethnicity, or civil status, provided the admission or enrollment requirements and legal documents are submitted, and rules and regulations are obeyed for a fruitful life on campus.
[6] These college professors typically cared little about publishing the latest tract on the newest topics in their discipline—assuming they saw themselves as members of a discrete academic discipline, which would have been unusual.
Rather, their position was to share what they knew and to serve as role models embodying Christian wisdom and the virtues of the college's sponsoring religious community.
In the second half of the twentieth century, a sequence of events led to the blossoming of academic freedom in Catholic universities in the United States.
[8] Similarly, in October 1966, four professors of theology and philosophy at the University of Dayton were accused of teaching that was contrary to the magisterium of the Church.
Inspired by the liberalization represented by the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962–1965), the statement declared that "To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.
The Land O'Lakes Statement was drafted by theologian Neil McCluskey at the request of University of Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh.
"[13] The Land O'Lakes statement was repudiated by Pope John Paul II in 1990 in Ex corde Ecclesiae, the apostolic constitution for Catholic universities.
[14] Nevertheless, the Vatican and the bishops were powerless to reverse the change in legal status that made hundreds of schools independent of the Church.