| |
Straws and Broken Camel’s
The method and articulation of the Curran decision precipitated the latent
resentment of the faculty and students, and forced the university community
to confront the cleavage between their values and those of the clergy
in the administration and on the Board of Trustees. The faculty would
view the decision as an abuse of authority within the values of the academy,
and an affront to the principles enunciated the Second Vatican Council.
However, many were initially ambivalent about how to respond to the Trustees’
action and inclined to deal with it as they had in the Siegmann case,
with a series of written protests. In contrast, the students would react
to the decision as an assault on the values they shared with their counterparts
at secular colleges and universities—values that privileged a democratic
structure.
The strike could not have occurred without these divergent shifts in
values. Without new norms of due process and academic freedom, and the
heightened sense of “openness” fostered by Vatican II, the
theology faculty might well have acquiesced in a decision the decision
to dismiss Curran, just as they had in the Siegmann case. Similarly, the
larger faculty might well have stood back from a conflict viewed as the
particular province of Church authorities. Equally important, the students
might well have avoided a remote dispute between the faculty and the administration,[78]
but the commitment to democratization in the school and the example of
earlier student movements in the mid-1960s would make them a driving force
in the strike.
Note
|
