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Unfortunately, a number of professors at other Catholic institutions have refused to do this. Richard McBrien of Notre Dame even refused to seek a mandatum from his bishop to teach "Catholic theology." Anyone who has an emotionally visceral or strong hostility toward Catholic teaching, Catholic culture, or the Church in general should never be given authority in a Catholic classroom, lecture hall, chairmanship of a department, or a university president's office. Moreover, there are actually anti-Catholic non-Catholic faculty at some "Catholic" institutions of higher learning.

The problem is that the mandatum as implimented by the AmChurch doesn't have any teeth. The NCCB has dragged their feet on Ex Corde Ecclesiae for over ten years and come up with what amounts to mere symbolism. McBrien and his ilk will suffer no consequences for thumbing their noses at the Pope and the US Bishops.

We need to bring back a version of the anti-Modernist Oath, IMO; to those who don't take it, don't let the door hit your a$$ on the way out!

"The NCCB has dragged their feet..."

The NCCB is part of the whole problem. This bureaucratic BS, playing to TV cameras, the swarming cabals of liberal dissenting clerics, pressure groups, and lib journalists who follow the NCCB buffet events - all of this nonsense has very little to do with the spiritual/sacramental mission of the Church. You end up with a lot of bureaucratic double-speak jargon, loaded with hyphenated, conditionally qualified, hypothetical gobbledygook - which really means nothing in the final analysis. Ridiculous documents which result in further study of revised, bureaucratic position papers by bureaucratic committee just legitimize the PC dissent. And then you have "further study" of "further study" and more "prayerful reflection" on "prayerful reflection" ad infinitum. All this to wiggle around NOT saying directly and emphatically that homosexual behavior is wrong and that there is no place for it among the clergy, that liberal heretical dissent is wrong and that there is no place for it in the faculty dining rooms or lecture halls of Catholic institutions. Overblown, hypothetical, and casuitical, jargon-laden parsing of Ex corde leads nowhere. Does anyone really need one hundred footnotes to figure out that "Catholic" colleges should be "Catholic" and run by "Catholics" (and not by socialist or homosexual activists)? You don't have to be a canon lawyer or an expert in canonical ecclesiastical Latin legalisms to figure out that Richard McBrien types have jumped off the ship or that Fr. Shanley types should be thrown off.

Unfortunately, it seems possible that the meeting in Rome will tend to stay strictly limited to the legal matter of how to deal only with clergy accused of sex abuse in terms of a national policy for reporting that to legal authorities when the problem with homosexuality and corruption is much wider. The mess surrounding Ex corde ecclesiae is related to the current problems because the whole idea that "dissent" from church teachings (including on homosexuality) is an acceptable posture is given support by the organized dissent in higher education. Unfortunately, the Ex corde debate has generally limited discussion to "theology" (as defined canonically) when the problem in higher education is much broader than just that. The liberal effort to apply pressure on the Church to tailor its institutions (at all levels) in conformity with PC trends, as a sort of carbon copy of secular liberalism, is very much a part of this. The bishops really need to uphold Catholic orthodoxy throughout the Church's institutions and not just when clerics molest minors. Had they done that in the past, one wonders whether the current scandals would be nearly as large and disastrous.

A few links tracing this path:

Ex corde ecclesiae editorial: America

Bureaucratic Process for Ex corde ecclesiae by Association of Catholic Colleges & Universities

First Things article on Ex corde