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"Little Rome." C.U. began as a graduate school for priests, and although it let in undergraduates in 1904 and women in 1920, it is still something of a graduate-level seminary. Dominated by the vast National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the campus is ringed by 87 houses of study for various orders, giving rise to the nickname "Little Rome." One-third of the 5,300 students are nuns, priests and other religious. The effect is unusual—pretty coeds in skirts and sweaters mixing with bearded Capuchin brothers in robes and sandals and studious Sisters of Chari ty in swooping white headdresses.
The only Catholic member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, C.U. is one of only three Catholic campuses with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter (others: Fordham and Minnesota's College of St. Catherine). Though its $16 million endowment is paltry, its 600,000-volume library is tops for Washington campuses. Its first-rate drama department has enlivened capital culture with some 200 plays attended by 550,000 people. It boasts the nation's only school of canon law, complete with a topflight lay lawyer who converted from Judaism. Sometimes called the "West Point of the U.S. clergy," C.U. counts among its living alumni some 55 bishops and more than 40 college presidents.
Catholics have long thought of C.U. as a model of academic freedom—subject to neither "the hand of an order'' nor the pressure of a state legislature. Even in student rules, it is unusually liberal for a Catholic campus (no "lights out," no supervised study). Yet in recent years, notably under Irish-born Rector McDonald, who took over in 1957, the faculty has increasingly complained of academic timidity at the top. Items:
¶ Rector McDonald vetoed as "imprudent" a proposed C.U. symposium on evolution and Christian theology during the Darwin centennial in 1959—while similar symposiums were held at three other Catholic universities (Fordham, Duquesne, and Chicago's Loyola). ¶ Sociologist Father Raymond Plotvin was forced to withdraw from a major study of family planning in cooperation with Jesuit Georgetown University. Reason: McDonald refused to approve Plotvin's request for a Ford Foundation grant to study "family size preference of American Catholic college girls" because the subject was "too controversial."
¶ Father Edward F. Siegman, associate professor of sacred Scripture, was ousted last year "for reasons of health" despite an 18-2 vote of protest by the faculty of sacred theology. Rumored reason: Siegman's probing scholarship irked Archbishop Egidio Vagnozzi, the apostolic delegate to the U.S., who also takes a dim view of Theologian Kung.
¶ By Vatican request, C.U.'s canon law faculty prepared for the council a list of proposed reforms of obsolete church laws. In Rome, U.S. bishops waited expectantly but in vain to hear the C.U. ideas. Reason: Rector McDonald never sent them. His critics call-this "even more serious than the speaker ban."