The Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium may drop its institutional affiliation with the Church.
The Fleming-language University of Leuven—which until 1968 was joined
with the French-speaking University of Louvain—is inaugurating a series
of debates on the question of removing “Catholic” from its name.
While
saying that the decision will not be made hastily, Rector Mark Waer said
that “the Catholic message is not appropriate for the university.”
Waer said that students—especially those from outside Belgium—should be
reassured that the bishops who sit on the board of the University of
Leuven do not control academic policies.
The university has a full range
of academic specialties, but also includes faculties in canon law and
theology; it is not clear how these departments would be affected by
dropping the Catholic affiliation.
Although the Catholic Church in Belgium has been under fire because of
the sex-abuse crisis, officials at the University of Leuven said that
the scandal was not a factor in their discussions.
More pointed
questions, they indicated, have been asked about the Church’s
relationship toward science.
The university hopes to play a leading role
in biomedical research, and some faculty members were dismayed by the
Vatican’s critical reaction of Robert Edwards, the pioneer of in vitro
fertilization, when he was announced as a winner of the Nobel Prize.
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