BY JOHN K. WILSON

The president of Franciscan University of Steubenville has openly announced that a book will be banned from being taught at the university, and all books at the university will be scrutinized to ensure that “scandalous materials” are prohibited. It’s a shocking case of censorship and a clear example of the suppression of academic freedom at conservative religious colleges. If this had happened at a liberal college, there would be breathless reports on Fox News Channel and the mainstream media about the terrible repression caused by political correctness. But conservative correctness is met with indifference and silence.

English professor Stephen Lewis assigned an acclaimed novel, The Kingdom by Emmanuel Carrère, to a class of five advanced undergraduates that compared and contrasted modern views of Catholicism and faith by including secular works. According to one account, “Dr. Lewis taught this class once, and then opted not to use The Kingdom again.”

But then a right-wing blog, Church Militant, reported this past week about the novel being used in Lewis’ class, and all hell broke loose.

Apparently the most shocking part of the novel is this line about the Virgin Mary: “This woman knew a man in her youth. She had sex. She might have come, let’s hope so for her, maybe she even masturbated. Probably not with as much abandon as the brunette who has two orgasms, but whatever else is true she had a clitoris between her legs.” Gasp! Horrors! A novelist invented a character who thinks Mary was an actual woman!

A review of The Kingdom in the conservative religious journal First Things praised the author: “there is much for readers to learn from him, as someone who has experienced firsthand both religious belief and its lack with a rare depth, fervor, and thoughtfulness.” The review endorsed the book because “perhaps that is just what believers need” and suggested “using this book to see the New Testament and one’s own faith anew.”

The initial response to the controversy was this thoughtful statement from the FUS administration:

Franciscan University challenges students intellectually, helps form them professionally, and engages them spiritually. This includes arming our students with the knowledge and wisdom to confront the challenges of a coarse modern culture, which often runs contrary to Catholic teaching. Heresy, and sinful acts such as murder and adultery that go against Catholic teaching, are addressed at Franciscan to help to strengthen students’ faith and prepare them to engage with today’s culture. While this happens through the study of literature by authors such as Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare who portray many sinful acts, it can also happen when they grapple with significant challenges to Catholic faith by contemporary writers. Franciscan students learn through critical comparison to consider multiple sides of an issue or argument, led by professors who always promote Catholic spiritual and moral perspectives. Thus, our students graduate better prepared to solve problems and engage with integrity in a world that desperately needs to hear the truth. Where would we be, for example, if Catholics were unable or unwilling to engage with and push back against calumny such as The Da Vinci Code or against worse heresies and dangerous heterodoxies? Franciscan University promotes an authentic and vibrant Catholic faith—inside and outside the classroom—that helps students succeed spiritually, morally, and intellectually. We remain firm in providing the integration of faith and reason that will give them the best chance at lifelong success.

It’s a good statement despite its many flaws (why should all professors at a Catholic college always promote Catholic perspectives?), but it only lasted for one day.

President Sean Sheridan, under intense pressure from right-wing groups and donors and parents who threatened retaliation, immediately apologized and issued a shocking repudiation of academic freedom. He announced that the book is “scandalous” and “will never again be used as assigned reading in any class…” He wrote, “it has no place on a Catholic university campus.”

Most disturbing of all, Sheridan declared: “I have directed our chief academic officer, Dr. Daniel Kempton, and our Faculty Standards Committee to immediately review and revise our existing policy on academic freedom to prevent future use of scandalous materials.” It is absolutely scandalous that any university president would order a faculty committee to destroy the campus academic freedom policy in order to ban “scandalous materials.”

But Sheridan went much further in suppressing academic freedom. Lewis was immediately removed as chair of the English department for daring to teach a controversial book. And not only is the administration banning books and examining syllabi with great scrutiny, but they will require all faculty to take the Oath of Fidelity to Catholic dogma. According to Church Militant, “Sheridan is now calling on all faculty to take the Oath of Fidelity. Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1989 Vatican document on authentic Catholic education, requires that any professor teaching on matters directly pertaining to morals or doctrine must take an oath promising adherence to the Magisterium. Currently the theology faculty takes the oath, but other departments, including the English department, are not required.”

It’s wrong for any university to impose an ideological loyalty oath on any professor. But it’s particularly terrible to impose such an oath on all professors, even when they are not directly teaching church doctrine.

This is not the first attack on academic freedom at FUS. Church Militant took credit for helping purge “Rebecca Bratten Weiss, an adjunct professor in his English department for 11 years, who was forced to leave Steubenville in 2017 only after media exposed her as a “pro-choice” feminist.” It’s appalling that a long-time professor would be fired for the thoughtcrime of being a feminist.

Some FUS faculty embraced the censorship imposed by Sheridan. In fact, Church Militant claimed that the faculty was only divided into those who supported Sheridan’s announced repression and those who wanted more censorship: “Faculty have offered mixed responses to Sheridan’s apology, with some grateful the president is adequately addressing faculty’s concerns, while others are dissatisfied because he refuses to discipline Lewis.”

Church Militant reported that a graduate student who dropped a course at a university in protest after hearing about the book declared, “It is unconscionable to me that Franciscan University of Steubenville actually issued a statement defending the assigned reading of a grotesque blasphemy against the Mother of God. You have actually defended evil. You actually defended a satanic attack against the Queen of Heaven and Earth. I am horrified and disgusted.”

Scott Hahn, professor of biblical theology and the New Evangelization at FUS, wrote on Facebook: “Academic freedom is valuable, but it should not be exercised in a vacuum. Rather it must be in service to the truth, and not serve as a license for perversity and sacrilege.” No, academic freedom serves the truth by allowing individuals to express their own ideas without being forced to bow to orthodoxy.

Anne Hendershott, professor of sociology at FUS, said: “The novel is horrific — something that no student at a faithful Catholic university should have been required to read. It was a betrayal of the Catholic identity and mission for a professor to assign such a novel.” Hendershott declared that it is “time for action — not just promises for the future. It is clear that a distorted view of academic freedom has emerged among some on the faculty at Franciscan.”

That’s certainly true. But it’s Hendershott and those who agree with President Sheridan’s radical attack on academic freedom who have a distorted view of it, because they think there is a religious exemption to academic freedom..

Marie Kopp, a recent graduate of FUS, wrote about the value of reading controversial books : “I was often shocked and made uncomfortable by the reading I assigned  in my classes at Franciscan University. However, as one of my favorite professors taught me, art ought to make us uncomfortable.

Another alum, Jenn Riley, asked: “How can we call ourselves warriors for Christ if we shrink at the first challenge to our thoughts–-because it does not align specifically with a checklist created by those in authority who want to keep us from exploring different perspectives?”

This kind of thoughtful analysis stands in sharp contrast with the administrators and professors at FUS calling for censorship and the repudiation of academic freedom.

Ironically, last April FUS hosted a conference on higher education that featured a panel of conservatives discussing “The Politicization of the American University and the Crisis of Free Speech and Reasoned Academic Discourse.”

But there is no better example of a crisis of campus free speech and an attack on reasoned academic discourse than a university banning books and ordering its academic freedom policies to be rescinded.

This case is a stark reminder that the most repressive universities in America today—the places where the administration literally is banning books—are conservative religious colleges.