Liberating the Greg

For more than four centuries, Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University has been both the pride and the protector of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. Eight of its alumni have become saints. Thirty-three have been beatified. Fifteen have become Pope, from Gregory XV (1621-23) to Paul VI. Every year 30 to 40 of its alumni become bishops. Fully two-thirds of the church's seminary professors of theology have taken some part of their education at the Gregorian.

That success has not been without its costs. When Ignatius Loyola founded the "Greg"* in 1551, he conceived of it as an intellectual citadel from which to battle the Reformation, and until 1966 it remained a bastion of authoritarian conservatism. Classes consisted of dry lectures in Latin, with no chance for student participation. Seminarians had virtually no lives of their own. They could leave their residence only in groups, and could never enter a store or restaurant. They could not take secular newspapers. They could not even wear trousers; instead, the members of the more than 200 scattered residential colleges, representing 78 countries, wore colored cassocks, each color denoting a different nationality, and round, flat hats.

Beer, Blondes and Bunuel. The Second Vatican Council changed all that. Although seminarians at the Greg had been advised by their colleges not even to discuss the council while it was in progress, the meeting had its effect soon enough. First, Pope Paul VI eased out conservative Giuseppe Cardinal Pizzar-do, secretary of the Sacred Congregation on Education and ex-officio chancellor of the Gregorian. He was replaced by a liberal French prelate, Gabriel Cardinal Garrone. Then, in 1966, the Pope named Canadian-born Sociologist Herve Carrier, now 48, as rector.

This fall, as the Greg heads into its fourth year of Carrier's rectorship, the changes are little short of astonishing:

COEDS: Girls have invaded what was once an exclusively male world; this year there are 198 females, mostly laywomen, among the Greg's 2,858 students. The majority are in the Institute of Religious Sciences for the Laity or the social sciences department, but a pert German blonde, Hannalore Oesterle, 25, is studying in the department of theology, planning to get a doctorate and return to Germany to become religious editor of a newspaper.

DISCIPLINE: With the arrival of feminine skirts on campus, the male seminarians' soutanes quickly vanished. In their place are typically collegiate "civvies": khaki pants, sweaters, windbreakers and sports jackets. Students may visit Rome's shops and restaurants. In the Greg's main building, a new snack bar serves beer as well as coffee between classes.

CINEMA COURSES: Only a few years ago, Gregorian students were forbidden to enter Rome movie houses; on-campus movies were limited to mild fare like My Fair Lady. Now students not only may go to movies in town, but get pretty heady fare on campus. Last year Father Nazareno Taddei, a cinema expert, introduced a course on

"Faith and Unbelief in the Contemporary Cinema"--and illustrated it with uncut showings of avant-garde films by Antonioni, Bresson, Bunuel, Dreyer, Pasolini and Bergman. Vatican conservatives howled "Pornography!" when Taddei ran Bergman's erotic The Silence, but the show went on.

PROTESTANT PROFESSORS: The first Protestant to lecture at the Greg was Methodist Theologian J. Robert Nelson of Boston University, who gave a course last year on the ecumenical movement. This year the resident Protestant is Dr. Dale Moody, a Southern Baptist theologian from Louisville Baptist Seminary, whose subject is baptism and Christian unity. Next year Rector Carrier hopes to add a Jew to the faculty to teach a course in Jewish culture.

LANGUAGE: "Latin," says Carrier emphatically, "just wasn't working any more." Out it went as the Gregorian's language of instruction. Instead, courses are taught in modern languages, usually Italian but sometimes French, English or Spanish.

STUDENT POWER: By far the greatest strides have been made in student freedom. Gregorian students exercise more power than students at many American secular campuses. Under Carrier's definition of "co-responsibility," students must have at least one-fourth to one-third of the membership on each departmental council, and are guaranteed a third of the votes on the university senate. They participate in revising university statutes, planning the curriculum, creating professorships, approving the budget and even naming (when the need arises) a new rector. Students now have their own uncensored campus newspaper, which enjoys tilting at sacred cows; last spring, in an editorial on "party-line journalism," it cheekily compared L'Osservatore Romano with Pravda.

If the old patterns of alumni success persist, the Gregorian promises to create some interesting members of the hierarchy in the next generation. "Our job," explains American Student Nelson Minnich, "is to defend Rome against Rome."

*Named for Pope Gregory XIII, who in 1582 ordered the erection of larger quarters for Loyola's Collegium Romanum.

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