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Land O' Lakes Statement, Wisconsin, 1967

    In response to the Second Vatican Council, Catholic universities put forth their own statements regarding the role and function of Catholicism in education. The Land O'Lakes Statement was one such example created in 1967 in response to a meeting of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU) in Tokyo. 

    In 1965, the IFCU meeting came to a resolution to convene regional conferences to create a statement on Catholic higher education that would coordinate with the the Second Vatican Council constitution Gaudium Et Spes or the "Pastoral  Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" [1]. This constitution was concerned with the state of the modern world at the time of the Second Vatican Council, and the role of both the Church and mankind in that world [2]. To achieve this goal set by the IFCU and the declarations of the Second Vatican Council, multiple conferences were held around the globe from 1965 to 1968, including one concerning American Catholic higher education in Land O' Lakes, Wisconsin. 

    Resulting in the presentation of the Land O' Lakes Statement, this conference included representatives from nine American Catholic universities, such as head speaker Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, the president of Notre Dame; members of the episcopacy (the governing body of bishops); and religious leaders and scholars [3]. The statement outlined the roles and functions a Catholic university should fulfill, the relationship between its students and faculty, and its relationship to the Catholic Church. In the words of the authors, a Catholic university needed to be "a university in the full modern sense of the word, with a strong commitment to a concern for academic excellence." The American Catholic university was autonomous and embraced academic freedom, providing the same services as any other university with "Catholicism...persceptibly present and effectively operative" [4]. The Catholic university had objectives of both academic excellence and theological purpose.    

    The Land O' Lakes Statement served as a contributing document to "The Catholic University in the Modern World," published in 1973. Its policies became the model for the general approach taken on education, administration, and student faculty relations by American Catholic universities. The statement was generally met with acceptance due to its broad and flexible guidelines, but also generated criticism for its separation of Catholic higher education from the authority of the Catholic Church [5]. Conflict on this subject emerged on the St. Edward's campus after the transition to a lay board of trustees in 1969, as the authority of a local bishop clashed with the university's idea of autonomy and academic freedom asserted in the Land O' Lakes Statement [6].