The Land O'Lakes Statement of 1967 was an influential manifesto published in Land o' Lakes, Wisconsin, about Catholic higher education in the United States. Inspired by the liberalization represented by the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II, 1962-1965). The statement declared that "To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself."[1] In the next few decades hundreds of Catholic schools kept the religious designation but began to operate independently, and sometimes in opposition to, Catholic teaching.
It was drafted by theologian Neil McCluskey at the request of University of Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh. They helped plan the meetings for the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU). These meetings culminated with the statement, written by McCluskey, entitled “The Nature of the Contemporary Catholic University,” better known as "The Land O’Lakes Statement".[1] The seminar, on the role of Catholic universities, was sponsored by University of Notre Dame and hosted at Notre Dame's Land O’Lakes resort in Wisconsin. It was attended by the presidents of the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown, Seton Hall, Boston College, Fordham, St. Louis University, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico. Over a dozen other educators from North American Catholic institutions of higher education were also present. McCluskey was subsequently be named chair of the IFCU meeting at the Lovanium University at Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which released “The Kinshasa Statement on the Catholic University in the Modern World of the IFCU,” as well as the Congress of Catholic Universities' “The Rome Statement on the Catholic University and the Aggiornamento.”
The final Statement was based on background papers by: George Nauman Shuster, John Tracy Ellis, Michael P. Walsh, S.J., Thomas Ambrogi, S.J., Paul C. Reinert, S.J., Neil G. McCluskey, S.J., William Richardson, S.J., John E. Walsh, C.S.C., Larenzo Roy and Lucien Vachon. Most of the final drafting was done by Robert J. Henle, S.J. [1]
The statement has had a pervasive influence on Catholic higher education. Within a few years after 1967, a majority of Catholic colleges and universities in the United States dropped their legal ties to the Catholic Church and turned over their institutions to independent boards of trustees.[2]
The Vatican was alarmed. Pope Paul VI informally warned Jesuits: "in teaching and publications in all form of academic life a provision must be made for complete orthodoxy of teaching, for obedience to the magisterium of the church, for fidelity to the hierarchy and the Holy See."[3] The Land O'Lakes statement was repudiated by Pope John Paul II in 1990 in Ex corde Ecclesiae, the apostolic constitution for Catholic universities.[4] Nevertheless, the Vatican and the bishops were powerless to reverse the change in legal status that made hundreds of schools independent of the Church.[5][6]