The American bishops have announced that the American College in Louvain will close its doors this June ending 154 years of seminary formation conducted in conjunction with the Kaltholeike Universiteit de Louvain (est. 1425).
The news of this has hit me much harder than I thought it would. The new right wing of the church tossed me out years ago, and I thought I had made my peace with it all — possibly I had kept some dormant hope for the church based in part on the fact that the American College still existed. Oh well.
I first began my graduate studies in Leuven (the flemish for Louvain) as a seminarian living at the College. I had wanted to go there due to some very influential Prof’s I had studied with at St. Ambrose when I was in undergrad seminary (btw — they closed that seminary too…). I remember walking the halls and noticing the Native American details carved into the stone cornices; I was told that when the college first opened it was to train Europeans for missionary work in North America. It went full circle in the mid 19th century when the US bishops purchased it as one of two national seminaries located in Europe.
The University is legendary; from Erasmus to Fulton Sheen, and my first months were spent in horror as my first set of oral exams approached. I survived them, and began to feel a part of the place. There was a natural rivalry with our peers in the other national seminary in Europe; the North American College in Rome. I spent my first Christmas in Europe there, with classmates from Ambrose, and we talked about the differences in our experiences. Leuven had a much higher course load and Rome had the pope… The saying was that the church sent you to Rome to make you a bishop, to Leuven to make you a theologian.
In those years, we didn’t really know better — it seemed to us that the church needed both. I think we were right, but events have made a liar of me.
I had heard over the years, that the College was having a hard time, that the numbers were down — but I also learned that the seminary in Rome was full to overflowing…wth? About that time I had invited Ray Collins to town to speak at the parish and Vandy, he was then at CUA, but had been one of my NT prof’s at Leuven. I asked him about the low numbers at Leuven… “It’s pretty simple, they closed most of the “liberal” undergrad seminaries and now we aren’t producing anyone who can handle the work!”
Over the last 30 years the US bishops have systematically closed the seminaries that were academically rigorous enough to prepare people for Leuven, and gloried in the correctness of the ones that didn’t, thereby guaranteeing the end of The American College.
Somehow intelligence, intellectualism, inquiry and loyal dissent have become sin. And the American church hierarchy has systematically worked to purge itself of this problem. They have done such a great job that most of the tiny number of recently ordained priests their system has gotten through to ordination are exactly what they wanted — intellectually neutered and completely clerical.
The church I loved said it wanted the best, the smartest, the thinkers — people smart enough to be as open-minded as Jesus. Now the church seems only to want those who will stay in line — the church has become IBM circa 1956.
The American College of Louvain gave the American church some of its greatest thinking leaders and assured the church of a loyal voice of dissent when it’s clerical hubris started to show. The cradle of those voices will close this June — no one will notice, and that may be the worst part.
Tot Ziens Sedes Sapientiae
Dave,
Yes more than sad and more than a shock at first but the social structure of the church I believe like much of society is collapsing under its own weight. At first I could not understand why say 10 or 20 of the “overflow” from Rome couldn’t be sent up to be poor country mice in leuven and get “perhaps” [that is a real flemish proffessorial perhaps] not a better view and education [ that would just be impossible in poor louvain] but maybe a more humble formation.….i guess that was not very humble of me. Then I began to think it would “perhaps” not be good to continue to risk letting others move the American College back any more into a place it never was or would never belong in. I guess we just can’t float the big boat anymore at least not float it north of the Tiber. I believe of course the CHURCH can and will survive with a few of those there fishing boats outfitted with men and women who know they are sinners but find Christ’s call and message to those on the edge of and outside the structure so appealing. Mark Leonard A.C. 1980 Maybe the college can reopen someday and send Belgian missionaries to the states!!!
Thanks for the comment Mark, I do wish we could still allow all the boats to float, not to mention and incoming tide raising them all… I will always be a little sad in Junes of the future; I always liked thinking about the boys struggling through all those oral exams!
Be well!
Well, well, well!!!! Oh for the days of Leuven…long days and short nights, books and beers and well, other stuff. We shall miss our Alma Mater, but better that she be closed than tarnished, which is what was happening. The profs at the KU Leuven were shocked at the transformations at the AC…they wondered alound what was happening to the AC of old, hospitable, open and a part of the Leuven and KU Leuven community.
Oh well, at least we shall survive.
I love Leuven. I am an American lay student here studying theology. I will miss the American College of Louvain. This year has been amazing. I have so many seminarian friends that I will miss. We made such a great community and I am proud to say that I sang in the choir for the very last Mass at the American College. We were a community of liberal and conservative, rich and poor, all different ages and cultures. We were proud to call this seminary our parish. It is the greatest crime of the USCCB in the 21st century to close this seminary. Shame. But yes, it will continue in spirit and one day I believe it will again be resurrected.
I am a priest of a diocese that was instrumental in re-opening the AC after World War II. I agree with everything expressed in this article. Leuven was my spiritual and intellectual home while I battled it out at that political seminary south of the Alps. How sad it is that a university like KU Leuven is being denied of future generations of priests. I was very blessed to have a rigorous undergraduate program at a college which was formerly a feeder for Leuven. And now the bishops are shedding crocodile tears as they close up 100 Naamsestraat, whining that there aren’t enough seminarians there, when it’s up to them to send men there! In wanting only “corporate men” who parrot a party line and whose concerns mainly involve buying costly “Borromean” chasubles and spouting formation clichés, the bishops are only denying the Church a future Aquinas or Erasmus or Roger Bacon — someone who truly can intellectually sound the depths of the Catholic mystery and contribute to the culture.
AC’74 I have been in Leuven more than 25 times over the last almost 4 decades, The AC changed enourmously–very clerical– as did the faculty in theology. Perhaps the world has moved faster than Leuven. Look to the south–Africa, Asian, Latin America.
Thanks Dave. A very sad story.…and there are no good reasons for the closing. FYI I have just been elected president of the alumni organization. I will be organizing a reunion in Leuven in the spring of 2012. I hope you can come!
Jack
I’m very disappointed to learn of the closing of the American College in Leuven and read with considerable interest the comments posted here concerning this development. Though I did not study at the AC, in the course of my years at the KUL (as student and later as researcher), I knew a number of peope who did and recall how much their experience at the AC meant to them…
I am saddened to hear of the closing of the American College in Leuven. I had the opportunity to visit there in late December 1992, right after my diaconal ordination in Rome. I immediately fell in love with the place. The hospitality was great (North American College seminarians could stay there for free and it was reciprocal for AC students visiting Rome). It was obvious that AC students were more progressive theologically, but we had great dialogue over Belgian beer and chocolates. The conversations were always fun and cordial. It really will be a tragic loss, and I say this as an alumnus of the AC’s younger sister (the NAC in Rome). Perhaps this will only be temporary. Certainly there are enough Leuven alumni to get a concerted effort to get some students sent there, no?
The AC taught me a lot. It will be missed.
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