Looking for a guide to "authentically Catholic" universities, colleges, and seminaries? Visit www.mandata.org, which is complete with links to lists of university faculty who have obtained the mandatum to teach theology, as required by Ex corde ecclesiae.

Father John J. Stryjewski, webmaster and priest of the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama, has devised the mandatum quotient (MQ)—"a decimal number formed by dividing the number of faculty members who have received the mandatum by the total number of eligible faculty members"—to rate Catholic schools and seminaries on a five-star scale. An MQ of 1.0 yields a five-star rating, while an MQ of .5 and under merits only two stars.

The U.S. norms for the application of Ex corde have not yet been implemented. If the bishops approve them in May, Catholic professors of theology will still have two years to obtain the mandatum. This makes Father Stryjewski’s list of schools with any rating at all very short. The Catholic University of America, The Josephinium, Steubenville, and Christendom College are five-star schools. Viterbo University and Loyola University Chicago bring up the rear, with MQs of .12 and .04, respectively.

"Please remember," Fr. Stryjewski writes, "that the MQ is just a dispassionate number...which might condition answers to your questions about authentic Catholic teaching." Good thing we won’t be seeing any McCarthyite tactics in the discussion of the Catholic identity of colleges and universities.

Related: Theologians in the Dock, by Rodger Van Allen