Land O'Lakes Statement

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." 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.