DEUS SCIENTIARUM DOMINUS. - Apostolic constitution, which begins with words taken from I Sam. 2, 3, promulgated on the day of Pentecost, 24 May 1931, to regulate teaching in all ecclesiastical universities and faculties (AAS, 23 [1931], pp. 241 ff.).
It begins with a proem, in which the right to teach entrusted to the Church by its Divine Founder is asserted and the work carried out over past centuries by the Church herself in the field of higher education is recalled. There follow 58 articles divided into 6 titles.
Attached to the constitution are the Ordinaciones, issued by the S. Congregation of Seminaries and Universities of Studies on 22 June 1931, in 49 articles, to regulate the correct observance of the pontifical prescriptions.
The constitution sets as the purpose of universities and faculties that of giving higher instruction and initiating students into scientific work as a path to the progress of the ecclesiastical sciences. Entry into the faculties is permitted only after a prior suitable formation, in conformity with the faculty itself: attendance at lectures is required before presenting oneself for academic degrees, so that, for example, one does not proceed to the doctorate in theology before the fifth year completed in the faculty of the same name. The degrees are: the baccalaureate, the licentiate, the doctorate. No one may aspire to the doctorate before having obtained the licentiate. The doctorate is necessary in order to teach in a faculty. The subjects of instruction are assigned according to the criterion of guaranteeing on the one hand a thorough knowledge of the fundamental doctrines and, on the other, sufficient information with regard to the many disciplines that have arisen or developed more recently. Therefore the disciplines in one and the same faculty are divided into principal, auxiliary, and special. Indeed, among the principal ones, there is one most principal, called praeclypa, to which everything else must be coordinated. The special disciplines - they must be treated and practiced in such a way that they harmoniously accompany and complete the principal disciplines, but that they do not require too much work for themselves and that they never bring even the slightest detriment to the accurate and truly supreme study of the preeminent doctrines» (Discourse of Pius XII to the ecclesiastical students of Rome, AAS, 31 [1939], p. 246).
Before the licentiate, the characteristic subject of the faculty (in theology, all the treatises; in canon law, the entire Code; in philosophy, all the parts, etc.) must be explained in its entirety. After the licentiate, study is more specialized, and for the obtaining of the doctorate the writing of a scientific thesis is prescribed, of which at least a part must be published. An attempt has thus been made to harmoniously compose the demands of speculative and of positive formation, of solid and general culture and of specialization.
All ecclesiastical faculties are subject to this legislation (although here and there suitable adaptations to certain local conditions have been authorized) and are under the dependence of the S. Congregation of Seminaries and Universities of Studies.
Bibliography6 works
Carlo Boyer