WASHINGTON — Catholic bishops cannot punish theologians who refuse to seek permission from the church to teach, or even those denied such permission.

That declaration, made yesterday by a top official of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, essentially removes the teeth from a controversial measure approved by the bishops last year under pressure from the Vatican.

The requirement that instructors in theology and church history at Catholic universities get a seal of approval from their local bishop is intended to ensure that their teaching conforms with Catholic doctrine. But the bishops yesterday acknowledged that trustees, not church officials, control Catholic universities and colleges.

"It is my understanding that the diocesan bishop does not have the power to enforce anything in the context of university life," said Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk of Cincinnati, the chairman of the bishops’ committee on the mandatum, the Latin word the bishops are using to describe the permit they want theologians to seek.

This means that theologians at schools such as Boston College, some of whom have already said they will refuse to apply for permission from Cardinal Bernard F. Law, will face no punishment from the church.

At a news conference later, Pilarczyk acknowledged the toothlessness of the new church requirement for theologians. But he said the requirement is an appropriate effort by the church to certify that people claiming to be teaching Catholicism at Catholic colleges are "on the same team" as the church hierarchy.

"There are lots of laws in the church that one could contend don’t have teeth," he said. "This is a relationship we want to acknowledge, and if you don’t want to acknowledge it, there’s not much we can do about it."

Law, in an interview, went even further in an effort to assuage concerns over the new requirement, declaring that "theologians have to have the freedom to be wrong." Although one bishop declared yesterday that he would seek to publicly repudiate academics who had not received church approval, Law said in the interview that "I don’t want to denounce people."

Law said that even St. Thomas Aquinas, a famed theologian, had made errors, and that just because a theologian has church permission to teach "doesn’t mean they will always be 100 percent reflecting what the church is saying." Law said his basic criterion for issuing a permit will be the intent of a theologian.

"Maybe a person will be engaged in speculative writing, and that has to be judged by his or her peers," Law said. "If it is rooted in the magisterium [church doctrine], there’s room for that."

The combination of the lack of punishment for failure to seek permission and Law’s assertion of his own open-mindedness seem to go a long way to answering the concerns raised by faculty members at Boston College and other Catholic universities. They had feared their academic freedom was threatened by the suggestion that professors seek license from a church to teach.

The requirement to seek permission is supposed to go into effect next year, after another debate by the bishops.

Yesterday, the bishops reviewed a proposed set of guidelines for granting permission. Under those guidelines, to be voted on in June, Catholic theologians would be required under the unenforceable church law to sign a two-sentence declaration that says, in part, "I am committed to teach authentic Catholic doctrine and to refrain from putting forth as Catholic teaching anything contrary to the church’s magisterium."

The local bishop, in turn, could only deny the theologian a permit based on "specific and detailed evidence," and that decision could be appealed.

Many academics are still concerned.

Daniel Finn, a theologian at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., who is consulting to the bishops’ committee, said he fears that conservative groups of alumni, trustees, and financial supporters will pressure Catholic colleges to oust theologians who do not have approval from their local bishops.

And Finn said that some theologians, perhaps including some in Boston, would be denied a seal of approval to teach if they sought it.

Finn said there is at least one theologian at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge already under investigation by the Vatican.

Sister Maureen Fay, president of the University of Detroit-Mercy and another consultant to the bishops, said the bishops’ assertion that they would not punish noncooperative theologians "came as a surprise to many."

"The distinction between the guidelines for action and the ability to enforce them is significant," Fay said.

She added that, as a college president, she does not expect to fire faculty members who refuse to seek church approval, or even those denied it.

Boston College’s president, the Rev. William P. Leahy, who had not yet seen a transcript of the bishops’ debate or reviewed the document, declined to comment, according to a spokesman.

The bishops, who are holding their semi-annual meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, are clearly divided over this issue.

"If I were a teacher of theology, I’d be very nervous," said Bishop Joseph J. Gerry of Portland, Maine.

But Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss of Omaha said "if it doesn’t make any difference whether somebody asks, this is an exercise in futility." Curtiss said he would seek to publicize the names of theologians in his diocese who were denied church permission to teach.

This story ran on page A01 of The Boston Globe on 11/16/2000.