The Deseret News reports that professors at LDS Church-owned BYU are closely following the Pope Benedict XVI's interaction with American Catholic academics on his U.S. tour.

BYU professors told Amy Stewart they would have mixed reactions if LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson were to address BYU administrators. LDS leaders often lead devotionals, but if they issue a weighty statement related to academics, even the address when Ricks College morphed into BYU-Idaho, it causes "a big stir," they said.

BYU issued a "academic freedom" policy in 1992 that prohibits professors from contradicting church positions (no-brainer there). For instance, a BYU prof, the DNews explains, "couldn't say in class they believe the church should practice polygamy."

The DNews neglects to mention BYU's purge of faculty who were deemed critical of church policy outside the classroom. The most recent controversy erupted around part-time prof Jeffrey Nielsen, who got the ax after he wrote an op-ed piece in The Tribune questioning church's position on same-sex marriage.

Daniel Peterson, BYU professor of Islamic studies and Arabic, tells the DNews that BYU profs don't fear LDS Church leadership would clamp down on BYU because, he says:

We haven't been allowed to get off the path that far.