Leaders of other Catholic schools worried that anger over Notre Dame's action would spill over to all colleges and cause long-standing damage to their relations with bishops.
George said the issue would be taken up at the meeting as part of a broader look at what groups can legitimately call themselves Catholic.
"If those relationships - which don't mean control, they mean relationship - are now weakened, then we have to think of ways to enter discussion in order to strengthen them, and to redefine perhaps what are the criteria for a university or any other organization to consider itself Catholic," George said in an interview ahead of this week's meeting.
There is no easy answer to questions of how bishops and schools should relate.
The discussion touches on canon law, civil law and Vatican documents on Catholic higher education, including the decree from Pope John Paul II called "Ex Corde Ecclesiae."
With just a few exceptions, Catholic colleges and universities are incorporated independently from a local diocese and the church as a whole. Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer and former dean of Duquesne University Law School, noted that John Paul's decree recognizes the autonomy of Catholic colleges and universities.
Under canon law, bishops can revoke the right of a school to call itself Catholic, according to Edward Peters, a canon lawyer at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. However, that penalty is rarely applied.
Beyond that, Peters said, a complex analysis is needed on existing canon law to "work out implications in various fields such as civil law and sound theology. That is why they are forming this committee."
