ARTICLES

No Catholic Character

Catholic Universities in Denial

BY JAMES MCCOY

In April, Dominican University of San Rafael issued a press release praising its choice for commencement speaker, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), as a "champion" of (among other things) "a woman's right to choose." I called Carol Harbers, Dominican's publicity director: "How can a Catholic university have as its commencement speaker a politician who's a champion of abortion?"

"The only comment I would make to that," Harbers replied, "is that Senator Boxer has also been a champion of human rights, environmental protection, military procurement reform, and medical research."

"No one is a hundred percent evil," said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society in Manassas, Virginia, which put Boxer on its "Inappropriate Commencement Speakers" index last month.

Other wolves giving out sheepskins were: the San Francisco mayor who broke state law by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Gavin Newsom (at University of San Francisco's school of business); the 1972 presidential candidate of "acid, amnesty, and abortion," George McGovern (at the University of San Francisco's college of professional studies); the "more Catholic than the pope" (but only when it comes to the death penalty) Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ (at Notre Dame de Namur University, in Belmont).

Pope John Paul II might have had universities like these in mind when he told a December 2002 Catholic higher education congress in Rome: "clearly, university centers that do not respect the laws of the Church and the teachings of the magisterium, particularly in the areas of bioethics, cannot be endorsed with the character of a Catholic university."

Noting that a Catholic college can always find a reason to honor somebody, Reilly told me that "the point is, when someone like Senator Boxer is a very well known leader in abortion advocacy in the Senate, it's clearly a scandal for students, and actually for the general public, since commencement speakers are well publicized by the universities." Anyway, he added, stopping abortion "is the leading human rights issue today. And she's clearly on the opposite side."

John Galten is president of Campion College of San Francisco. He was the long-term president of the Saint Ignatius Institute until being fired by the president of the University of San Francisco in January 2001. With the Institute's core faculty, who had resigned in a show of solidarity, Galten had Campion up and running by the fall of 2002. It had 26 students this spring.

I asked Galten whether a Catholic college can fink out by publicly stating, "we're honoring our commencement speaker for a host of reasons and not for promoting abortion?"

"In the particular case of Barbara Boxer," Galten replied, "her situation is particularly horrendous... She's really hardcore: she's promoted partial-birth abortion."

When told that Boxer was actually being honored as a "pro-choice" politician, Galten said: "that's telling you volumes about Dominican University; they've gone over to the other side, in a certain sense." Yet in another sense, Dominican's public self-description as "Catholic" keeps it on the pro-life side. No wonder "the Dominican vision of education," as the university's website puts it, "seeks to reconcile seeming opposites: the religious and the secular...."

Why doesn't Dominican ease its chronic hypertension by simply going secular?

Money, for one thing. "They want to attract a wide variety of contributors," Galten said. "And to do that, they have to espouse a wide variety of positions.... They're falling into the situation of what George Weigel called 'Catholic Lite'" (in his 2002 book, The Courage to Be Catholic).

Then there's rebellion and resentment. According to Galten, many teachers and administrators at Catholic universities not only resent the Church's authority over their teaching, particularly on moral matters, but go ahead and teach what's diametrically opposed to it. Ironically, such alarms and excursions played out on the stage of a self-styled Catholic university would put the audience asleep at a secular one.

Actually, it's true that true faith and right reason can only ever be seeming opposites, for it is the same one true God who gives human beings both. In August 1990 the Holy Father gave the Church's charge to Catholic universities in Ex Corde Ecclesiae ("born from the heart of the Church" -- that's what Catholic universities are -- or at least should be). He writes: "a specific part of a Catholic University's task is to promote dialogue between faith and reason, so that it can be seen more profoundly how faith and reason bear harmonious witness to the unity of all truth."

"In Ex Corde Ecclesiae, paragraph 32," said Cardinal Newman Society's Reilly, "it lists 'serious contemporary problems.' And the first of these is 'the dignity of human life.'" Reilly quoted: "if need be a Catholic university must have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion, but which are necessary to safeguard the authentic good of human society."

"And then in the norms," Reilly went on, "which are actually the legal end, it says: 'Catholic teaching and discipline are to influence all university activities.... Any official action or commitment of the University is to be in accord with its Catholic identity.'"

I asked Campion's Galten whether a Catholic university could perhaps introduce its commencement speaker with the explicit disclaimer: we're honoring this politician for her championship of a variety of causes but not abortion. "The thing is," said Galten, "when you invite a commencement speaker, what you're doing is 'honoring' this person.... And there's no way in the reporting of these things -- they'll never report that you said that in your introduction."

About honor, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "God's fourth commandment also enjoins us to honor all who for our good have received authority in society from God.... They will dispense justice humanely by respecting the rights of everyone, especially of families and the disadvantaged....

"Those subject to authority should regard those in authority as representatives of God, who has made them stewards of his gifts.... Their loyal collaboration includes the right, and at times the duty, to voice their just criticisms of that which seems harmful to the dignity of persons and to the good of the community."

I asked Galten whom Campion would honor as its commencement speaker. "We're having a pro-life supervisor, Tony Hall." On the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Hall has taken "some very heroic positions.... He's certainly taken a lot of heat for what he does and how he votes."

I contacted Tony Hall. "First of all," Hall told me, "Campion College represents very traditional Catholic values; I also represent very traditional Catholic values. I feel honored being asked to address them as their commencement speaker. It's a chance to inspire and help young kids who may have the same values as I did to understand that there is a way that they can survive in the political arena. That's going to be the gist of my speech."

Hall said he thinks "schools, especially Catholic schools, should have as commencement speakers those who best represent the value that that school is trying to impart to their students. So you honor someone who has elevated the values of that group, who has proven that they could take it to another level. And that is honoring that person."

Which is why, ironically, Senator Boxer may be just the right speaker after all to address the 2004 graduates of Dominican University.

And so, in the end, no matter how San Francisco's Catholic Lite universities may whitewash their various commencement speakers year after year, the deeper issues lurk beneath, like dead men's bones. About such uncleanness, what can an industrial-strength Catholic teacher, administrator, student do?

"It is very difficult to reform an institution," Galten said. "There's no doubt about that. However, time is on the side of those who want a reform.

"I think this is going to be a very difficult time and a time of suffering for those who want to stand up for the Church and the values of the Gospel. But everybody has to understand that many times the reform of a Catholic institution is tied to the reform of the religious order which runs it. Then the judgment has to be made by each individual person teaching in a place like this, if they have an option: 'can I be of help here? Am I being a help to individual students?'

"I think for the foreseeable future, these individual professors who dare to stand up and teach the truth will experience a not-so-subtle persecution and a kind of an isolation and a bit of an alienation from their peers. I don't think they should go provoking things like that," Galten said, "but it will be a consequence of their teaching the truth."

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