The Tablet
The Catholic newspaper of the diocese of Brooklyn & Queens
At a time when the buzzword of X number of liberationists is to “come out of the closet,” some Catholic universities seem to be headed back in for cover. Are they afraid of themselves? Since when is it decided that in order to be admitted into the public square a university must hide its core identity? Or are they unsure of what – or Whom – informs that identity?
At the outset, we need to be clear. Although President Obama’s invitation to Notre Dame and to Georgetown is a catalyst of the recent controversy, his identity is under neither camouflage nor compromise. But the universities seem to be struggling with their own. In a Catholic university – or any public forum for that matter – absolutely nothing should prevent a president from advocating what he believes in, even if it be at odds with Catholic teaching. But why must the host university also cover up its own core identity or cringe from challenging positions blatantly repugnant to it?
In Georgetown, for example, at the request of the Obama White House, the very name of Jesus himself – represented by the IHS symbol to be precise – had to be hidden from public view as a “distraction” from American flags. By that logic, “In God We Trust” should be removed from all court houses as an impediment to the administration of justice and from our currency for interference with commerce. While to some this might seem trivial, it goes deeper. How is it possible even to enter into honest dialogue where one partner’s core identity must be suppressed?
And since when have the rules for public discourse or the understanding of a university changed? Well-respected theologian, Robert Barron, argues in the Chicago Daily Observer (“A Cover Up at Georgetown, April 22, 2009), that “what a Catholic university should never do is to surrender its own identity or to make apologies for its own deepest commitments.” The reason hinges first of all on our understanding of Jesus Christ as not just one of many religious figures but the incarnate Logos, the origin of reason and all creative activity. It also has to do with what a Catholic university actually is. Precisely as the incarnate Logos, Jesus belongs at the table of intellectual conversation. He is, recalls Barron, “related to every truth discovered by science or philosophy, every design apparent in nature, every instance of artistic beauty, every arrangement of justice . . .” Any university, Catholic or not, that has the pursuit of truth as its core mission cannot tolerate a repression of the name – or its symbol – that defines its mission, as in the Georgetown cover up. Or is the name of Jesus a distraction?
The Notre Dame controversy, the other case, is not distinguished by its invitation to a president with certain views contrary to Catholic teaching, not even if reputedly the most radically pro-abortion in history. It is, rather, the uncritical conferral of an award (an honorary degree in law, of all things) which appears to minimize (or marginalize) the fundamental tension between his views and the foundations of morality itself. The prohibition of the direct killing of innocent human life is so fundamental that to vitiate it is to undermine the very moorings of moral discourse, indeed, of civilized society. The same selective valuation of the dignity of different human subjects is the moral relativism that underlay the atrocities of the era of Hitler and Stalin, and indeed the reign of slavery in America.
Twenty-five years ago, Notre Dame extended to New York Governor Mario Cuomo an invitation to deliver an address that would touch on controversial moral issues (“Religious Belief and Public Morality,” Sept. 13, 1984). Unlike the current subject of controversy, it was not to showcase his celebrity, but the persuasiveness of his reasoning, which remained free for discussion and dispute. A commencement address – in which the speaker himself is also singled out for honor – spotlights not only to his celebrity, but also what he stands for. And the “elephant in the living room” here is the president’s blind spot – to be kind – about the value and inviolability of all innocent human life.
Imagine the outcry were a university to so honor an otherwise distinguished personage whose advocacy of a single issue – say, colonialism, apartheid or the subordination of women to men (even if proffered on a questionable reading of the Scriptures) was his or her only heresy. Is it so inconsistent with academic freedom for a Catholic university to withhold a platform from an otherwise admirable public figure, whose advocacy for the expendability of some human lives compromises all human lives?
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