I begin by thanking Rob for his posting on Faculty Chaperones and Catholic Identity and by taking him up on his invitation for reactions, insights, and recommendations dealing with the present situation at the University of Saint Thomas and the objection by some faculty to the school’s position on faculty chaperones.
I will respond to his open invitation if not with insights or a recommendation, then with a reaction. Mine begins with the beginning of today’s first psalm from the Divine Office’s Morning Prayer:
Defend me, O God, and plead my cause against a Godless nation.
From deceitful and cunning men rescue me, O God.
I appreciate and support Rob’s position on why he could not co-sign the letter issued by some faculty criticizing the University in its stand against non-married faculty bringing heterosexual or homosexual domestic partners on University-sponsored trips where faculty serve as chaperones or excursion leaders. I have also read with great interest the March 3 letter signed by some faculty against the University and its Administration. I lament their position and the manner in which they expressed their views.
My reaction really is a series of questions for faculty members who signed this letter and hold the view that the University has been “unfair” to them and the several faculty members affected by the University’s decision.
My questions begin with an assumption that when these faculty were hired they were neither asked by the University nor did the University inquire through other means about their domestic relationships if they, in fact, existed at the time of hiring. My assumption goes further in that I suspect these faculty members did not volunteer information about their private lives and relationships when they were hired. But now these private matters have become of legitimate public concern to the University when the faculty members made their private affairs a public business.
With this prelude, I share Rob’s concerns about the rhetorical style which the faculty letter employs. It is harsh. It is disrespectful of the University. It is not conducive to civility and civil discourse. I suppose tenure for some of its holders provides a sense of having the right to say anything in any tone one wishes to employ without fear of consequences. In this line, I wonder how many untenured faculty who agree with the University and its position would consider themselves as free to respond with written disagreement against tenured colleagues who have signed the letter? But I digress.
My questions continue: who really is being unfair in this matter? Who initially chose to remain silent on these matters of vital interest to a University that represents itself to the world as a Catholic institution? Has the University in fact condemned those with whom it disagrees or has it simply stated its disagreement and asserted that it will not support the relationships of the affected faculty members? Has the University in reality denied its openness and commitment to diversity conducive to an institution that claims to be Catholic? Has the University really been deceitful in this matter? Did the University conceal some previous institutional policy that there was nothing wrong with heterosexual and homosexual domestic partnerships becoming a part of the University’s identity? Has not the University tried to be true to its Catholic identity—a challenge to institutional integrity in this present age? Has the University exhibited hypocrisy?
Might it just be that the University in honoring its heritage, mission, and institutional integrity chosen the correct path in this matter? This last question takes into account the important address Archbishop Michael Miller, Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, delivered at Notre Dame this past fall in which he talked about the current challenges to Catholic identity of colleges and universities. As the Archbishop stated, the time may have come to exercise “evangelical pruning” toward those institutions which no longer adhere to Catholic identity. Is it possible that the University of Saint Thomas has chosen to remain true to its identity rather than to become a candidate for evangelical pruning—not out of fear but out of the exercise of its academic freedom to be true in a very public fashion to the identity it claims?
It is relevant to note that not once in their letter do the faculty who issued this condemnation mention the Catholic nature of the institution. Not once. This omission says much, however.
I shall conclude my reaction to Rob’s posting with another stanza from today’s Divine Office:
O send forth you light and your truth; let these be my guide.
Let them bring me to your holy mountain to the place where you dwell.
It may just be that someone at Saint Thomas is also mindful of the Divine Office and what its words mean. It also appears that there are those at the same University who are unfamiliar with its wisdom. RJA sj
Monday, March 13, 2006
Here is an interview I did with the Catholic news service, ZENIT, on the freedom of speech and the "right to offend."
For an example of the struggle to articulate and maintain a university's Catholic identity that does not involve the Vagina Monologues, check out the storm caused here at the University of St. Thomas by the administration's practice of not allowing unmarried partners to travel with faculty on student trips. A sampling of the coverage can be found here, here, and here, and the protest letter signed by (some) faculty and staff is here.
Rob
UPDATE: After I posted this, I was asked why my name is not on the protest letter. There are several reasons, including the fact that accusing the administration of being "hypocritical" and displaying a "lack of integrity" are unlikely to facilitate a healthy resolution of a difficult issue. Also, the resolution currently before the faculty senate suggests that a faculty chaperone could choose whatever travel partner they wish without limitation. Here are my original comments in response to that resolution:
I would be more sympathetic to [this] resolution if it simply called for travel privileges for same-sex partners who are in long-term, committed relationships and are legally precluded from pursuing more formal recognition of those relationships. That proposal would still stand in tension with the school’s Catholic identity, but it would raise a different set of considerations than the broader and, in my view, more radical suggestion that a faculty member’s choice of travel partner is none of the school’s business. The implicit presumption is that faculty members are teachers by instruction, but not by the behavior they model – or at least that the modeling function is limited to circumstances chosen by the faculty member.
If I paid tuition for my child to attend any college, Catholic or not, and the faculty chaperone on a trip abroad slept with a different partner at every stop on the journey, for example, I would certainly complain to the administration. And if the administration responded to my complaint with “that’s none of our business,” I would wonder what sort of formation process is contemplated at that institution. If I go out for drinks with students one evening and end up getting falling-down drunk, that’s no longer just my personal business; I’ve made it the school’s business by modeling my behavior for students.
The resolution should strike us at the law school as especially problematic because we’ve set out a distinct mission of educating the whole person, which puts the burden on us to know that we’re being watched, not just listened to. If folks want to have a conversation about what sorts of relationships are legitimate models for students on university-sponsored trips, that’s one thing. But to suggest that our choice of travel partners is irrelevant to the formation of students that occurs – intentionally or not – on such trips, that’s quite another.
I'm not sure how other schools have handled this issue, but I'd welcome any reactions, insights and recommendations.
I've been following the media coverage of the Equality Ride, a cross-country protest tour through which GLBT students hope to bring attention to anti-gay policies and practices at Christian colleges. Whatever our view of the policies being protested, it is, in my view, a valuable model of cultural engagement by the riders, who seem to be targeting hearts and minds, rather than the levers of government power. Equally interesting are the divergent approaches taken by the institutions themselves, ranging from the fortress mentality (e.g., Liberty having the protestors arrested for setting foot on campus) to the facilitation of dialogue (e.g., Bethel planning various discussion forums with students and faculty). As Wheaton College's provost recognized, "this is a significant event" because "it signals a heightening of the pressure that's going to be on our institution as we are discordant with the general culture on our stand of sexual morality."
Rob
Sunday, March 12, 2006
By way of a follow-up to my recent post on adopting babies with Down's Syndrome, here is an interview with my friend, Prof. Lisa Schiltz (St. Thomas) -- who has a son with Down's -- on the pressure put on parents to abort children with Down's. Here is a taste:
Q: Why do you think it has become socially acceptable to abort a child with Down syndrome?
Schiltz: Because, unfortunately, it has become socially acceptable to abort any baby who disappoints the expectations of the baby's parents for any reason, as the increasingly common practice of sex-selection abortion indicates.
Down syndrome just happens to be a disability that is easily identified through prenatal testing.
Not only have many come to accept that a woman faced with such news is justified in aborting her child, some now go further and insist that she has a duty to abort.
Bob Edwards, the scientist who created Great Britain's first in vitro fertilization baby, gave a speech a couple of years ago at an international fertility conference in which he said, "Soon it will be a sin for parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children."
This is frightening. It signals an erosion of societal consensus about our collective responsibility for vulnerable people.
Society will increasingly believe that a mother who forgoes an easy abortion and chooses instead to give birth to a disabled child should not look to the community for help. After all, it was her "choice."
