Over the weekend, in the wake left by both a colleague and former law student here at the University of St. Thomas, I waded into what Mark Sargent accurately has called a “kerfuffle” about objections raised by Boston College faculty to an honorary degree to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (arguing that her position on the war in Iraq contradicted fundamental Catholic teachings), together with a supplemental inquiry about whether objections to speakers and honors based on fundamental conflicts with Catholic principles were being made consistently. The heart and soul of my weekend posting affirmed the great value of asking such questions about Catholic character in our academic communities, addressing fundamental Catholic values and striving always for consistency in principle, but not insisting upon my own particular answers on every occasion to those questions. As I stated, in my view, the Catholic character of an institution is strengthened and highlighted by the very asking of the questions.
Yesterday, at the request of my colleague, Elizabeth Brown, I posted a message in which she challenged the accuracy of a partial list of pro-abortion Boston College speakers and honorees obtained from the Cardinal Newman Society. Allowing my colleague Elizabeth to present her message without interruption, I promised any response would be separate and subsequent.
In my weekend posting, I deliberately focused upon the general subject of Catholic identity in higher education, while pausing only briefly to address the controversy of the moment that initiated this debate. Because I do not wish us to miss the forest for the trees, I am wary of entering a tit-for-tat exchange, that could spiral down into increasingly fine factual distinctions of diminishing importance. And, as what follows shows, correcting the factual record is meticulous work requiring a protracted explanation, which is ill-suited for a blog. At the same time, we cannot truly explore the meaning of a principle without seeing it in actual application. To belabor the metaphor, the forest cannot be fully appreciated without giving attention to each tree and, on occasion, examining the health of individual leaves. So here is a more specific response and some corrections to the factual record as explored by Elizabeth’s posting. And then I’ll withdraw for a while so as not to dominate the conversation with these lengthy postings.
In yesterday’s posting, Elizabeth Brown listed each pro-abortion public figure identified by the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) as having been a commencement speaker or award recipient at Boston College—and then outlined what she viewed as the crucial errors and omissions in that CNS list. As an engagement with and as one plausible answer to the consistency question, I find Elizabeth’s message to be a qualified success. As an exercise in exposure of error, I respectfully submit she falls short and actually introduces error in ascribing error. Still, given that I am more interested in progress in encouraging and addressing questions about Catholic identity, the successful dimension of Elizabeth’s message largely outweighs the failure in my mind, although both deserve some further discussion below.
Elizabeth asserts essentially three mistakes or omissions in the Cardinal Newman Society’s listing of speakers or honorees. First, in the case of one Boston College honorary degree recipient, CNS identified the person as the chairwoman of a particular organization with a public record of promoting abortion, whereas Elizabeth emphasizes that she did not become the chair until the month following the college recognition. However, as it turns out, this individual had been named chair months earlier, as evidenced by numerous news reports dating months before the college event, although she did not officially step up to that post until shortly after the college honor. Moreover, she had been a prominent member of the organization’s board for more than a decade previously and had been named fellow of that organization nearly two decades earlier. In other words, at the time of the honor, she most definitely did have the "ability to shape or influence the policies" of the organization.
The second objection Elizabeth raises is that all but one of the pro-abortion advocates CNS identifies were commencement speakers or honorees at the Boston College law school rather than for the college as a whole. She’s certainly correct about this, but mistaken in attributing error to CNS. In its published reports and on its web site, the Cardinal Newman Society accurately reports that each of the individuals that Elizabeth discusses indeed were speakers at the law school commencement or received an honor at the law school.
Moreover, even if CNS had not carefully and accurately reported these cases as law school recognitions (as it did), the indelible fact would remain that the institution had bestowed such an honor. Now I do think the fact that these honors were located in a particular department of the college is relevant to the question of consistency by faculty in raising objections (as I discuss below). But from an institutional standpoint, a commencement speaker at a law school or graduate school or business school commencement is a commencement speaker at that college of university. If it is objectionable for a college or university to honor a public official whose position or conduct arguably stands in egregious contradiction to Catholic teaching, then it does not become less so because the figure is honored at one school rather than another. Indeed, while Secretary Rice is to be the commencement speaker for the entire university, I understand that the honor to be conferred is an honorary doctor of laws.
Elizabeth also attributes error to CNS’s listing because she emphasizes that the commencement speakers were not selected for that honor because of their pro-abortion stance. But this reflects no error on the part of CNS. Neither CNS nor anyone else has suggested that Boston College affirmatively endorsed pro-abortion advocacy as the actual reason for these recognitions. Thus, Elizabeth’s listing of achievements by and quotation of commendations to the specific commencement speakers or honorees does not contradict the description by CNS of the prominent roles played by these same public figures in promoting the abortion license.
So the Cardinal Newman Society passes the accuracy test with flying colors. And somewhat ironically, given the matter that provoked the "kerfuffle" in the first place, that same organization actually has joined in objecting to any honor to Secretary Rice at Boston College, focusing upon Secretary Rice’s support for the abortion license.
Still, while Elizabeth may have gone awry in identifying errors, I do think she succeeds, at least in part, in offering a fuller context in support of a plausible answer to the consistency question. In particular, after explaining that most of these arguably pro-abortion figures were commencement speakers at the law school, Elizabeth suggests that faculty from elsewhere in a college or university might feel constrained from voicing a protest. To be sure, one could argue that principled objections, at least those framed in terms of a fundamental conflict with Catholic teaching, ought be projected beyond the hallways of one’s particular department or school. Moreover, the post that raised the consistency question on this blog was directed to all protesting faculty at Boston College, which as a group apparently numbers around 150 and quite probably includes members of the law faculty.
Yet Elizabeth further submits that faculty from elsewhere in a university (and I would bolster her point here by saying that the same could be said for those within a particular component) might be inclined to voice any objection to an honor or speaker in another department in a private communication. Given that respect and decorum often counsel the private expression of concerns, the possibility that some of the presently-objecting faculty may have raised private objections in the past strikes me as a fair answer. In any event, as Elizabeth concludes, absent further information to the contrary, we ought to assume good faith on the part of all concerned. I would include as well those who raise questions.
In sum, while I understand that Elizabeth viewed her message as a correction to what she (mistakenly) viewed as inaccurate information, I believe that her message served better as a decent if not dispositive answer to the underlying merits of the consistency question. In other words, rather than exposing the consistency question as inherently flawed in the asking or undermining the legitimacy of the inquiry, she inadvertently affirmed the question by attempting to answer it. And I see that as a quite good thing.
In the end, what matters most is that we confront the consistency question, not as a substitute for addressing the merits of the objection at hand but as a supplemental inquiry. After all, a perfectly understandable answer to the consistency question would be simply to say, well, there has to be a first time for any one of us to raise a principled objection, that is, for any of us to call upon an institution to live up to its Catholic identity. That due to reticence or ignorance or neglect or simply being distracted I may have failed to stand up for principle in the past surely is no reason to continue to do so. The acid test is whether, now that I have spoken up for Catholic character, will I continue to do so in the future.
And so I end where I began over the weekend: Both lines of inquiry—about objections to honors in specific cases and about consistency in treatment in general—are honorable and fairly posed and legitimately explored on the Mirror of Justice and elsewhere. When we assume good faith on the part of all participants in the debate, the introduction of a dialogue about affirming the Catholic character of our institutions should in itself have the salutary effect of strengthening that character.
Greg Sisk
