Georgetown Law Asserts its Catholic Identity?

I am always very hesitant to comment on this blog on the behavior of another law school for diplomatic reasons, but I am so astonished at what has just transpired at Georgetown that I must say a few things.

        First, this issue is old hat for us at Villanova. Several years ago, I prohibited the use of funds raised at a Villanova sponsored and supported auction to pay a student who would be doing "reproductive rights" advocacy at the leading supporter of such activism in Pennsylvania. While most students and alumni understood my rationale, some reacted with the kind of vitriol now being seen at Georgetown. We were attacked in the press and online, but the attack did give me the opportunity to articulate publicly why we could not endorse a type of action so fundamentally inconsistent with the Church's teachings. I drew a careful, casuistic treatment between situations  in which the academic freedom interest was strong, and the endorsement risk low, and cases (such as this non-credit bearing internship) in which the academic freedom interest was low and the endorsement risk very high. I was also assaulted with the "inconsistency" argument, ie, why don't we ban internships at the death-penalty-seeking DA's office, and didn't I really have some kind of one-sided political agrenda? My responses were very similar to Patrick Deneen's, so I won't belabor the fundamental/prudential distinction here.This was a Rubicon development for us -- after that everyone knew that I was serious about establishing Villanova Law's Catholic identity. In my opinion, a law school cannpot call itself Catholic without being willing to make very difficult decisions such as this one. Without them, it's all empty rhetoric. I wonder if this is a Rubicon for Georgetown Law?

Speaking of empty rhetoric: while I am grateful for Georgetown's decision, and very respectful of its dean's courage, I am very surprised by this decision. The only coherent argument that the complaining student makes is that she never had been given the slightest hint that Georgetown would do anything so "Catholic." As Dineen points out, she does have a point. As far as she knew (and was told), for Georgetown Law being "Catholic" or, more particularly, "Jesuit," meant pursuing a general social justice agenda through clinics, pro bono and internships essentially identical to those at other secular schools. This was, after all, the same law school where a former dean told a Catholic faculty candidate that Georgetown Law  " was not a 'Catholic' law school, but a law school in a Catholic university" (which at least showed a very Catholic capacity for onotological abstraction). Georgetown Law has long contented itself with having a couple of Jesuits on its 100 person plus faculty and supporting a splendid clinical program -- the epitome of what I have long called "Jesuit Lite" legal education: ie, if we are for "social justice" (with no reference to or even awareness of Catholic understanding of that term), teach ethics and jurisprudence (albeit with zero Catholic content), and strive to be "diverse" (like every other law school in the country) than we are in the "Jesuit Tradition," and let's not worry about all that other messy, embarassing Catholic stuff. Most of the other Jesuit law schools are the same. Recently, I gave a paper at another such school on what the preferential option for the poor means for the law (invited by the only faculty member with the slightest interest in mission.) I talked about how our clinic was inspired by St. Thomas of Villanova's dedication to the poor, how our subject areas reflected traditional Catholic pastoral concerns (asylum and migrant farmworkers), and our clinical faculty were engaged with Catholic social teaching. A clinical faculty member from the host school interrupted me to say that they were also doing wonderful things in their clinics (of which I had no doubt), but their inspiration was really "Jesuit," not "Catholic." At least the Jesuits in the audience had the good grace to look embarassed! Readers of this blog will undoubtedly remember John Breen's recent dissection of the empty claims of Jesuit law schools to meaningful engagement with the real Jesuit tradition let alone Catholicism in general. The problem is really systemic, and the persistant tendency to distinguish "Jesuit" from "Catholic", and to strip "Jesuit" of any meaningful content has allowed these schools to avoid serious engagement with their Catholic identity through cheap and deceptive rhetoric.

But I should not use this happy occasion to carp! Let us applaud Hoya Saxona, and hope this means that that Georgetown Law is at least thinking about what its Catholic identity really means.

A quick postscript: my wholesale criticism of Jesuit legal education should not in the least be read as disparaging what individual faculty at Jesuit schools are trying to do in the face of the hostility or indifference of their colleagues: Amy at Fordham, John Garvey and Rob Kalscheur at BC, John Breen at LoyolaCHI, Bill Quigley at LoyolaNO and Scott Wood at LoyolaLA as well as some others. They carry the torch bravely and imaginatively, and I have only gratitude and respect for them.

--Mark