More on Majerus

With respect to the dust-up about Rick Majerus's comments, about which Michael blogged here, a few thoughts:

Like (I gather) Michael, I don't think, at the end of the day, it's reasonable to expect the President of Saint Louis University to admonish Majerus for expressing views contrary to the (clear) teaching of the Catholic Church.  That said, I think it's important to be more clear than many -- at least, the many I've heard discussing the matter on ESPN -- have been about the reasons why, and why not, this is true.

For starters . . . note to Michael Wilbon (of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption"):  This is not a matter of Majerus's "freedom of speech."  Even if we put aside the fact that neither Archbishop Burke nor S.L.U. is the government, there is nothing about the "freedom of speech" that means you cannot be criticized in return.  Let's move on. . .

Second, perhaps more noteworthy than Majerus's statements about his "pro-choice" views -- what a shocker!  some Catholics are wrong about abortion! -- is his later statement, commenting on Archbishop Burke, "He's entitled to his opinion, but I should be entitled to mine."  Well, d'uh.  The issue is not about who's "entitled" to their opinions.  The question -- and it is a tricky one -- is whether it is appopriate for someone in his position -- a professing Catholic, at a Catholic university -- to publicly endorse a position that is contrary to Catholic teaching, thereby effectively using that university as a platform, or as a credibility enhancing credential, in a way that could cause scandal.  Majerus is getting a lot of praise for his said-to-be courageous insistence on taking stands for things he believes in.  Fair enough.  One would hope that some might question the appropriateness of his using his S.L.U. position to convert his views on a controversial position from "a private person's views" to "the views of the Saint Louis University basketball coach."

To be clear, I don't think a university, Catholic or not, can or should expect that none of its faculty or staff, even one as visible as the basketball coach, is ever going to say misguided things.  I do not think that a Catholic university -- even one that is serious about its Catholic mission -- should criticize or admonish faculty for saying such things.  (One wonders, though, what S.L.U.'s, or ESPN's, reaction would have been had Majerus appeared at a Tom Tancredo rally and complained about immigration, or at a League of the South rally and complained about Emancipation.) 

Third, one can think that, at the end of the day, S.L.U. should not directly criticize Majerus for his comments, and also -- see, for example, this comment by my colleague Cathy Kaveny -- that this was a missed opportunity for a different, and perhaps more constructive, response by the Archbishop, without embracing the (silly, I think) view that Majerus's comments are somehow none of the Archbishop's business.  Majerus, after all, is a Catholic.  It's entirely appropriate, it seems to me, wholly and apart from the question what the University should do, for the Archbishop to use the statements of one of the area's most visible Catholic laypersons as an occasion to remind the Catholics he has been charged -- he believes, by God -- with teaching and pastoring of an important moral truth about the dignity of human life.

Finally, and contrary to what I've seen suggested in some of the sports-blogsphere, the fact that S.L.U. should not directly admonish Majerus for his misguided views does not mean that Catholic universities should not, as a general matter, care about the connection between their mission and identity, on the one hand, and the intellectual life of their faculty and students on the other.  It would be unfortunate if the upshot of l'affaire Majerus were that the mistaken view that a Catholic university can only be a "university" if it cordons off the faith from its intellectual life became more accepted.