The Dog That Didn't Bark

NCR, 6/8/09

The silence of the presidents

By Richard McBrien

Created Jun 08, 2009

Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., former editor-in-chief of America magazine, wrote an exceedingly important article for the National Catholic Reporter, May 29, on the silence of the presidents of Catholic colleges and universities.

Almost none of them came to the defense of the University of Notre Dame or their fellow president, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, when the institution and Jenkins were under heavy fire from bishops and conservative laity alike for having invited President Barack Obama to be Notre Dame’s Commencement speaker and to receive an honorary degree.

Reese, alluding to a famous line in one of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, referred to their collective silence as the case of the dog that did not bark.

He called it a surprising development because this one group of Catholic college and university presidents (many of whom, alas, are Reese’s fellow Jesuits) knows more about Catholic higher education than any other group and has more at stake than most.

And yet, Reese observed, the presidents were “AWOL during the entire controversy. The Catholic college and university presidents were silent.”

“Yes, a couple did speak,” he conceded, “such as Trinity College President Patricia McGuire. Georgetown University President Jack DiGioa also showed solidarity by allowing President Obama to speak on campus. But most were silent.”

Reese offered four theories for the silence and found none of them finally persuasive. . . .

“Whatever the cause of this presidential silence,” he concluded, “it was shameful. The presidents owe Notre Dame and Fr. Jenkins an apology; they owe Catholic higher education better leadership; they owe their faculties an explanation for not defending academic freedom and autonomy. They stood silent while another educational institution was unfairly and viciously attacked.”

[Read the whole piece, here.]