Where goeth political debate?

 

 

Many thanks to Rob Vischer for bringing to our attention the recent developments regarding Professor Scott FitzGibbon of Boston College Law School and the “ruckus” over his appearance in a political advertisement concerning the state of Maine marriage referendum. At the outset of this posting I make a disclosure that Scott and I are good friends. Our friendship began thirty-nine years ago. At that time he was a nominal Christian, but in due course he entered the Church several years later. He has a keen intellect, and he searches for truth honestly and objectively.

I believe that Rob and I share the position that Professor FitzGibbon was clearly within his rights as a citizen and as a member of an academic community to express his view and propose to fellow citizens a particular course of action on an important political issue, in this case, same-sex marriage. In last year’s election season, I addressed the rights of individuals to participate in the political process, but I was and remain critical of those who deny to others the right that they insist on for themselves. [HERE] I am troubled by the fact that Professor FitzGibbon is being criticized for stating in the political advertising that he is a professor at Boston College. He did not imply or state that he represented Boston College. Rather, his identification was a statement of fact about what he does for a living and where he is a professor. Both he and I know that there are those members of his university who do not share all of his views on political issues just as he does not necessarily share theirs. In this context, faculty members from universities and colleges have often expressed political views and identify the institution with which they are associated not intending to imply that they speak for their institution. For example, last fall, members of then-Senator Obama’s Catholic Advisory Committee publicly associated themselves with their own home institutions that included Xavier, Harvard, Boston College, Toledo, Notre Dame, Georgetown, and Holy Cross. [HERE]

We all most likely agree that the issue of same-sex marriage is hotly contested subject generating robust engagement. But I think—I hope—that we can agree that it can be discussed and debated in a civil and rational manner. And that is precisely what Professor FitzGibbon has done. When certain views, his views in this case, are hounded from the public square, democracy is in trouble. When good people as citizens cannot enter a political discussion or enter a political campaign because others contend that their position is unwelcomed in the public debate, democracy is in peril.

I have raised on previous postings the thoughts of Christopher Dawson that provided insight into the point I was making. I shall do so again today. In a 1959 essay entitled Civilization in Crisis, Dawson said,

 

...if Christians cannot assert their right to exist in the sphere of higher education, they will eventually be pushed not only out of modern culture but out of physical existence. That is already the issue in Communist countries, and it will also become the issue in England and America if we do not use our opportunities while we still have them. We are still living internally on the capital of the past and externally on the existence of a vague atmosphere of religious tolerance which has already lost its justification in contemporary secular ideology. It is a precarious situation which cannot be expected to endure indefinitely...

 

The “ruckus” involving Professor FitzGibbon demonstrates that Dawson saw something happening in 1959. With the passage of fifty years, we have evidence that his prediction seems to be a most accurate one.

 

RJA sj