Cardinal Newman Society Beats The Jesuit University System

The politics of commencement
Catholic colleges avoiding controversial honorees
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff

May 12, 2008
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is one of the nation's most powerful Catholics, but this year the only commencement address she gave was at one of the eight campuses of Miami Dade College. Senator John F. Kerry is headlining three commencements this year - the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, UMass Lowell, and Wheelock College - but it's been nine years since he's done one at a Catholic institution, Boston College Law School.

As for the scion of the nation's most famous Catholic family, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, ( Jesuit Ivy )his major commencement address this year is at Wesleyan University, founded by Methodists.

After repeatedly getting criticized by conservative Catholics, and after years of pressure from the Vatican and some American bishops, Catholic colleges and universities are now shying away from politicians - especially those who, like Kennedy, Kerry, and Pelosi, support abortion rights - as commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients. Instead, the schools are scrutinizing the public records of potential honorees for evidence of open dissent from key church teachings, especially on abortion, and they are choosing noncontroversial church insiders or nonpolitical figures for their most prominent honors. "I think there's a concerted effort to use the moment of naming people who reinforce the Catholic identity of our institutions, and I'm pleased by that," Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston said in an interview.

At the College of the Holy Cross, where the local bishop boycotted commencement five years ago because the speaker was Chris Matthews, an alumnus and television personality who had voiced sympathetic opinions about abortion rights, this year the speaker is Dr. Kevin M. Cahill, a specialist in tropical medicine who had worked with Mother Teresa.

Boston College, which in the past has given honorary degrees to abortion rights supporters such as Senator Warren B. Rudman and Attorney General Janet Reno, this year chose as commencement speaker the Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough. Catholic University of America graduates will hear from Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, and his wife, Dorian.

And the University of Notre Dame, which once spurned complaints from several cardinals and gave its highest honor, the Laetare Medal, to the abortion rights-supporting Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, this year chose as its commencement speaker Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the very prelate who chaired a task force urging colleges not to have abortion rights-supporting politicians ascommencement speakers or honorary degree recipients.

"I think that Catholic administrators at Catholic colleges are much more attentive to the selection process than they may have been in the past, and there is a growing awareness that these types of invitations are related to Catholic identity and mission," said Bishop Robert J. McManus of Worcester, who is chairman of the education committee for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. "I call it truth in advertising," McManus said. "Why would you honor a person, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, that has publicly contradicted the positions of the church?" The issue of honorary degrees and commencement speakers has been the most visible manifestation of two decades of tension between Catholic universities and the church hierarchy over what it means to be a Catholic university in the United States.

In 1990, Pope John Paul II released a document, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, in which he declared that "Catholic teaching and discipline are to influence all university activities." Some Catholic academics balked at the implications for academic freedom, and, in particular, at a hotly debated measure that requires Catholic theologians to seek approval from local bishops for their teaching.

That requirement, approved in 2001 by the US bishops, has been widely, although not universally, ignored. "There was some pushback within the academic community, because of what they perceived as external influence," said the Rev. David M. O'Connell, president of the Catholic University, in Washington, D.C. But, O'Connell said, "it gave an impetus to a broader discussion about what Catholic identity and mission mean." In 2004, the presidential candidacy of Kerry, a Catholic Democrat who supports abortion rights, led to the creation of a task force of bishops examining how the church should relate to such politicians.

That task force failed to settle the prickly question of who should decide whether such politicians should receive Communion, but it was clearer about commencement, declaring, "The Catholic community and the institutions which are a part of our family of faith should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles."

Since that time there has been an obvious impact on commencement ceremonies. The Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative organization that each year scrutinizes the hundreds of men and women who are given honorary degrees by the nation's 225 Catholic colleges and graduate institutions, has identified a dwindling number of honorees who dissent from the church on key moral teachings - 24 in 2006, 13 in 2007, and six thus far this year.

"When a Catholic college administrator deliberately chooses a person who is publicly opposing the church, it raises serious flags, and very often the schools choosing those commencement speakers have problems across the board in terms of applying their Catholic identity to what they do," said Patrick J. Reilly, the president of the Cardinal Newman Society.

Reilly's organization is itself controversial for its tactics, and many college administrators resent its role. "Some groups with a certain ideological perspective have focused on these decisions and, I think it's fair to say, orchestrated campaigns to embarrass institutions or put them in a negative light," said the

Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame. Jenkins, despite honoring McCarrick this year, is being criticized by the Newman Society for also honoring Marye Anne Fox, the chancellor of the University of California San Diego, who has supported that institution's embryonic stem-cell research.

Jenkins said he, like other Catholic university administrators, does not quiz potential honorees about their beliefs. "I think it would be inappropriate to interrogate someone for an honorary degree, but it's appropriate to look at their public record, to see how does that life size up," he said. Even O'Connell, who heads one of the more conservative Catholic institutions in the nation, acknowledges the decisions are often difficult. In 2004, he barred the actor Stanley Tucci, who had supported abortion-rights organizations, from speaking. But O'Connell says the question of who can speak on campus is a difficult one. "Suppose I wanted to have a conference on the environment, and a senator is an expert on the environment, but is prochoice, can I bring him onto campus?" O'Connell asked.

The change in approach is exemplified at Fairfield University, a Jesuit school in Connecticut. In 1991, a philosophy professor, the Rev. Thomas J. Regan, criticized the choice of the singer Billy Joel as commencement speaker because of the lyric, "You Catholic girls start much too late."

Last year, Regan, was himself chosen as Fairfield's commencement speaker. And this year, the college's president is giving the speech himself, after declaring four years ago that he intended to limit commencement to "speakers who have a close relationship to Fairfield and to the kind of education we stand for." "It's not a matter of, 'I have to be careful of the Cardinal Newman Society,' or what the bishop thinks, but from listening to a lot of awful commencement addresses from famous people," said

Fairfield's president, the Rev. Jeffrey P. von Arx. There are still colleges courting controversy, including, this year, Regis College in Weston, which chose as its speaker an active alumna, state House Majority Whip Lida E. Harkins, who supports abortion rights. Regis's president, Dr. Mary Jane England, said Harkins's position was not an issue, and that she simply tries to select people "for their commitment to social justice." Harkins said she had no conversations with Regis about her stance on abortion,

but that she considers herself a Catholic and a proud Regis alumna and is planning to reflect in her commencement speech on the civil rights issues that dominated her time at the college in the mid-1960s. But Regis is an exception. The Rev. D. Paul Sullins, a professor of sociology at Catholic University, noted that while his university "has never honored any real Catholic dissenter," in past years there have been speakers whose primary claim to fame was not their Catholicism. This year, though, the university chose the head of the Knights of Columbus. "It doesn't get more Catholic than that," he said.
Michael Paulson

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