Father Patrick Hartin A Professor At Gonzaga On Dante’s Hell

Link

After reading the Bulletin Friday morning, I’m convinced that I’m living in Alice’s Wonderland! Instead, it’s “Wonderland” – more like Dante’s “Hell”! …. To protect themselves and others in the neighborhood, the students defended themselves by pulling out a gun (one with a legal permit). Then the students called the police (as any law-abiding GU student would), informing them they had a legal gun with a permit. The police congratulated them on their whole mature behavior and response to this incident. There, the incident should have ended (if we were in the real world). But, we enter GU’s “Wonderland” or Dante’s “Hell.” 2:00 a.m. next morning: GU’s campus security breaks into the students’ apartment and their bedrooms and seizes their weapons…. Tragically, in GU’s “Wonderland,” these young gentlemen are turned from victims into criminals….
no

What about the cura personalis that is the bedrock of GU’s ethos? We could have been mourning “Two funerals and a rape” this weekend. Instead, the heroes who avoided such a catastrophe are punished as villains. What a far cry from our Jesuit ethos! 

In the Catholic tradition, to which I ascribe, every person has a right to defend him or herself and to use appropriate means to save their lives.

Go (here) to read the full piece, Fr. Hartin is Professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga, and an ordained priest of the Diocese of Spokane, Washington.