Free Speech and Catholicism at ND

[DFW HOYA]

Where are the Jesuits in all this?

[SirSaxa]

WBH.... thanks for finding and posting that article. The two quotes below express my feelings on the issue far better than I did:


"There are people who say that the play has no place on a Catholic campus," the Rev. Kevin Wildes, president of Loyola University New Orleans, wrote last year in a statement sanctioning the play. "To exclude the play from a Catholic campus is to say either that these women are wrong or that their experience has nothing important to say to us. I would argue that these are voices that a Catholic university must listen to if we are to understand human experience and if we are to be faithful to the one who welcomed all men and women."


"Father Hesburgh (Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, retired Pres. of ND) also said a modern university had to face the crucial issues of the times.
"I think the real test of a great university," he said, "is that you are fair to the opposition and that you get their point of view out there. You engage them. You want to get students' minds working. You don't want mindless Catholics. You want intelligent, successful Catholics."

[WilsonBlvdHoya]

dfw said:

Where are the Jesuits in all this?

Well, here's at least a hint, DFW.....from the NYT article

"Catholic teachings seem to allow divergence on complicated issues like human sexuality. In the last decade, the number of gay and lesbian groups at colleges, including religious ones, has risen steadily, according to gay rights and academic groups. Notre Dame does not have an officially sanctioned group for gay and lesbian students. Many other Catholic institutions do, including 24 of the 28 members of the Association of Jesuit Universities and Colleges, an increase from a decade ago, said the Rev. Charles L. Currie, the association president."

Now I'm waiting for the quotes and accusations from the Newman Society crowd that the Jesuits aren't "really Catholic."

[Frank Black]

wilsonblvdhoya said:

And an NYT article..........

www.nytimes.com/2006/02/18/national/18notredame.html?th&emc=th

PS: FB, do you still think I've shut GU down?

What do you mean?

[SirSaxa]

frankblack said:

Ergo, Georgetown = Duke/Harvard/Cal-Berkeley. Re-read what you wrote and describe to me how Georgetown's mission differs from any of the schools I've mentioned. You have stripped the institution of its Catholic identity. Fun while it lasted, though.

Frank.. do you ever even read your own posts?

The above is what WBH was referring to. You essentially accused him of seeking to end GU as you thought it was.

Fortunately for GU, those responsible for running the univeristy are more open-minded and interested in education -- in the broadest sense.

[Healy]

dfw said:

Where are the Jesuits in all this?

From the Hoya, here is one Jesuit's view (Fr. Steck).
www.thehoya.com/viewpoint/021006/view4.cfm

One excerpt:
"The Catholic tradition must be committed to such a listening to others — even when critical — because of the important value it places on human reason and human insights into the world. The genuine advance of human knowledge beyond the Church walls is possible because God imparted to the world a kind of order and wisdom which is accessible to human reason.

Catholicism has engaged a larger community of discourse that has, at least sometimes and perhaps often, disagreed with it. That engagement has not always been smooth, but the Church hoped that it could be fruitful because it is committed to the belief that the deeper questions of our world and of human existence within it (e.g., questions about human nobility, about the virtuous life, about how to live well and flourish as individuals and as a community) are not irrational, and because they are not irrational, they can be fruitfully explored in conversations across diverse communities."

[Coast2CoastHoya]

To respond (a few days late and a few posts after) to one of the original questions on this thread: The Catholic University of America, right across town.

The question? Is there nowhere a Catholic can send his/her children where a Catholic atmosphere is maintained. (easyed)

If you think ND is going far is limiting the free excahnge of ideas, check out CUA. Not only did they kick the Monologues off campus, citing the same "it's antithetical to the Catholic mission" line, but University President O'Connell came out and said that it is "crude, ugly, vulgar, and unworthy of staging or performing at CUA or any venue whatsoever."

Oh yeah, and seem very keen on keeping those who have taken a public stand in favor of a woman's right to choose from speaking on campus at all, with the notable exception of former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe.

[hoyatables]

tothebeach said:

Oh yeah, and they won't let anyone speak on campus who has ever taken a public stand in favor of a woman's right to choose.

Interesting . . . one wonders if CUA also bans speakers who have publicly advocated capital punishment or un-just wars . . . .

[hoyatables]

I wonder if Notre Dame is also looking into the movies aired by SUB (the Student Union Board--think "the Corp"+GUSA).

www.nd.edu/~sub/entertainment.html

Titles this spring include: Saw II, When Harry Met Sally, Rent, and The Producers.

Better ban Saw II--all that icky violence. And Rent--oh the humanity--gays? Sex between unmarried people? Transgendered people??? And of course, you just have to ban When Harry Met Sally--can't have all those good Catholic girls seeing Meg Ryan's big orgasm scene and wondering if they are missing out. And of course, the Producers should be banned--if there's anything worse than sex with young women, its sex with old women and performing a song about it.

What SUB better to is invite the powers that be in to watch is Good Night and Good Luck. Actually, strike that, better not draw attention because they'll ban that film as well--can't advocate thinking for oneself!!!!

[Coast2CoastHoya]

The speaker policy at CUA says the "freedom to express oneself verbally, in writing, or by peaceful demonstration, even in significantly controversial matters, may be constrained in a private university by other values which are held to be equal, greater or prior. The Catholic University of America, as a private institution, is not required to provide a forum for advocates whose values are counter to those of the university or the Roman Catholic Church. The university recognizes a distinction between objective explanation and advocacy in the presentation of issues. This means, therefore, that it may refuse permission to prospective speakers who in its judgment promote or advocate such counter values. This also means that balanced programs explaining positions on both sides of controversial societal, political, moral and/or ecclesiastical issues may be staged in the pursuit of a more complete educational experience and a greater understanding of the issues. Hence, in such matters, even in those in which the Roman Catholic Church has expressed clear and unambiguous official teaching, programs involving knowledgeable spokespersons representing opposing viewpoints may be considered to be appropriate within the university setting. Conversely, programs designed to promote action rather than understanding, while not necessarily inappropriate in themselves, are not clearly “educational” in a strict sense. The university refuses to allow advocacy programs judged by the administration to be inconsistent with the university’s underlying value base and in so doing exercises its freedom as a private, value-based institution.
~Approved by Board of Trustees, June 5, 1990."

It goes on to identify a couple specifics:
"The university, operating within the framework of the foregoing, is committed to its various constituencies to avoid the following:
i. blasphemy: the act of expressing irreverence for God or those things held sacred;
ii. pornography: explicit sex lacking any artistic merit, portrayed in a vulgar and exploitative manner;
iii. calumny: false and malicious accusation;
iv. advocacy: meaning the act of pleading for, supporting, inciting or recommending active espousal of (as opposed to scholarly and abstract discourses), examining or questioning the legal, academic or moral propriety of the subject under discussion, constituting a clear and present danger of:
the violent overthrow of the government of the United States or any political subdivision thereof;
the destruction of, damage to, or the unlawful seizure or subversion of the university’s buildings or other property;
the disruption, impairment or interference with the university’s regularly scheduled classes or other educational functions;
coercion, threats, intimidations, blasphemy, defamation, physical harm or other invasions of the lawful rights of the members of the university community;
any campus disorder of a violent nature;
illegal acts constituting a deprivation of the civil or property rights of others."

To my knowledge, no one with pro-war or pro-death penalty view has been prohibited from speaking.

[utraquehoya]

Some faculty at CUA have felt that the policy on books about free speech hasn't been respected in reality. As you can imagine, the closer a speaker gets to a hot button issue, the more likely it seems that the university will intervene.

However, I don't think this should be argued as if there's one way to be a Catholic university. I'm glad there are places like Catholic, Stuebenville, Christendom -- conservative places that are part of the Catholic education system. At the same time, I think Georgetown's particular mode of being Catholic offers the Church something important.

Just two examples. Qatar and the newly announced Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.

Qatar: it seems possible that the SFS program there might become a place where future Middle East statesmen are trained. It's also a place where religious discussion is esteemed and will continue to be so (all students take a Problem of God course). It offers a way of building conversational bridges between Catholicism and a deeply religious part of the world. None of this could ever be done by a Duke or a CUA... it could only be done by a place like Georgetown.

Berkley Center: same thing: can't be done by Duke or by CUA. If you're going to be serious about bringing religious leaders together for dialogue (as the Center hopes to do, I believe), you have to have an institution which esteems such religious commitment (in its diverse forms).

There was something really lost when Georgetown's religious requirements ceased to focus almost exclusively on Catholicism, but the gain, the good achieved, is also important. And because all these goods are important to the universal body Catholic, there can be no one model of Catholic higher ed.

[jimg8r]

Plato taught and sought after what he called eternal and universal truths, and this is what I believe should still be the mission of universities in modern America.

I guess sadly though many universities now see their mission to be the exploration of any and every idea no matter how clearly wrong or straight up perverse it may be.

Anyhoo what do I know? I am just a product of a huge southern state school. As a Catholic though I do find the above discussion rather fascinating. I was never fortunate enough to attend a school like GU or ND, but had always pictured those places as remaining more true to the mission of seeking the truth.

[utraquehoya]

jimg8r said:

I guess sadly though many universities now see their mission to be the exploration of any and every idea no matter how clearly wrong or straight up perverse it may be.

I think there are a lot of crazy ideas that make their appearance in higher ed, but I don't believe that is a sign that universities have given up on the pursuit of truth.

The problem is, of course, that ideas that seem "clearly wrong or straight up perverse" to one culture and time period are shown as errors for another.

When Pope Innocent III said that Jews "ought to be held in continual subjection"; or when the 4th Lateran Council said that secular authorities "ought to exterminate all heretics to the best of their ability"; or when Pope Gregory said that it is "insanity to believe that liberty of conscience and liberty of worship are the inalienable rights of every citizen"; or when Pope Pius IX claimed authority over the civil realm and promoted "the right of the Church to teach the human race, to pass laws, and to rule for the purpose of leading people"; or when Pope Leo X "condemned as false" the idea that "against the will of the Spirit to burn heretics at the stake"; etc. weren't they advocated ideas that we now see to be fairly zany (though those ideas seemed some reasonable and conventional to many at the time)?

Who then decides where the boundaries are between the nonsensical and possibly true? The hope of higher ed is that if you keep putting ideas to the test, that over time truth will emerge. It's not a perfect solution, given the silliness of the ideas that appear within it, but it's a better solution than allowing one group to control the conversation.

[SirSaxa]

The surest way to make some more attactive, is to make it Taboo.
"Banned in Boston" was guaranteed to sell more books.
And then there's that Adam and Eve and the Apple story.

Why should we be afraid of ideas?
Let people explore.
Help them to understand and analyse
and make good decisions.

That's what it should be all about.

Again... banning a play?
banning a speaker?
what next... go into the library and start burning books like "Catcher in the Rye"?

[Coast2CoastHoya]

Couldn't agree more, SirSaxa. As a non-Catholic who has now been to college at Gtown and law school at Catholic U., it's staggering to me that particular ideas would be excluded from campus discussion because they might be anti-thetical to Catholicism.

If the Church has cornered the market on Truth, then what's the danger of someone offering a counterpoint? Isn't that a golden opportunity to display the power of the Church's point of view? Why treat your students like children in danger of corruption instead and, as one of our faculty mused, engage in prescriptive censorship? I've never understood it, and I don't see how it advances the Church's mission either.

[utraquehoya]

Notre Dame's president, who had earlier indicated he was going to ban the Monologues has changed his mind, according to an article in NYTimes. it seems that even though he found the play's content alien to Catholic views, the issue came down to the value of free speech, as evident in the fact that the conversations around the Monologues had given him new insight (into what, I'm not sure).

www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/education/06notredame.html?_r=1&oref=login
Notre Dame's President Allows 'Monologues' and Gay Films - New York Times