February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
We’ve come a long way since the days of Eamon de Valera.
The alleged offenses of Mary McAleese are not what you might expect. She is not pro-choice Catholic, like, say, John Kerry. These days, it goes without saying that Senator Kerry would not be welcome in many Catholic settings, regardless of what he might have to say on matters ranging from foreign affairs to health care to Social Security reform. He is pro-choice, and thus unwelcome on parish grounds or on campus.
No, it is not President McAleese’s position on abortion which has exercised members of the Cardinal Newman Society, a group that has appointed itself as guardians of true Catholic orthodoxy. As a matter of fact, members of the society conceded that President McAleese’s position is just fine.
The problem is that the president once said something which could be construed as favoring the possible ordination of women priests. This, according to the Society, showed disrespect for the church and its leaders.
And that simply will not do.
Villanova University went ahead and presented the president with an honorary degree on May 22. But had it been up to the Cardinal Newman Society, Mrs. McAleese would have been barred from the campus because she dared voice her opinion – or, more precisely, she dared voice an opinion that the church’s bishops do not share.
Of course, it ought to be noted that Mrs. McAleese is not the first person to express sympathy for the idea of female clergy, nor will she be the last, despite the best efforts of the modern era’s inquisitors.
The society says the issue is closed. Yes, but that’s what some said about the church’s tolerance of slavery a few centuries ago, when some priests owned human beings and slaves toiled in service to the papacy.
Church teaching changes, which is why Catholics can throw burgers on the grill on Friday evenings, and why the Latin mass is Greek to Catholics younger than 45. Perhaps women never will be ordained. Perhaps the Catholic Church will never have a married clergy. But is it so terrible, so dangerous, for a Catholic to speak in favor of either?
Apparently it is, at least for some Catholics who clearly wish to make life uncomfortable for other Catholics who don’t march in lockstep with the Cardinal Newman Society.
President McAleese is not the only politician whose presence on a Catholic campus has created a tempest, although surely the McAleese case is clearly the most absurd. Catholics have protested invitations to public figures such as Rudolph Giuliani, who recently spoke at Loyola of Maryland, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who is a Jewish, pro-choice Democrat, and the inevitable Hillary Clinton.
In fact, after Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., invited Spitzer to speak on campus, the college was, in essence, de-listed as a Catholic institution thanks in part to the agitations of the purer than thou.
In the view of some Catholics, pro-choice speakers, regardless of their faith, cannot be allowed to speak on Catholic ground regardless of the topic. So if a Catholic university were to sponsor, say, a conference on 9/11, or on international terrorism, Rudolph Giuliani would be ineligible to speak. So would Tom Ridge, the former Homeland Security secretary who was pro-choice as governor of Pennsylvania. If a Catholic institution wished to hear about abuses in corporate America, Spitzer – a man who made his name by going after Wall Street cheats – could not be invited.
This is dangerous nonsense, and it is just the first step in a larger effort to attack academic and intellectual freedom on Catholic campuses in the United States. If some Catholics have their way, the only authorized Catholic institution of higher learning will be the Ave Maria College in Michigan and the Ave Maria University in Florida, built with pizza-maker Tom Monaghan’s orthodox millions.
How much longer before some activists insist that certain books be banned from the shelves of Catholic colleges?
In fact, I’d bet that there is a movement afoot already to make sure that Catholic school libraries are swept clean of unclean thoughts and arguments – unclean, of course, in the eyes of the self-appointed guardians of Catholic thought.
It is a brave law school professor at Georgetown who would dare assign students to read and discuss Roe v. Wade. Better to simply denounce it, or ignore it, and move on. It is a brave theologian, or political scientist, or U.S. historian, who would direct students to read Mario Cuomo’s address at the University of Notre Dame in 1985, or to study John F. Kennedy’s speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960.
Both of these milestones in American Catholic history are filled with dangerous ideas, and these days, we can have none of that.
The matter is closed.
It is interesting to note that years ago, New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor, who instituted a ban on pro-choice Catholics from speaking at church functions, had a famously friendly relationship with Mayor Edward I. Koch, who was vehemently pro-choice and pro-gay rights.
Koch, of course, was Jewish, and so was not speaking out against church teaching. I once interviewed the former mayor about his friendship with the cardinal. He said he and the cardinal agreed to disagree.
What a curious notion! Today, ironically enough, members of the Cardinal Newman Society would have no choice but to protest the presence of Ed Koch on a Catholic college campus, just as they would protest the presence of any pro-choice public figure. But when Cardinal O’Connor was alive, Ed Koch was a fixture at midnight Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Would the Cardinal Newman Society stand idly by in the face of this offense?
The Cardinal Newman Society demands that Catholics show due respect and reverence for their hierarchy. But some of us will not, in the words of the Fenian John Devoy, discuss our politics on our knees. Nor do we feel especially obliged to pay heed to those responsible for the church’s moral and – coming next – fiscal crisis.