Feb

Did the USCCB Foresee Dead People?

Late last week, Prof. Rob Vischer from the Univ. of St. Thomas School of Law posted his forthcoming essay on the application of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2004 statement “Catholics in Political Life” to honors conferred by Catholic law schools. The Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy will print later this spring my article dealing with the same topic.

The next day, Georgetown University Law Center inaugurated its new endowed Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professorship, initially held by Prof. William Lazurus. Several years ago, GULC launched the Robert F. Drinan, S.J., Chair in Human Rights.

If “Catholics in Political Life” were required reading in a class on Catholic legal thought, the Brennan Professorship could make for an interesting final exam question: does the Conference’s guidance in CPL apply to dead people?

A good essay response would walk through the text of the USCCB’s statement: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”
Georgetown University is a Catholic institution. Naming a professorship for a well-known public figure is an honor, whether or not conferred posthumously. Legislating abortion rights from the bench or supporting them in Congress violates fundamental Catholic and natural law moral principles. And although most honors are given to living people, the concepts of “honors” or “awards” and “those who violate” have no requirement based on the presence of a pulse
(President Obama has recently awarded both the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom to deceased recipients).

Moreover, named professorships are just as susceptible to the “scandal” that this provision of CPL seeks to prevent. CPL’s goal is to stop Catholic institutions from placing the imprimatur of the Church on public figures in a way that legitimizes or excuses their wrong public conduct in the minds of the participants in the institution (in this case, especially students) and the community at large. Naming a chair for Justice Brennan or Fr. Drinan communicates
to students, faculty, alumni, and current public officials that morally wrong public decision-making on life issues is really no big deal – it’s just something we disagree on, but not something so significant that it affects our overall evaluation of a public career. To steal a line from another area of this debate, such an award says, “We’re personally opposed, but we don’t want to impose our morality on you by denying you this award you otherwise deserve.” But, for reasons
ably explained many times before on this blog, abortion IS a really big deal, a huge deal, and one that significantly shapes our evaluation of a person’s public service.

Thus, looking at both the words of and intent behind CPL, it should apply to a university chair named for a public figure when that person’s public work violates our fundamental moral principles.

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