By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
First, the good news: Pro-life students from the Jesuits’ Georgetown University were a prominent part of the March for Life in Washington, D.C., in January. Now the bad: Georgetown had nothing to do with it. It is an instructive test case, a scenario that makes one wonder whether our modern Catholic universities have become schools with as pronounced an animus against Catholicism as nonsectarian schools fully under the sway of the secular left.
The Georgetown students who attended the March for Life recently told The Cardinal Newman Society (cardinalnewmansociety.org) that “student groups at the university are finding success in driving pro-life outreach and discussion on campus despite the university’s lack of support for their events and activities, or for Church teaching on life issues.”
Michael Khan, president of the student-run Right to Life group at Georgetown, told the Newman Society, “I think that given a campus culture that’s often hostile to pro-life views, it’s extremely helpful that there exist organizations like Georgetown Right to Life. With contraceptives allowed in dorms and faculty members who hold views diametrically opposed to Church teaching, I can totally understand why many students on campus feel exiled for their pro-life views.”
Is Khan overreacting? It doesn’t look that way to me. It is hard to believe, but not only does Georgetown not provide financial support for the Right to Life group in the way it would for other campus organizations and clubs, the school actually refused to give the 40 students who attended the March for Life an excused absence for the day they spent in Washington. That’s not a misprint.
The Newman Society has documented Georgetown’s support for groups and events that promote views contrary to the Church’s teachings, including abortion-supportive groups like Planned Parenthood. In October of last year the Newman Society reported the university’s disregard for Respect Life Month and its decision to sponsor instead “six weeks of events and speakers for their annual LGBTQ OUTober.”
Khan told the Newman Society, “I am very disappointed with Georgetown. We celebrate LGBT History Month and so-called ‘OUTober’ with a variety of events, panels, and speakers . . . but for [recognizing] Respect Life Month [we have] absolutely nothing. No events. No emails. Nothing.”
Khan got a revealing reaction when he wrote a pro-life article for the Georgetown University newspaper The Hoya last September. He says that the most vocal complaint he received was from a member of a religious order of women:
“The biggest pushback from faculty that I received for that article came from a Catholic religious sister — I kid you not — who argued against abolishing abortion by law and objected to aspects of Church teaching on abortion.”
Khan goes on to say that things are not much better in the school’s theology classes:
“Unfortunately, in some classes with certain professors, I know that many students feel too intimidated to share their pro-life views for fear of repercussion by professors who are not at all sympathetic to either the pro-life or Catholic message.”
Khan added quickly that he does not want to paint with too broad a brush, that “there are numerous professors here who could not be more supportive of Right to Life and events like the Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life that we host annually.”
Still, on balance he contends that pro-life student groups are “places of refuge” in a “generally unsupportive faculty and campus atmosphere.” For new students with pro-life views, he recommends actively seeking out information from fellow students about groups like his and also the campus chapter of the Knights of Columbus.:
“The [pro-life] community is very close and it definitely strengthens my confidence in my positions, especially knowing that I have support on campus. Especially on such a liberal campus, it is very nice to know there are so many good people who share your beliefs and support you.”
The Newman Society informs us that the Georgetown Right to Life student group, also known as Vita Saxa (“life rocks”), is made up of more than 114 students. This is a small percentage of the university’s undergraduate enrollment of approximately 7,595 students, but it has made an impact at the school and in the surrounding area.
Khan describes the group’s efforts to assist “pregnant women not only here at Georgetown but in our local community,” by collecting donations of diapers and supplies for crisis pregnancy centers. “I think part of the reason Right to Life is so important as a student organization at Georgetown is that we believe the pro-life movement is also a service-oriented movement.”
What is happening at Georgetown regarding pro-life students gives us another opportunity to ponder the question discussed several times in past editions of First Teachers, namely, whether it is better for Catholic students to attend a Catholic college or a public or nonsectarian private college. There is no easy answer. It is unlikely that the members of Khan’s Right to Life group would be able to find as many pro-life faculty members to serve as their mentors at, say, Yale or Ohio State as they did at Georgetown.
But if they attended those non-Catholic universities they would not have to deal with the phenomenon of having their pro-life views attacked by professors at a Catholic institution. There is nothing surprising or unsettling about finding a professor who openly and unapologetically defends abortion-on-demand at a nonsectarian private or public university. It is what one expects at those schools. But finding those views championed at a Catholic college is a different matter.
It is a textbook example of what the psychologists call “cognitive dissonance,” the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who is forced to hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. It can lead to a serious undermining of one’s Catholic faith, something, I would imagine, that most Catholic parents serious about their faith do not want to pay tuition to subsidize.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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