In response to Georgetown University’s invitation of Kathleen Sebelius to a commencement weekend ceremony, outgoing professor Patrick Deneen has circulated a letter of protest among the faculty:
Calling the invitation to speak on commencement day “one of the greatest honors that a University community can bestow upon an individual,” the letter says, “Secretary Sebelius’s role in crafting and advancing the HHS mandate that would require religious institutions to offer insurance coverage that would provide abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraceptives, makes her a profoundly objectionable choice.”Only eight members of the Georgetown faculty besides Deneen himself have signed the letter, which Deneen plans to present to President DeGioia late this afternoon, have signed so far. Deneen remains technically a member of the Georgetown faculty until May 30.
Georgetown has 2, 173 full- and part-time faculty (not including other staff). So 8 is 0.4 percent of the university’s faculty.
A depressing and telling figure, especially given that 90+ faculty members signed a letter excoriating and mocking Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan for his supposed straying from Catholic social teaching just a few weeks ago. Though that letter’s tone and reasoning were highly debatable, an outside observer might have been forgiven for taking its circulation as evidence that perhaps Georgetown’s Catholicity was more institutionalized and ingrained and than critics often assume.
But the selective outrage on the part of the faculty now looks more cynical, and their failure to stand up for the animating faith of the university which employs them suggests that, actually, they aren’t really interested in it after all.
