Food for thought from an essay, "Catholic Commencements and Pro-Abortion Politicians," originally published on Ignatius Insight by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., in early June 2005:
Honorary degrees should be given for what is honorable. They should testify to what is honorable. They should be in a context of knowing what is honorable and what is not. By giving an honorary degree a university, whether it knows it or not, teaches us what it stands for. By accepting a degree, the recipient tells us what he stands for. Honor is a subtle thing, much more subtle than monetary rewards, as Aristotle also saw. It intends to emphasize the good, true, and beautiful in a particular way, in the way that such institutions can point to the importance of these realities and their understanding of them.
The universities in the Catholic tradition are not designed to confuse us about what the truth as that truth is enlightened by reasoning and revelation. The world is full of folks who do not hold these positions. This is why the Church, as the new Pope has said, the Church is by its nature missionary. What cannot be honored are views that clearly undermine what the Church holds to be valid. Why a school would choose someone who takes a position contrary to the Church’s views, or why someone would want to be called Catholic or be honored who takes a contrary view, are rather curious issues. One possibility is that the school or the honoree thinks that the Church is wrong. The other possibility is that there is a deep-seated reluctance to cut one’s ties with the Church on the suspicion that such an act would be a final break with a tradition that claims to be true.
In either case, the question of "who is honored at commencements?" is no neutral consideration. It does reveal, in a rather obvious way, just what a school thinks it is about and just what the one honored stands for in the light of the attention focused on him by the honor. One might phrase the issue this way: "Tell me what you honor and I will tell you what you are." What we see worked out at university graduations, more than we might at first suspect, is a particular answer to this question. If in this context, the Church has its own response to such particular questions, it is in fact doing little more than proclaiming what it is, a source of truth that it too must uphold because it is true.
The universities in the Catholic tradition are not designed to confuse us about what the truth as that truth is enlightened by reasoning and revelation. The world is full of folks who do not hold these positions. This is why the Church, as the new Pope has said, the Church is by its nature missionary. What cannot be honored are views that clearly undermine what the Church holds to be valid. Why a school would choose someone who takes a position contrary to the Church’s views, or why someone would want to be called Catholic or be honored who takes a contrary view, are rather curious issues. One possibility is that the school or the honoree thinks that the Church is wrong. The other possibility is that there is a deep-seated reluctance to cut one’s ties with the Church on the suspicion that such an act would be a final break with a tradition that claims to be true.
In either case, the question of "who is honored at commencements?" is no neutral consideration. It does reveal, in a rather obvious way, just what a school thinks it is about and just what the one honored stands for in the light of the attention focused on him by the honor. One might phrase the issue this way: "Tell me what you honor and I will tell you what you are." What we see worked out at university graduations, more than we might at first suspect, is a particular answer to this question. If in this context, the Church has its own response to such particular questions, it is in fact doing little more than proclaiming what it is, a source of truth that it too must uphold because it is true.
I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who knows as much about higher education than does Schall.
No matter how many ways I look at this ND thing, it comes up "stupendous debacle".
Posted by: Ed Peters | Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 05:20 PM