Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Catholic, Jesuit and Diverse’

Toward the end of last semester, and for the fourth time in seven years, the Jewish menorah which annually stands in Red Square during Hanukkah was vandalized.

After the incident, Julie Fishman, Georgetown’s Jewish program coordinator, was quoted in the Dec. 15 issue of The Georgetown Current as describing the event as “most likely nothing more than a mean-spirited prank.” Whatever else it may have been, it was certainly that too. But the appalling repetition of these and other incidents (such as the vandalizing of the Muslim student prayer room in April 2001) has begun to suggest that such incidents may indicate changing attitudes here and can not be so easily dismissed.

Causes for such still aberrant behavior are often hard to fix, and political motivation can by no means be excluded. But it may be useful for at least part of the explanation to recall that in recent years Georgetown has insisted upon its identity as a “Catholic and Jesuit university,” and that the phrase has registered so widely now that it is sometimes taken to offer a totalizing response to all members of the university on almost all moral issues.

A non-Catholic colleague on a committee involving social issues tells me that she had difficulty working with students to whom she was supposed to demonstrate that not all standards of equity sprang from, or were responsive to, a specifically religious commitment.

Those of us who can remember the presidency of the late Rev. Timothy S. Healy, S.J., can recall his often repeated belief that Georgetown was not only a Catholic and Jesuit university, but that it was also beginning to become a great university, and one with a mission to the world. The danger of ignoring Healy’s insight is that the language we have now chosen to describe ourselves may seem to encourage dated and self-regarding attitudes which the foolish and the unwary may take as somehow tacitly authorizing the actions which took place in Red Square.

I understand that the narrowing of religious and other attitudes cannot by itself account for these events and that other factors may be involved as well. Furthermore, the recent rally in support of religious tolerance, which specifically responded to the attack on the menorah, no doubt represented not only the official attitude here, but also that of the great majority of students, staff and faculty. No doubt too many of those involved in the rally combine their social and political commitments with their religious ones.

But particularly among those students who are not attentive either to social justice or to religious dialogue, an unconditioned emphasis on Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit character stands in danger of suggesting an institution which is too uninflected, and as a result too discouraging of a broader religious and cultural discourse.

It is not enough simply to assert other beliefs, like that of tolerance, to counter our present difficulties. What is needed is that the terms in which we articulate the university’s identity, particularly on campus, reflect our intellectual, cultural and religious diversity, even as they attest to our Catholic history and, springing from that, our complex present commitments. As Fr. Healy understood, our current and developing diversity is not something we need apologize for, rather it is one of our several strengths, and the one which best connects us to the world which, in accordance with our stated values, we seek to serve.

But the events which precipitated these reflections have their own importance, and should not be lost in discussion. Pope John Paul II has indicated, both by teaching and by example, how seriously he takes the current dialogue with Judaism. It is a dialogue which, as he has shown, involves a measure of self-criticism and also of apology, and which is far removed from the moral smugness which may be gaining a foothold here.

But more than any other pope, John Paul II has also extolled the virtue of hope and perhaps it is with that virtue, first of all, that we may best address our present quandary.

John C. Hirsh is a professor of medieval literature in the English Department and founded the Catholic Schools Project in 1995. He has also worked for 16 years with the Sursum Corda Tutoring Program.

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