Replies

Most Rev. Robert McManus:

As Bishop of Worcester, it is my pastoral and canonical responsibility to determine what institutions can properly call themselves “Catholic.” ... To deny Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice a forum in which to present their morally unacceptable positions is not an infringement of the exercise of academic freedom.

Irrev. Micheal McFarland:

A great deal of misinformation and misrepresentation is circulating about the upcoming meeting of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy in rented facilities in the Hogan Campus Center at the College of the Holy Cross.... To cancel at this point would ... make it impossible for the Alliance to hold a conference that we believe deals with a worthwhile subject.

Apparently, McFarland has called what he presumed to be McManus’ bluff. McManus has a clear choice: yank the Catholic identity from the College of the Holy Cross, or attest through inaction that the event now meets the diocese’s approval. If he yanks the name “Catholic,” however, he must also not allow the University to use the word in any official description of itself. Further, he must instruct the Jesuits not to permit their name to be used to imply that the institution is Catholic. Several formerly Catholic institutions market themselves with slogans such as “a Jesuit institution, upholding the faith.” The Jesuits’ quartering in the diocese is also at diocesan approval.

Even if no threat is made following such marketing, much good can come of being tough on Holy Cross, if McManus’ metropolitan, the Archbishop of Boston, were to weigh in approval if McManus’ position. The Jesuits might let Holy Cross slip, but they’d be loathe to allow Boston College, which is along with Georgetown one of their two flagship institutions, to be stripped of its status.