The Notre Dame News website publishes a list of expert professors who are recommended to members of the media as experts. The university promotes two dissenting Catholics as experts in fields directly related to Church teaching.
The Sycamore Trust, an alumni organization committed to preserving Notre Dame’s Catholic character, called attention to one professor’s views.
Cathleen Kaveny, a Catholic professor of law and of theology, is listed on the Notre Dame News website as an expert in the ethical aspects of assisted suicide, bioethics, biomedical ethics, cloning, death and dying, the pope, and the papacy.
Kaveny expressed pro-choice beliefs during a Princeton University conference on abortion in the fall of 2010.
“I do not believe [the mother] has an obligation to provide life support to the unborn if pregnancy imposes a significant burden on her health or if she was raped,” said Kaveny. “Under those circumstances I think those actions are describable as intentionally ending the burden of the pregnancy and can be described differently than intentional killing.”
Kaveny also said the unborn have no moral rights until 14 days after conception, a stance that could permit embryonic stem cell research.
Kaveny’s claims caught the attention of Frances Kissling, founder of the National Abortion Federation and former president of the pro-choice group Catholics for Choice. Kissling noted Kaveny’s assertion in an article in Salon.com, highlighting Kaveny’s association with Notre Dame.
Kissling wrote of Kaveny’s comments, “Such deviations from parallel orthodoxies are the stuff that gives one hope that the absolutism of politics can be transcended.”
Rev. Richard P. McBrien, professor of theology, is listed as an expert in ecclesiology, religion and politics, and the theological, doctrinal, and spiritual dimensions of Catholicism.
Fr. McBrien rejected HUMANAE VITAE, the 1968 papal encyclical which upheld traditional Christian sexual morality, by signing former Catholic University of America theologian Rev. Charles Curran’s statement of dissent. Fr. Curran was removed from Catholic University of America for his dissent from the Church’s moral teaching and now teaches at Southern Methodist University.
Similarly, Fr. McBrien’s 1968 CATHOLICISM has yet to receive an IMPRIMATUR. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices released a statement that the book was inaccurate in its descriptions of Church teachings on the perpetual virginity of Mary, the ordination of women, and other matters.
In response to Pope John Paul II’s apostolic constitution EX CORDE ECCLESIAE on Catholic universities, Fr. McBrien stated that “bishops should be welcome on a Catholic university campus. Give them tickets to ball games. Let them say Mass, bring them to graduation. Let them sit on the stage. But there should be nothing beyond that.”
In a 2009 article in the National Catholic Reporter, Fr. McBrien argued that Eucharistic adoration “is a doctrinal, theological, and spiritual step backward, not forward.”
University Spokesman Dennis Brown responded to inquiries on why the university refers dissenting Catholics to the media as experts in fields directly related to the area of dissent.
“As we have noted in the past, the free and open exchange of ideas is at the heart of any university, and our faculty have the academic freedom to express theirs,” Brown said. “It is in that spirit that the university provides information on faculty who are willing to speak with the media about issues of the day within their area of expertise.”
Stephanie House is a senior PLS major. Shoot her an email if you dissent with her article at shouse1@nd.edu.
Claire Gillen contributed reporting to this article.
