Last week, over 100 faculty members at my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, signed a letter calling on Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C., of Peoria, Illinois, to resign his position on the University’s Board of Fellows. They did so in response to a homily the bishop gave on April 14, in which he denounced President Obama’s HHS mandate that Catholics and Catholic institutions be forced to pay for services they consider intrinsically evil. The bishop accurately compared the mandate to similar measures taken by different regimes throughout history, including the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
The faculty members’ public response to Bishop Jenky’s remarks is both dishonest and unacademic. It is dishonest in that it deliberately takes the bishop’s words out of context to impute to him a claim he never made. The faculty members selectively quote him, saying only that he “described President Obama as ‘seem[ing] intent on following a similar path’ to Hitler and Stalin.” They immediately conclude this demonstrated “ignorance of history, insensitivity to victims of genocide and absence of judgment.”
The bishop’s comments were much more specific than the faculty members reveal. Consider his words in context:
Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room. In the late 19th century, Bismarck waged his “Kulturkampf,” a Culture War, against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany. Clemenceau, nicknamed “the priest eater,” tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century. Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care. In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama — with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda — now seems intent on following a similar path.
Genocide was not Hitler and Stalin’s only crime. It is plain fact that both tyrants made it near impossible for the Catholic Church to function under their rule, especially in the realm of social services, and sought to displace it with state authority, state interests, and state values. Bishop Jenky did not, in any way, compare President Obama’s HHS mandate to Hitler and Stalin’s much more serious crime of genocide. Nor did he intend merely to evoke horror through rhetoric. Rather, he indicated that Hitler, Stalin, and others implemented policies unsettlingly similar to the HHS mandate. That is the clear point of his homily, and it is entirely true. Those faculty members suggesting otherwise are either being deliberately deceitful or are ignorant of history themselves.
In addition to its dishonesty, the letter is an indictment of legitimate academic inquiry. Bishop Jenky, though not acting as an academic, did what academics should do: he engaged a serious issue of our time and compared it to similar situations in history, with the hope of learning from history. And what was the response from the ivory tower? A demand that he be silenced — a demand that he be immediately disassociated from the University. So much for academic freedom.
Sadly, the faculty members’ letter suggests there is no longer room in academia for serious historical analysis of leftist policies, for fear it might offend the leftists of today. (The approach to conservative policies is, needless to say, quite different.) According to this perverse attitude, the more severe the historical context, the more taboo the analysis. Hitler and Stalin have been dehumanized. It is no longer acceptable, in the dissenting academics’ view, to regard these dictators as real human beings, governing real nations, who committed real crimes. As John Duffy, one of the dissenting professors, wrote in Notre Dame’s campus newspaper, The Observer: “To invoke Hitler is to invoke all of it — the death camps and all the rest.”
Really? So it is now off-limits in academia to learn from any of the lesser wrongdoings of history’s most brutal regimes? Academics are supposed to be able to make specific comparisons and distinguish them from broad generalities. Given that academics are the ones in society who, more than anyone else, are entrusted with asking the tough questions about our world, this is a dangerous state of affairs indeed. If our academics are too afraid to engage candidly the worst of our history, placing it in a box and labeling it “unthinkable,” then our best defense against repeating it is lost.
During my years at Notre Dame, in college and in law school, I was blessed to have many outstanding professors. Notre Dame still is — and must be — a beacon of Catholicism and academic excellence in America and in the world. Much is to be expected of Notre Dame faculty members, and indeed many exceed their expectations. Unfortunately, those faculty members urging Bishop Jenky’s resignation have, in this instance, acted unworthy of their positions.
Joseph Petros is an associate at the law firm of Warren and Young PLL in Ashtabula, Ohio. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Notre Dame Law School, where he served as executive editor of the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy.