A Catholic university in Washington has invited communist and abortion supporter Angela Davis to speak on campus, raising concerns among those who say her views are anathema to Catholic teaching.
Davis will give a lecture on October 17th at Seattle University, a Jesuit institution. Her talk is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Justice in Society, and will ostensibly be about prison reform.
Davis is a controversial choice for a Catholic university, however. She is a former leader of the U.S. Communist Party, and ran for vice president twice in the 1980s on the Communist ticket. She holds socially liberal views at odds with Catholic teaching, including the view that abortion rights are a “fundamental prerequisite for the emancipation of women.”
These views should disqualify her from a speaking slot at a Catholic university, wrote James Bascom of TFP Student Action, a conservative education group.
“It would be difficult to find a speaker who contradicts the teaching of the Catholic Church on more levels than Angela Davis,” he wrote in a blog post for TFP Action. “Stalin maybe?”
Catholic institutions should recognize the death and destruction wrought by communism in the 20th century and decline to honor one of the ideology’s devotees with a guest lecture, wrote The College Fix.
Seattle University did not respond to a request for comment.