This lady personifies numerous pro-choice politicians posing as \Catholics\: Joe Biden, Sens. Durbin, Leahy, and others.
Is that what we want to promote for the next generation?

Do I or any other aging graduate wish to recommend GU to our children or grandchildren, now or in the future? It is not the Catholic university I once knew.

Ron Wiles – BSFS-60

Dear former professors and others
who signed the “Georgetown Letter”
to U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan,

Your note brings sadness.

I expect more from each and from all of you. I think you were respectful, not condescending, to responsible points of view when I studied under you or your predecessors in the 1970s, and especially views sincerely espoused, even if they were at odds with your own. It is certainly what we were taught.

Two recollections: Dr. Kissinger’s hiring and Farah Pahlavi’s speech at Gaston Hall. Neither Fr. Henle nor Fr. Healy would abide – institutionally – the cursory, opportunistic, conclusory and, frankly, basely political denunciations these events provoked. However, you strike the notes today that our presidents taught us then were countenanced neither by Christian hospitality nor by Jesuit praxis.

How like the 17th century local wise men in Tibet, China, the Philippines, or for that matter Wisconsin you sound, reacting to a Desideri, Ricci, Xavier or Marquette, upon the campus arrival of one who sees things differently than you. I wonder if you think this signifies confidence in your position – or alarm.

Your letter’s thin welcome leaps to a conclusory assertion, with neither evidence nor references, that Rep. Ryan ‘misuses’ Catholic teaching by occasional application of its terms to describe his plan for our unsustainable federal spending and $15 trillion national debt.

But it does so in the terms of a press release, or 100 press releases, from interested parties and true believers, who say the same thing. Are your descriptive powers those of a campaign press secretary? Are you ashamed to crib their copy? Frankly, it is embarrassing that your characterization is indistinguishable from those repeated constantly by a national political party that appears primarily focused on… attacking Rep. Ryan’s plan.

I know several of you, and I know the grades we would have earned – or forsaken – for originality or its absence. I leave to your own honest personal assessment how you would grade yourselves – or your students – for such work.

In substance, about subsidiarity, you appeal to Rome. I instead appeal to Athens, in substance, about unsustainability.

In Athens these days electricians are fighting merchants because they have not been paid in six months, but if they fail to report to work they will lose their claim to their jobs and the pensions they thought were secure.

In Athens’ Constitution Square, on Wednesday, April 2, a pharmacist, whose support checks were lost in the unwinding of Greece’s insolvency, shot himself to death rather than leave his family in debt, according to the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass. Protestors gathered throughout the day. Eventually, in front of the parliament building, the demonstrations turned violent. Greeks hammered the marble steps and started throwing chunks at Greeks. Troops arrived, tear gas was sprayed, as at Healy Lawn in the 1970s, and, in Kass’ words, “The situation appeared to calm down, at least for a few hours overnight, until the nation awakens and sees that its economic agony remains unresolved.”

If you think we are not hurtling to that moment, then please offer to exchange views with Congressman Ryan. I suggest you check your arithmetic first.

If you think that moment awaits us, then please state, unlike the U.S. Senate, which has not adopted a budget resolution for 1100 days, or the president, whose budget received zero votes in the House of Representatives several weeks ago, your better plan to avoid it.

Or, if instead you choose to quibble about Mr. Ryan’s description of his plan, then you might consult Rhonheimer, for instance, who as you know recites and refreshes Thomas’ best lessons – and emphasizes that an “integral common good” is based on a “practical common good.”

And then you might describe to all of us, in detail, what in Athens looks to you like a “practical common good.”

Citizenship’s requisite rationality demands that we listen to those with whom we disagree. Of course, it is easier to disqualify than to learn an opponent’s position better than they know it themselves, as Lord Acton admonished. Your preemptive snit over interpretive nuances of subsidiarity, coupled with your insulting stunt of enclosing Rerem Novarum, teach your students to disqualify, rather than to listen.

Thus, the sadness your letter brought, on an otherwise glorious John Carroll Weekend here in beautiful Chicago, for as we were taught to listen above the din, the din now comes from within.

I hope – pray actually – to see better from each and all of you, as well as from Georgetown University, institutionally, itself.

Utraque unum,

Chris Robling

A.B., philosophy and economics

How does the faculty feel about the “social teachings” of Kathleen Sibelius and Nancy Pelosi?