The Vatican investigation of Georgetown theology professor Fr. Peter Phan’s writings regarding Catholic primacy over other religions is not the first time that Georgetown has come in contact with controversy from the Vatican.
- In 1991, Georgetown officially recognized and agreed to fund GU Choice after group leaders re-stated their purpose as a group to promote debate about abortion, rather than an advocacy group. In April 1992 Georgetown withdrew the organization’s funding and stopped providing a meeting place after receiving criticism from prominent Catholics. Rev. Leo J. O’Donovan said Georgetown ceased funding of the organization because it continued to advocate on behalf of abortion, which it had promised not to do.
- Georgetown’s 2003 commencement address by Cardinal Francis Arzine sparked campus-wide protest. “In many parts of the world, the family is under siege,” the Cardinal said. “It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia…desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality…and cut in two by divorce.”
- In 1980, two student gay rights organizations sued Georgetown, saying that its refusal to recognize such groups violated the D.C. Human Rights Act. Georgetown agreed to fund the organization without recognizing it. Catholic officials asked Georgetown to take the case to Supreme Court, but the University refused. The committee created to determine how to deal with issues regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students recommended a LGBT resource center, which officially opened its doors in 2006.
- John Courtney Murray, who in the fifties taught at Maryland’s Woodstock College, then affiliated with Georgetown University, urged cooperation between Catholics and non-Catholics at a time when the Church was not tolerant of other religions. His work led to his silencing by the Vatican by curtailing his writings, but later became the foundation of the Church’s declaration of religious freedom.
