BOSTON — For the second straight year, Jesuit-run Boston College honored abortion advocates at its commencement ceremonies, this time in both its undergraduate and law schools.

The Chestnut Hill college, which has graduated many leaders in New England politics and society, drew heat last year when the law school's commencement speaker was a Massachusetts judge who had served on the board of an abortion clinic.

This year, on May 20, the college gave an honorary doctorate to Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a Harvard University professor and the incoming chairwoman of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which funds the dissident group Catholics for a Free Choice and promotes abortion and population control in the United States and abroad. She has been a foundation board member for more than a decade.

Delivering the commencement address at Boston College Law School May 24 was the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, a Republican who was a vocal abortion advocate while serving as governor of Massachusetts from 1997 until he was appointed ambassador last year.

“The scandal continues,” said Patrick

Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a watchdog organization that offers help to colleges seeking to implement Pope John Paul II's encyclical on Catholic higher education.

The Newman Society has identified 16 Catholic colleges that are honoring individuals who support abortion or publicly dissent from Church teaching. Said Reilly, “In the four years we've been tracking Catholic commencements, this appears to be the worst.”

The Pope wrote in his 1991 apostolic constitution on higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), that a “specific priority” for a Catholic educational institution “is the need to examine and evaluate the predominant values and norms of modern society and culture in a Christian perspective, and the responsibility to try to communicate to society those ethical and religious principles which give full meaning to human life” (No. 33, emphasis in original).

Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said the school does not apply a “litmus test” to awardees or speakers, who are chosen for their professional achievements. He said the college did not know Lawrence-Lightfoot's views on abortion and was honoring her as an outstanding educator. Cellucci, he said, was invited for his contributions to international diplomatic relations. The ambassador is a graduate of the Boston College Law School.

Discussing Dissent?

In a separate action, Boston College announced May 15 the development of undergraduate and graduate programs and lectures on the priestly sex scandal that will begin to be offered in the fall. While presenting Church teaching and maintaining respect for the hierarchy, the programs will discuss a range of issues that could be controversial, said Jesuit Father William Leahy, college president.

Father Leahy said that the Church's hierarchical structure, its teachings on sexual ethics and the celibate priesthood will be among the issues under discussion, the Boston Globe reported. The academic programs also will reach out to the Boston community, with faculty members giving public lectures, the school stated.

In announcing the new programs, which he said would continue for about two years at the campus, Father Leahy said students and faculty are “baffled, bewildered and angry” about the reports of sexual abuse by priests and some bad decisions by members of the hierarchy. “I think people feel betrayed,” he said. “I do.”

He said that Cardinal Bernard Law, whose office is across the street from the college's campus, decided not to attend this year's commencement exercises after hearing that some students and faculty would protest against his presence. Father Leahy said the cardinal, who has been at the center of lawsuits accusing two Boston priests of sexually abusing minors, told him that he did not want his attendance to be a distraction from the ceremony.

Commenting on Boston College's honoring of abortion supporters, Father Peter West of Priests for Life said, “It's totally inappropriate for a Catholic institution to be giving an award to a pro-abortion politician or other public person. Catholics today are examining how well we have responded to such things as the Holocaust or the sexual abuse of children. In the future, we will have to answer for the fact that at a time we were stating officially that abortion is the taking of innocent human life, we were giving awards to people who promote abortion.”

Student Perspective

Boston College student Steve Calme, who runs a conservative newspaper on campus, said via an e-mail statement, “It is true that Ms. Lightfoot and Mr. Cellucci have many commendable accomplishments, but does BC want to send the message to its graduating seniors that it is acceptable to support abortion as long as you do other things that are more positive? As a Catholic institution, Boston College should be promoting the sanctity of life as fundamental to a healthy society.”

Lawrence-Lightfoot will take charge of the MacArthur Foundation board this summer. Reilly called the foundation “a leading funder of radical and anti-Catholic organizations advocating abortion, contraception and population control.”

Reilly is a senior fellow of the Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C., which tracks phil-anthropic organizations. It has published reports documenting the MacArthur Foundation's support of Catholics for a Free Choice, a pro-abortion and pro-condom lobby that has been repeatedly denounced by the U.S. bishops as opposed to the Church's mission and not authentically Catholic.

The MacArthur Foundation also supports International Planned Parenthood Federation, the world's largest private abortion provider, and population control programs in South America, Africa and India, Reilly said.

In response to the criticism over its commencement honorees, BC spokesman Dunn said the college should be recognized for “reaching out to embrace the Catholic Church” through its planned academic programs on the sexual scandals, which he said are intended to promote healing. Dunn added that the school is showing support for priests and defending the Church by the honorary degrees it bestowed this year on Jesuit theologian Father John O'malley of the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass.; Elisabeth Zweig, head of Greater Boston Catholic Charities; and Notre Dame de Namur Sister Marie Santry, principal of the nation's oldest African-American Catholic school in Natchez, Miss.

Other Schools

Boston College isn't the only Jesuit university facing criticism for an alleged failure to adhere to Church teachings. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Society of Jesus, commented in 1997 that secularization is rampant in Jesuit universities. “For some [Jesuit] universities,” he told Father Richard John Neuhaus during the Special Assembly for America of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, “it is probably too late to restore their Catholic character.”

Among the other Catholic institutions honoring abortion supporters this spring is Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Also run by the Jesuits, the university featured U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a pro-abortion Democrat from California, as commencement speaker for the School of Foreign Service.

Speaking at the Georgetown law school's graduation were former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams, both vocal abortion supporters. Giuliani also marched often in the annual Gay Pride Parade on Fifth Avenue, which passed St. Patrick's Cathedral on a Sunday.

A Georgetown spokeswoman said in a statement to the Register that in inviting speakers, the university looks at their records of public service and “the totality of their careers and services.”

Noting that similar statements are routinely offered by Catholic institutions hosting abortion supporters, Father West said, “What would a person have to do or say to be disqualified in the eyes of these schools? Isn't advocating the killing of innocent children in the womb enough?”

Brian Caulfield writes from West Haven, Connecticut.