The Surrender of Catholic Higher Education
by Patrick J. Reilly - June 1, 2004
Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic.com, the leading online journal of Catholic faith, culture, and politics.
Last month, Jesuit Rev. Lawrence Biondi, president of St. Louis University, resigned from the board of directors of Tenet Healthcare Corporation. Biondi had served on the board since 1998, most recently as chairman of Tenet's ethics committee, for which he was eligible for annual compensation of more than $100,000. Biondi, like many Catholic college presidents, serves on numerous boards to help secure his university's standing within the community.
Problem is, according to state records, Tenet's national chain of 114 hospitals includes at least several in California, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania that perform abortions. Tenet-owned MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, for example, performed 166 abortions in the year 2000—the most recent year for which records are available. The affiliated Tenet Healthcare Foundation has funded Planned Parenthood clinics in California, Illinois, and Texas.
Last summer, members of the Cardinal Newman Society and pro-life activists sent hundreds of letters and e-mail messages to Biondi, urging him to forego reelection to the Tenet board. Biondi refused and was reelected last July. Was his later resignation driven in part by the public embarrassment the protest caused him and the Catholic university he represents? Possibly not. After all, this is the linguistics scholar who responded to protesters with the assurance that he is "pro-life and anti-abortion…[believing] in the universal sanctity of human life from birth until death." Birth until death? Despite several protesters' requests for clarification, Biondi never corrected the statement and repeated it in communications with protesters throughout the summer and fall.
It's reasonable to assume that Biondi's wording was a simple mistake, and for reasons of expediency and lack of concern about what the average Catholic thinks of him, Biondi stuck with his original form letter. Rather than revealing a pro-abortion position, Biondi's carelessness more likely demonstrates his indifference to the charges of scandal.
Unfortunately, this same indifference seems to characterize many Catholic college leaders today. Biondi's a good example, not only because of his Tenet service, but also because of scandals internal to St. Louis University under his watch. Despite protests and embarrassing media coverage, Biondi has refused to take corrective action. In February, the university's College of Arts and Sciences and School of Social Work cosponsored the sexually explicit and offensive play The Vagina Monologues. Last year's commencement speaker was St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan, who has written of his "pro-choice" views, supported embryonic stem-cell research, and ridiculed the Catholic Church. In March 2003, the university's School of Public Health invited former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, who encouraged contraceptive use and opposed a ban on partial-birth abortion, to deliver the prestigious John J. Flanigan, S.J., Lecture. And the medical school's Center for Vaccine Development is recruiting sexually promiscuous women for a trial of a potential genital herpes vaccine and is encouraging the women to use contraceptives to avoid pregnancy during the trial.
