Hesburgh and Hyperbole

Father Theodore Hesburgh is one of “four great Americans”—along with Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.

At least, that’s what Cardinal McCarrick says.  The Cardinal, speaking at a tribute for the priest who served as the president of the University of Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987, said of Father Hesburgh’s contributions that he had helped change the course of U.S. history, and described his service to those who faced discrimination as well as his work at the university.

The Catholic News Agency offers more:

Just as Washington began to build a nation, Father Hesburgh showed “an understanding of what a country should be,” Cardinal McCarrick said. Just as Lincoln showed his concern for the poor, Father Hesburgh showed how the poor “should be a concern for all of us,” he added. And as Jefferson knew what freedom of religion was, Father Hesburgh, the cardinal noted, “has tackled the whole question of human relations.”

Now I’m not usually one to criticize a Cardinal in a public forum—but REALLY, Cardinal McCarrick?  Hesburgh certainly played a role in the success of Notre Dame; but his political positions in other matters make it highly inappropriate to canonize the guy.  Father Hesburgh distinguished himself by his participation alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.  But what comes to my mind are the controversies:

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  He was a principal organizer and a signatory of the controversial Land O’Lakes Statement, which pitted Catholic universities against their local bishops.  In the Land O’Lakes Statement, Catholic university presidents declared their “true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical.”  I’ve seen firsthand the deleterious effect which this model has had on Catholic higher education in America, and I cannot celebrate or honor this accomplishment.

• Father Hesburgh also served as a board member and chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, which has advocated for population control—a decidedly non-Catholic position.
• Father Hesburgh, in a 2008 interview in the Wall Street Journal, stated that he had no objection to the ordination of women, another untenable position within the Church.

Father Hesburgh may be mistaken, idealistic, poorly catechized—but he has not always spoken with the mind of the Church.  To suggest that this dissident priest holds a high place among the heroes of America is, sadly, just not true.