Saint Thomas University – the Twin Cities’ main and most prestigious Catholic university – just can’t win for losing.

For years, they sell their Catholic soul to try to appeal to the urban, big-money, soft-left crowd they apparently seek.  And what does it get them, according to the City Pages?
I mean, if they try to act Catholic and all?

For Tara Borton, choosing a place to volunteer over the summer for school credit was a no-brainer. The first-year student at the University of St. Thomas School of Law was interested in women’s issues, so she decided to donate her time to Planned Parenthood.

“I’d volunteered there when I lived in Florida,” Borton explains. “I wanted to get involved again.”

It’s a “no-brainer” to do something that the Catholic Church explicitly deems non-Catholic?

Apparently.

But Borton’s choice, hardly worth a second glance at most schools, has become the latest political controversy to roil the University of St. Thomas. Last summer, St. Thomas infamously disinvited Archbishop Desmond Tutu from speaking on campus for fears that his Palestinian-friendly remarks would offend Jews. Shortly thereafter, a deal with Allina Hospitals & Clinics to set up a medical school fell through amid whispers that St. Thomas’s Catholic views would be incompatible with standard medical training on sexual and reproductive health.

Ahem – aren’t we missing a controversy?

I digress:

The latest controversy has forced St. Thomas’s law school to weigh its secular, prestige-oriented ambitions, underlined by its recent ascension to third-tier status in the influential U.S. News & World Report rankings, against the pressure to hew to the Catholic Church’s doctrinaire leadership, reinforced by Pope Benedict’s stern speech to Catholic educators during his recent visit to America.

I dunno.  Somehow, other Catholic institutions manage to make the list. Have they all tossed the whole “church” thing overboard?

The current fracas was set in motion earlier this month, when Borton sought permission to meet her public service requirements by spending the summer working for Planned Parenthood. All students are required to complete 50 hours of volunteer service—anything from pro bono legal work for the poor to building houses for Habitat for Humanity—in an effort to encourage them to serve the needy.

And naturally, Saint Thomas told Borton she couldn’t work for Planned Parenthood at all – right?

Following standard procedure, Borton took her request to the Public Service Board, a student-run committee charged with lining up volunteer opportunities and deciding which projects are worthy of students’ time. Last Monday, after a tense, hour-long deliberation, the board issued its decision: In a 10-4 vote, it ruled that Borton could work at Planned Parenthood on cancer treatment, adoption services, and sexually transmitted disease testing, but would have to refrain from any volunteer work involving contraception or abortion.

Ah.  So Borton actually got to work for Planned Parenthood, in other words?   In a way that didn’t contravene the rules the Catholic church that runs St. Thomas, and of which Borton was certainly aware when she applied?

Oh, of course not.  This is Saint Thomas; the place where the administration of  President Father “Havana Denny” Dease screws up in the secular and ecclesiastical veins – picking and choosing both the First Amendment  rights and  the ecclesiastical rules that will apply to his students.

Within hours, Dean Thomas Mengler’s email inbox was flooded with dozens of angry emails from faculty, students, and alumni. The messages shared a common question: How can St. Thomas, as a Catholic institution, lend volunteer support to Planned Parenthood, a notorious facilitator of abortions?

Mengler acted swiftly. In an open letter he sent out the next day, before the board’s decision had been publicly announced, the dean overruled the vote.

But wait!

But his edict was muddied by school bylaws, which don’t explicitly grant the dean authority to overrule the Public Service Board without a grievance from the volunteer in question. By claiming that authority, Mengler angered a large contingent of students. Though the school is hunkered down for final exams, 80 students found time to sign an open letter challenging the dean’s authority.”A vocal minority of students and faculty were allowed to overturn a decision by a representative student body without a formal appeals process,” the students wrote. “Law school has taught us to be proud of living in a democracy where people—right or wrong—are allowed their day in court and their opportunity to be heard. Ours has been denied.”

Note to Fr. Dease and Saint Thomas; if you shoot yourself in the foot repeatedly, consider switching from a machine gun to a revolver.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 5:55 am and is filed under Culture War, Faiths And Their Followers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.