Catholic University in Washington, DC has a policy of not allowing speakers on campus who "have espoused positions contrary to Vatican teachings," according to The Washington Post. The policy was used last year to bar actor-director Stanley Tucci from appearing at a film festival held on the campus. Tucci supports abortion rights. Students Democrats are now trying to use the policy to bar death penalty supporter and known adulterer Newt Gingrich from speaking on campus. "If the university has a policy for what speakers need to represent in regards to church doctrine, they shouldn't pick and choose which teachings apply to which speakers," (Frank) Lankey said. "We're not trying to lambaste or protest Mr. Gingrich as a politician or an individual," he said. "We're trying to show that the speaker policy is very poorly applied."
Campus officials have said the rules don't apply to Gingrich because "he's not a public advocate for adultery. That's the distinction." A little more bizarre than that statement is the claim from university spokesperson Victor Nakas that "there's nothing that says that capital punishment is necessarily forbidden" in Roman Catholic social teachings. Someone should alert the Pope. The Vatican states:
The Holy See has consistently sought the abolition of the death penalty and his Holiness Pope John Paul II has personally and indiscriminately appealed on numerous occasions in order that such sentences should be commuted to a lesser punishment, which may offer time and incentive for the reform of the guilty, hope to the innocent and safeguard the well-being of civil society itself and of those individuals who through no choice of theirs have become deeply involved in the fate of those condemmed to death.
The Pope had most earnestly hoped and prayed that a worldwide moratorium might have been among the spiritual and moral benefits of the Great Jubilee which he proclaimed for the Year Two Thousand, so that dawn of the Third Millennium would have been remembered forever as the pivotal moment in history when the community of nations finally recognised that it now possesses the means to defend itself without recourse to punishments which are "cruel and unnecessary". This hope remains strong but it is unfulfilled, and yet there is encouragement in the growing awareness that "it is time to abolish the death penalty".
It is surely more necessary than ever that the inalienable dignity of human life be universally respected and recognised for its immeasurable value. The Holy See has engaged itself in the pursuit of the abolition of capital punishment and an integral part of the defence of human life at every stage of its development and does so in defiance of any assertion of a culture of death.
The policy of barring speakings who might disagree with church teaching is simply ill-considered. How do students learn without hearing all sides of a debate? Gingrich should be allowed on campus. His appearance could be followed by a discussion on the value of freedom of speech in both democratic and religious institutions.