January 28, 2015 (CardinalNewmanSociety.org) — In an ironic twist, Marquette professor Dr. Daniel Maguire has reportedly sent a letter to the University defending Dr. John McAdams following Marquette’s sudden action banning McAdams from campus. But while McAdams was disciplined for blowing the whistle on an instructor who labeled a student’s views as homophobic, Maguire has held his position at Marquette for many years regardless of his public stances in opposition to Catholic teaching.
McAdams, a long-time Marquette political science professor, has exposed instances of Catholic identity abuse at Marquette for more than ten years. He wrote on his blog last November about a graduate student ethics instructor named Cheryl Abbate, who told a student that a same-sex marriage discussion “would be offensive” to homosexual students and “homophobic.” McAdams’ posts received national attention and he was suddenly disciplined for unexplained reasons in December.
The University recently clarified its position, according to McAdams, stating that he was banned from campus for revealing Abbate’s name on his blog, since she was a graduate student. However, as she was given a position of authority in single-handedly teaching an entire ethics class, her role as an instructor would seem to be more relevant, argued McAdams’ legal counsel on his blog.
Daniel Maguire, a professor of theology at Marquette and a former priest, has an extensive history of arguing against Church teaching. He has reportedly labeled partial birth abortion “a necessary procedure” and lashed out at Catholic bishops numerous times, calling them “moral heretics” for opposing the HHS mandate. In 2006, the Newman Society appealed to the Marquette administration with serious concerns about Maguire’s “pro-abortion advocacy and misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine.” Then in 2007, The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine stated that Maguire’s teachings “cross the legitimate lines of theological reflection and simply enter into the area of false teaching.”
Then-president Father Robert Wild, S.J., reportedly responded to concerns in a letter explaining that faculty “are not only allowed, but are expected and encouraged to follow the evidence of their own minds in research, teaching, and publishing, subject only to the criticism of their peers.”
Fr. Wild continued:
Many find it difficult to understand the apparent incongruity in Dr. Maguire’s presence on the faculty of an institution that unreservedly and enthusiastically avows itself as Catholic. However it is just that, an apparent incongruity. It is simply an instance of what must be done when an institution makes a commitment to academic freedom. And that commitment, a value in itself, is also a necessity if an institution wishes to be taken seriously as an academic enterprise in the United States today.
Fr. Wild even noted that faculty would only be “subject” to “the criticism of their peers.”
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In his recent letter to Marquette, Maguire reportedly criticized the University administration for disciplining McAdams and called the banning of McAdams “bizarre, demeaning, and unjust.”
“Over the years Professor McAdams and I have disagreed on many issues—and he has excoriated me on his blog—but all my personal interactions with him have been uniformly civil and urbane,” Maguire continued in his letter.
McAdams wrote, in response to Maguire’s defense of him:
Given our disagreements on various issues, one might say this is support from “an unexpected source.” But it isn’t really. Maguire has enjoyed the benefits of academic freedom at Marquette while supporting abortion and gay marriage, and calling on the President of Marquette to resign. So in supporting our academic freedom, he’s being consistent.
“So what we have here is a blatant case of the political correctness that increasingly dominates academia,” McAdams concluded.
Reprinted with permission from The Cardinal Newman Society.