Father Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and a Congressman from Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District, has died. He served in Congress from 1971-1981, resigning only at the direct order of Pope John Paul II. another American also has a diary well worth reading. There is much to Father Drinan’s career and another American focused on a few areas and I’ve focused on a few others. Between the two of us I’m hoping that we are able to convey the importance of this man to the Democratic Party, the people of Massachusetts, human rights activists, the Catholic Church, attorneys, academics and many others.
The Washington Post described him as "‘a man without rancor’ whose deeply held beliefs never prevented him from viewing every person as ‘deserving respect and possessing dignity.’"
According to the ABA
[A]dmirers described him as "an eloquent and effective advocate for the most downtrodden in society," someone "active in so many areas on the law and human rights that there is not enough space to catalog them," and such a "towering figure in the academic, professional, clerical and public service fields" that he "is the stuff of which legends are made."
Drinan was the recipient of numerous awards and honors. The American Bar Association called him "the stuff of which legends are made" when awarding him its 2004 ABA Medal, an honor shared by such legal luminaries as Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O’Connor. Just last summer Drinan received the 2006 Congressional Distinguished Service Award, which is given to former members of the House of Representatives who have performed their duties "with such extraordinary distinction and selfless dedication as to merit special recognition." He was the recipient of 22 honorary degrees and a visiting professor at four American universities.
Father Drinan celebrated Mass for Nancy Pelosi in one of his last public appearances. He began his homily saying ""Congress is 16% women and for the first time ever, the speaker is a mother. Today we are re-pledging our lives to the children.’"
Father Drinan was a member of many organizations including: Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control, Steering Committee of Members of Congress for Peace through Law, International Conference on Soviet Jewry, Common Cause, National Conference of Christians and Jews, Helsinki Watch Committee, vice president of the Massachusetts Bar Association, National Advisory Council of the ACLU, International League for Human Rights, Human Rights First, Massachusetts chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Lawyers for Human Rights, 1962 Governor’s commission to study conflict of interests, chair of the Boston Bar Association’s Committee on Family Law, 1962 Griswold commission to study judicial salaries, Democratic Study Group of the Environmental Conference, advisor to the US Holocaust Memorial Commission, Massachusetts Attorney General’s Committee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Bread for the World, Council for a Livable Word Educational Fund, People for the American Way, Americans for Democratic Action, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and founder and advisor to the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics.
His Congressional Career
From CNN
His run for office came a year after he returned from a trip to Vietnam, where he said he discovered that the number of political prisoners being held in South Vietnam was rapidly increasing, contrary to State Department reports. And in a book the next year, he urged the Catholic Church to condemn the war as "morally objectionable." He ran for Congress on an anti-Vietnam war platform. During his Congressional tenure, Drinan continued to dress in the robes of his clerical order and lived in a simple room in the Jesuit community at Georgetown.
The Boston Globe reported that
...[T]he sight of Father Drinan in the halls of Congress in his Roman collar was startling. Some even questioned the propriety of his wearing a cleric's collar and black suit on the floor of the House. Father Drinan had a standard response. "It's the only suit I own," he'd quip..."Our father, who art in Congress" became a popular, if unofficial, campaign slogan...
In announcing that he would not run again , Father Drinan described himself as "a moral architect." It was an apt description of his political career. His election in 1970 was as much crusade as campaign, charged with a moral fervor that would characterize his entire political career. Father Drinan's critics called him 'the mad monk." In the context of those highly charged times, it could as easily be considered praise. "He envisions political power as a moral power," Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, once said.
Father Drinan spoke of the heady days when Congress first began to tackle the issue of Human Rights.
We in the Congress during the agony of Vietnam recognized that something was fundamentally wrong. In 1974, the Congress, for the first time, developed a philosophy of the enforcement of internationally recognized human rights. I remember vividly the excitement that we had for this project.
We suddenly discovered one day what the United States had done in Chile. We had destabilized Dr. Allende, who was popularly elected, and we somehow got Mr. Pinochet as the head of the government. We in the Congress were unaware of this until Senator Frank Church held hearings.
In the House we said that we wanted to prevent that from ever happening again. As a result, we put through a law saying that the United States is committed through the UN Charter to the salvation, to the implementation of internationally recognized human rights. They were exciting days when Congressman Don Fraser put this together, and we sent the first version of it to President Ford. On the advice of Kissinger, his Secretary of State, he vetoed. We didn’t have the votes to override. We repackaged it, and the next year President Ford signed something that was monumental, creating a new agency in the State Department that must monitor human rights.
This is a fascinating article about the internal Roman Catholic politicking during Father Drinan’s congressional career. Although the author clearly falls into the pro-life camp, the majority of the article focuses on the actual documents in the triangulation between the Jesuits, American Bishops and the Holy See. I found myself laughing out loud at some of the mental gymnastics that took place. Additionally, John McLaughlin of The McLaughlin Group plays a small role. I’m not sure the article is of interest to anyone who is not Catholic but I thought it was worth a link.
Here is the Cliff Note’s version of the Drinan/McLaughlin contretemps from another source.
At the time of Watergate there were two politicians who then were Jesuit priests. One was the Rev. John McLaughlin, a conservative Republican who wrote speeches for Nixon. The other was Drinan, whom most Republicans regarded as a left-wing radical. After Watergate, both were given an ultimatum by Pope John Paul II, who ordered that they resign from the priesthood if they wanted to continue on as professional politicians. McLaughlin chose politics and now is married and a prominent TV political commentator; Father Bob chose the church, retired from Congress and was replaced by Rep. Barney Frank...
In 1970, McLaughlin had challenged John Pastore, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island and lost. He then went to work in the White House as a public-relations expert. As a White House spokesman he defended Nixon for having given the country "outstanding moral leadership." At the time of Watergate, McLaughlin gave his political blessings to such conservative groups as Rabbi Bernard Korff's National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the Presidency and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's National Prayer and Fast Committee.
Father Bob, who had been dean of the Boston College School of Law, had won election to Congress in the Boston area. Often, after crossing himself, he would stand in the well of the House chamber and denounce President Nixon as a "fascist war criminal." The more McLaughlin defended Nixon from his White House pulpit, the more outraged Drinan became. Finally, on July 31, 1973, dressed in a black suit and white clerical collar, Drinan introduced a House resolution with only one sentence of text: "Resolved, that Richard M. Nixon, president of the United States, is impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors."
On Human Rights;
In his lifetime Father Drinan traveled on human rights missions to 16 countries: Argentina, Chile, China, El Salvador, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, South Africa, the former Soviet Union, Sudan, Thailand and Vietnam. In 1986 Father Drinan was honored with an honorary chair in Human Rights at Georgetown University Law School amidst much controversy.
Law Center Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff announced a chair in human rights last Tuesday named for Fr. Robert Drinan, S.J., who served five terms in Congress beginning in 1971. Drinan’s public support of abortion rights has earned him the enmity of many conservative Catholics because Catholic doctrine opposes abortion...Drinan served as a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts and has participated in human rights missions to more than 16 nations during his career, including China, Israel and the Soviet Union. He said he separates his personal views on abortion from his views on the legality of abortion rights, which he supports...
Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, a Catholic antiabortion organization, said that Drinan has not supported human rights. "It is a contradiction for Fr. Drinan to support human rights for people in Ethiopia but not the rights of the unborn in his own country," Euteneuer said. "Father Drinan was not ordained to preach the government’s position on abortion. He was ordained to preach the position of the Roman Catholic Church."...
"He is an educator, legislator, scholar and an advocate. His accomplishments are many, and his honors are well-deserved," Aleinikoff said during his speech...Drinan said that the award shows how human rights have emerged as an important issue for law schools. "The award is a nice recognition of the importance of human rights. For years, law schools have talked about natural law. Today, the name for that is ‘international human rights,’" Drinan said.
Regarding the issue of Human Rights, Father Drinan posed a question during a book tour for Mobilization of Shame that I think is very relevant today.
The Mobilization of Shame tells the story of the remarkable progress in global thinking that has marked the more than fifty years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was first adopted. For Father Drinan, however, the defining moment was the Vienna Conference in 1993. "It was there, for the first time," he says, "that the world came together and solemnly reaffirmed every human right agreed to by the UN and its agencies." Even so, Father Drinan raises an important point when he asks: "Has Vienna really made a difference? Have all the pronouncements on human rights since 1945 genuinely elevated the status of freedom and equality around the world?" emphasis mine
On Impeachment
From the New York Times:
And he became the first member of Congress to call for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon — although the call was not related to the Watergate scandal, but to what Father Drinan viewed as the administration’s undeclared war against Cambodia.
"Can we be silent about this flagrant violation of the Constitution?" Father Drinan asked. "Can we impeach a president for concealing a burglary but not for concealing a massive bombing?"
In 1975, Father Drinan filed an impeachment resolution against US ambassador to Iran Richard Helms for his activities as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. That same year, Father Drinan was chief plaintiff in a suit filed by 21 Democratic congressmen to block US military involvement in Cambodia. It was later dismissed.
Father Drinan was opposed to the impeachment of Bill Clinton and testified as an expert witness before the House Judiciary Committee.
In his sworn testimony, the 78-year-old priest charged that Republican members of the committee were motivated by "vengeance" rather than a desire for justice. He also testified that at no time during the Watergate years, when he served on the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Peter Rodino, was he ever personally motivated by Democratic partisanship. Citing public-opinion polls regarding President Clinton's popularity, Drinan further charged that it would be ethically immoral and constitutionally indefensible for the House to approve articles of impeachment unless members were convinced that President Clinton eventually would be convicted by a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate.
On Pro-Choice/Pro-Life Issues:
"Father Drinan...while[in Congress] was perhaps the single most reliable supporter of abortion "rights."" Wikipedia sums up his difficulty with Catholics.
Drinan's consistent support of abortion rights drew significant opposition from Church leaders throughout his political career, who had also repeatedly requested that he not hold political office in the first place. Drinan attempted to reconcile his position with official Church doctrine by stating that while he was personally opposed to abortion, considering it "virtual infanticide," its legality was a separate issue from its morality. This argument failed to satisfy his critics. In 1980, Pope John Paul II unequivocally demanded that all priests withdraw from electoral politics. Though this was framed as a general order, it seemed to some that Drinan in particular was the target. Drinan complied and did not seek reelection. However, he continued to be a vocal supporter of abortion rights much to the ire of the Church.
Father Drinan took a great deal of heat for supporting Bill Clinton’s veto of late term abortions.
When Congress passed a bill outlawing partial-birth abortions, the leftist National Catholic Reporter sharply criticized President Bill Clinton for vetoing the bill. A journalist who normally supports Clinton unwaveringly, Mary McGrory, reported having attended a gathering of liberal Catholics who were outraged at the President's action, which was condemned in the strongest terms by the Holy See and by the leaders of the American hierarchy.
Here is an interesting look at Father Drinan from a rabid pro-lifer. One can still find interesting nuggets from Father Drinan amid the hate speech.
Father Drinan has been involved in the abortion issue for more than 30 years. In 1968, he warned that abortion, if legalized, might become "the birth control of the poor." But as a congressman in the 1970s, after the Roe vs. Wade decision, he voted regularly for public funding of abortion. He claimed that equal-protection court rulings required public funding in order to avoid discrimination against the poor...
In a Nov.26, 1974, letter he wrote to a key Planned Parenthood lawyer, Father Drinan referred to a conference committee’s decision to drop an anti-abortion amendment to a funding bill: "I can take at least a little credit for that minor victory over the powers of darkness," he wrote. In the same letter, found in unprocessed material at the Rockefeller Archive Center in North Tarrytown, N.Y., Father Drinan remarked that "the so-called right-to-life movement attracts an extraordinarily large number of arrogant individuals."...
TO ABORTION SUPPORTERS, March 11, 1974: "I am happy to say that only a very few members of the House of Representatives have signed the discharge petition which would bring the matter [an anti-abortion constitutional amendment] to the floor....It is not very pleasant to have to suggest that...it appears that a certain small element within the Catholic Church is seeking to impose its views on the rest of the nation."
On W
Father Drinan was very clear in his disdain for the current Bush administration.
This Administration comes in and appoints a man who didn’t have much feel at all... I said, "Mr. Secretary, I’m going to teach a class in international human rights at Georgetown this afternoon for two hours, and there are fifty-six future lawyers there. What shall I tell them is your intention?" "Well, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm." Then we asked him, "What great improvements has the Bureau on Human Rights made since you were there?" He beamed and he said, "We have more travel money."
One of the terrible problems is that the Administration opposes the International Criminal Court. I was on a task force with the American Bar Association restructuring that. A delegate from the ABA with many others went to Rome for two or three weeks of negotiations. President Clinton signed, but he didn’t submit it for ratification because he knew that the votes weren’t there. And now, with all due deference to President Bush, somehow he and the head of the Pentagon said, "This would be a disaster," and they are putting intense pressure on countries not to apply this to the United States.
They haven’t read the document. The document says that if there is someone from any nation who is committing crimes of war, crimes against humanity, or genocide, he can be tried before a tribunal. But, before anything happens, the country of origin is notified and it says that you can take care of this in six months and we won’t enter in. Consequently, there is no possibility of an American soldier in some far-away place being indicted or tried by this international community. This will become international law. Sixty-five nations have now ratified. Within a year or two, the permanent Nuremberg will be set up at The Hague or elsewhere. We are on the wrong side of history. And our people wonder, how can you do this?...
When they scream at us about terrorism, et cetera, I say there are forty-eight Islamic nations, 1.2 billion people, every fifth person in the world is a Muslim. Why don’t we go and help them and their children so that they are not screaming at us that we’re going to bomb them? I have talked with Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia. Do they hate us? That would be against their religion. But they have the gravest suspicion about us, that we don’t give a damn about them and all we think about is America first, last, and always.
Father Drinan wrote an op ed defending Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s ruling against the Bush administration.
More than 200 years ago, the authors of the Bill of Rights, backed by the original 13 states, decided that the government must refrain from any search or seizures of letters or other personal material unless a judge grants a warrant. This safeguard, also secured in the Massachusetts Constitution, was designed to prevent the kind of searches that were carried out by the English crown on its political opponents.
Underlying the Fourth Amendment was the concept that citizens had a right not to have their mail opened and read. Even more now than in 1791, there is a deep feeling in America that some areas of life are beyond the purview of the government. The word privacy was hardly known in the 1700s, but after the experience of the Star Chamber in England the citizens of the colonies made it clear that the government could intrude into their lives only if a judge approves the action by issuing a warrant. A quarter century ago, Congress reaffirmed these concepts during the FISA debate...
The uncontradicted assumption since 1978 has been that FISA is a necessary evil to find out what terrorists and other enemies of the United States are saying and doing. The revelations that the Bush administration is defying FISA's strictures have shocked analysts who believe that the Fourth Amendment's protections are indispensable to human dignity...Privacy is precious, and a longstanding concern. The right to be free from compulsory incrimination is contained in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. The right to confidentiality is clear in Catholic teaching about secrecy in confession. (There are severe penalties for any priest who violates those guarantees.)
On Religion and Public Life
On March 27, 2005 Father Drinan had this to say on Meet the Press where he squared off against Joe Lieberman, hat tip .08 acres
MR. RUSSERT: Father Drinan, do you think it was appropriate for Congress to be involved in this matter[Schiavo]?
REV. ROBERT DRINAN: No, I don't. I think it's rather well settled at the state level, and it's rather well settled also in Catholic theology. I would recommend that the viewers look at the Web site of the Catholic Hospital Association. For years, they have been developing a coherent philosophy on this matter and the Holy See in the last year seem to have been a bit more conservative, which is understandable. It's a terrible, terrible, agonizing thing. But I think that all the judges that heard it, 20, 25 judges, we have the most certainty that we can have in this difficult situation.
During the same broadcast he also discussed gay rights, the ADA, Vietnam, and the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. He also had this to say
"The problem is when some religions say that you have to impose in the law our particular beliefs. Certain fundamentalists think that gays should be discriminated against, and that's not in the common tradition. There's a common core of moral and religious beliefs, and frankly, we are in total violation of that. We are supposed to be good to the poor; we have more poor children in America than in any other industrialized nation. We're supposed to love prisoners and help them; we have 2.1 million people in prison, the largest of any country of the Earth. We also allow eleven children to be killed by guns every day. All of the religions are opposed to that. That's violence. Why don't we organize on that?"
Accolades from colleagues:
From my senator via LA Times
"All of us who knew him and served with him admired him for his deep faith, his profound commitment to public service, and the bold actions he constantly urged us to take to live up to our principles, especially in ending the Vietnam War," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said in a statement Sunday night. "He was a profile in courage in every sense of the word, and the nation has lost one of the finest persons ever to serve in Congress."
"Father Drinan was a forever gentle, resilient, tenacious advocate for social justice and fundamental decency," said Senator John F. Kerry, who was Father Drinan's campaign manager in 1970. "He lived out in public life the whole cloth of Catholic teachings. In the most divisive days of Vietnam when things were coming apart, this incredible man and most unlikely of candidates showed America how a man of faith could be a man of peace."
I am tickled that the man the Vatican drove from office for being too liberal was replaced by Barney Frank. It’s such delicious irony for the Church. Barney Frank was a big fan of his predecessor and had this to say about him, hat tip writes like she talks
Few people in our history have had as great a dedication to the cause of human rights and have been so consistently effective in advocating for this cause. Unlike many who have tried to make this a partisan issue, Father Drinan was equally fierce in his objection to human rights violators of the left, right and center, and accepted no excuses from those who would deny the basic rights of others.
Mr. Speaker, Father Drinan served here in this body for 10 years as one of its intellectual leaders, having been elected in 1970 as one of the most effective opponents at that time of the war in Vietnam. He also played a very significant role in the impeachment of President Nixon, insisting that appropriate legal standards be applied in that matter. He was also a leader in matters that did not divide the House on either partisan or ideological lines, for example in the field of copyright, where he made contributions during that period that remain important foundations of our law today.
"When I arrived in Congress . . . Father Drinan was already serving as the conscience of the House of Representatives," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass). "It was an honor to serve with him and to seek his guidance and advice on issues such as halting the spread of nuclear weapons, mitigating the plight of Soviet Jews, and protecting the rights of political prisoners," Markey said.
From the American Constitution Society blog
In person, he was more than a match for his reputation. Bob was remarkable for his humanity. When meeting someone new, his questions would always turn to the person’s family: their parents, their children, their spouse or significant other. He would always ask about loved ones, remembering casual remarks from conversations months before. In this, you could see that, while he was a lawyer, politician, and activist, he was, first, a priest, a pastor in the best sense of that word.
Father Drinan was a great friend of ACS, from the very moment it was launched at Georgetown in 1999 when it was called the Madison Society. He was a speaker at ACS events and a supporter of its mission. He would often greet me in one of the hallways at Georgetown, calling out "Mr. Madison" in his booming voice, and inquiring about the Society’s progress. His passion for justice and his work seeking recognition and respect for the essential dignity of every human being was unflagging. His voice will be deeply missed. His presence will be missed even more.
Accolades from Others:
My parents were huge fans of Father Robert Drinan and they looked up to him for his articulation of the liberal Catholic position on issues. They often asked us to listen to his sound bites on the news and referred us to interviews and news articles about him. The writer of the blog Opinio Juris got the same line from his parents but was fortunate to have had real life exposure to Father Drinan.
When I was growing up, my parents held Father Drinan up as an example of what it meant to be a socially-engaged Catholic. This last year, I had the pleasure to get to know Father Drinan and to work with him and others on an upcoming issue of the Can God and Caesar Co-exist?
In the very short time I knew him, Father Drinan never donned the austere mantle of revered senior scholar; rather, he was always gracious and happy to engage me in my views not only related to his book (I respectfully disagreed with some of his contentions) but also about my own scholarship, current events, or the work of the Journal. He was warm and easy-going. Sometimes we would get on the phone and he could barely contain good news he had received; he was especially excited that his book was being translated into Turkish and would get a readership in the Muslim world.
Jesus had said that that we need to see the world through the eyes of a child. For all of his hard work opposing the war in Vietnam, protecting of human rights, speaking for political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and challenging nuclear strategy (to name only the international issues), Father Drinan kept a child-like enthusiasm to his final days.
From a comment on a Wall Street Journal Online obituary for Father Drinan death:
I remember in my other life as a journalist in the early ’80’s, I interviewed Father Drinan and was thoroughly prepared not to like him. I did not agree with his politics, and I had thought that Jesuits were arrogant, superior types. I could not have been more wrong. He was much more of a neighborhood priest type in personality than one would have suspected by following his political career. May he rest in peace. Comment by KDM
From jspot.org, a Jewish blog
Despite having grown up in a liberal New York Jewish community, Drinan the first genuinely radical religious leader I had ever met. His stories went back a generation or more, to the golden era of radical clergy who had made a compelling moral case to end a war, extend civil rights to all Americans, protect our civil liberties. We could use a lot more Bob Drinans, in the legal profession - but especially among our clergy.
Rest in peace Father Drinan. May we continue on with the fight you began and not rest until we succeed.