Georgetown’s Sinful Past — and Present

This week, Georgetown University faces two of the greatest issues in America’s story, past and present: slavery and abortion.

“Georgetown Confronts Its Role in Nation’s Slave Trade,” headlined the New York Times on its April 17 front page. It is a story, previously reported here and elsewhere, the details of which many at the school and in town learned about only fairly recently.

The next day, Adam Rothman, a professor with Georgetown University’s Working Group on Slavery, Memory & Reconciliation, spoke at a symposium — previously scheduled in honor of D.C. Emancipation Day — about the college’s shameful story in connection with the Jesuits’ sale of 272 slaves in 1838. With promises broken, families were truly “sold down the river.” The news was that descendants had been located from this heart-wrenching business.

“It seems to me that the story of Georgetown and slavery is a microcosm of the whole history of slavery,” said Rothman, who stressed that the first step of truth and reconciliation is truth. All of this occurred in a Christian institution, directly answerable to the Catholic Church, which could no longer look the other way in terms of slavery in the New World.

Yes, some kind of memorial should be erected on the campus. Yes, scholarships should be offered. Is it enough? Of course not. Yes, Georgetown sinned, but forgiveness is possible.

In an ironic and hopeful twist of fate, the university’s president in the 1870s was Rev. Patrick Healy, S.J. Healy was born in Georgia of a mixed-race mother and an Irish father, who owned slaves. He was referred to in his day as Irish and perhaps a little Spanish. After the 1970s, Georgetown embraced him as a black man. Regardless of the out-of-time hypocrisy, Healy is known and honored for putting the school on the path to becoming a major university. He was the first black American to earn a Ph.D. and become a Jesuit priest. His landmark building dominates the sky of this town and the federal city.

Meanwhile, the national abortion debate has erupted anew on the university’s main campus. Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, has been invited by a student group to speak on campus on the afternoon of April 20. (Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider.) University officials have defended Richards’s right to speak.

Opponents argue that Jesuit Georgetown is betraying — even mocking — its Catholic identity and mission. In essence, it is sinning.

A student group called Georgetown Right to Life has invited Abby Johnson, an anti-abortion activist, to speak later the same day in the main campus’s Dahlgren Chapel. Cardinal Donald Wuerl will celebrate a Mass for Life at 7:30 p.m., April 21, at Epiphany Catholic Church on Dumbation Street in Georgetown.

The Georgetowner assigned these stories to Georgetown University students, our interns Juliana Zovak and Percy Metcalfe. Such national issues and debates are why they — and most of us — are here in the nation’s capital.