By Randall Smith, The Catholic Thing, July 29, 2020
Randall B. Smith is a tenured Full Professor of Theology. His book Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Guidebook for Beginners is available from Emmaus Press. And his book Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture at Paris: Preaching, Prologues, and Biblical Commentary is due out from Cambridge University Press in the fall.
The Jesuit president of Loyola University Maryland, Fr. Brian Linnane, S.J., announced recently that Flannery O’Connor’s name is to be taken off one of the university’s dorms because, “Information coming forward recently about O’Connor . . . has revealed that some of her personal writings reflected a racist perspective,” and a “residence hall must be a home and a haven for those who live there, and its name should reflect Loyola’s Jesuit values.”
Would those be the “Jesuit values” that in 1838 allowed the Maryland Jesuits to sell 272 slaves – men, women, and children – to Louisiana’s ex-governor, Henry Johnson, whose son was a Georgetown student, for $115,000, equivalent to $2,761,078 in 2019? …