As a GU alum (CAS ‘82), the university’s ambivalence about its Catholicism has always bothered me, and I’m not even a member of the Roman church. When I was an undergrad, the provost (who was still a Jesuit then, as was the president) issued a directive that at least 51% of each incoming freshman class should be Catholic. My girlfriend at the time, an Irish Catholic girl from northern Jersey, was appalled at such a “discriminatory” rule, a reaction which even at the time struck me as absurd. In fact, I think every freshman should have to take a two-semester survey course on the “History and Dogma of the Roman Catholic Church” (or the advanced version if you went to parochial school or CCD) — believe it, don’t believe it, that’s up to you, but if you’re going to go to a Catholic institution, you have an obligation to familiarize yourself with its roots. If you’re uncomfortable with that, go somewhere else.

The reason that it’s part of a bigger story is that it’s yet another example of an institution turning away from its distinctiveness, from particularism and localism. It’s the same reason I was disgusted at the Boeing management’s decision back in 2001 to move its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago; I had no dog in that race, but the idea of the firm’s top management abandoning the city where the company was born more than 80 years before to move somewhere more mainstream, closer to Wall Street, whatever, was contemptible. And it’s why I’ve always liked pollster John Zogby, whatever his politics, because he built and kept his company in his decidely unglamorous hometown of Utica, N.Y.