Editor,
I find it interesting that Richard Wood, director of the religious studies program, in a recent guest column, basically answered my unpublished letter to the Daily Lobo about the new chairperson endowed by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. What an amazing coincidence. It reminds me of the kind of underhanded dealing clergy victims have come to expect from the Catholic Church. Could they have already achieved the kind of influence I tried to warn you against?
Despite Wood's careful description of the search process and all, he admits that "the archdiocese will have substantial representation on the committee." Why should they have any at all?
Any input into staffing and funding gives this, or any other, religious body with money undue influence into what should be free and independent scholarship. As I mentioned in my previous letter, no institutional religion should ever be allowed an official position in a state-funded university, unless all are. If the Roman Catholic Church is let in, might as well invite the Taliban, too.
How will the position be used to study the many contributions of the Catholic Church to our state? Will it be used to examine the church-sanctioned brutality by the Spanish, the oppression of native peoples in the missions and the Jews hiding from the Inquisition? Or maybe those fun-loving Penitentes or even the Servants of the Paraclete and all those pedophile priests they let loose here? I'm not holding my breath.
To the many victims of clergy abuse in this state, to honor the Catholic Church with its sordid record of crime and cover-up in New Mexico with an academic position of honor is outrageous. It makes a mockery of the intellectual freedom of the University, not to mention the suffering of all the church's victims.
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As an alumnus and a victim of clergy abuse here, I am disgusted and ashamed at the greed and cynical lack of principles of my alma mater for accepting such an offer. Let the Roman Catholic Church use the Newman Center for its propaganda - that's what it's for - and keep its preaching out of state-funded classrooms.
Jay Nelson
UNM alumnus
