Cross Purposes

Raoul Benavides

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More About

• Ashley Sovereign
• Leigh Lawton
• Ellen Kennedy
• Roman Catholicism
• Religion

At the opposite pole, he says, is Georgetown, a Jesuit university that has extended health care and other benefits to employees' domestic partners. "Georgetown, Boston College, Holy Cross, Loyola, Dayton, Marquette, San Francisco, Santa Clara—these are all schools that are on the other side of the spectrum," says Landry. "And my argument was, if you think about those schools, where's the quality, where's the reputation? St. Thomas says it wants to have a national reputation. Well, Marquette has a national reputation, and Boston College does, and Georgetown. Ave Maria and Steubenville and St. Thomas Aquinas College, they don't and they never will because of their rigidity and their insistence on this sort of pure enclave mentality.

"It seems to me that St. Thomas has established a culture over a period of time," he concludes. "We have a lot of faculty who are not Catholic and we have a lot of staff who are not Catholic, because we haven't been the kind of institution that asks that question and requires people to toe the line. It seems to me that we're changing horses in mid-stream when we start adding restrictions that were not there previously." 