The ‘Catholic’ University of Scranton Hires Pro-Abortion Former Senator | The American Spectator

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. My alma mater (Class of 1981), the Jesuit-run University of Scranton, announced that it has hired former Pennsylvania Democratic Senator Robert P. Casey Jr., as a Distinguished Fellow in Public Service. University President Joseph G. Marina, S.J., expressed his happiness “to have the senator joining us here at Scranton.” Casey, he said, is “perfect” for the role of “forming men and women to be agents of social change.” Perhaps Casey will enlighten students on his Catholic intellectual and philosophical journey from pro-life politician to pro-abortion politico.

The local news reports noted Casey’s Catholic education — Scranton Prep, the College of Holy Cross, and Catholic University Law School. He also attended Catholic elementary school at St. Clare’s (he was a grade behind me) and St. Paul’s in Scranton’s Green Ridge section. One news report noted that the University of Scranton “is a Catholic, Jesuit institution whose principles are familiar to Casey.” One of those Catholic principles is the sanctity of the lives of unborn children — a principle that Casey’s father, Robert P. Casey Sr. held inviolate during his long public career as a Pennsylvania state senator, Pennsylvania’s auditor general, and Pennsylvania’s governor. Casey Sr. had the courage to publicly challenge the national Democratic Party’s pro-abortion stance in the 1980s and 1990s, and he successfully shepherded through the state legislature a restrictive abortion law. He also wrote a book titled Fighting for Life in which he championed the lives of unborn children and excoriated his fellow Democrats who supported Roe v. Wade. He was a profile in courage. Sad to say, his son and namesake is not.

Throughout most of his political career, Bob Casey Jr. said he was pro-life. He was elected to statewide public office in Pennsylvania as the state’s auditor general and treasurer, where his alleged pro-life position went untested. That changed when he served in the U.S. Senate. As the national Democratic Party became America’s pro-abortion party, Casey, unlike his father, jumped on the pro-abortion bandwagon. Politico noted in 2018, that “Casey has become an increasingly reliable vote in support of abortion rights.” In his most recent and unsuccessful run for reelection to the Senate in 2024, Casey for the first time publicly embraced his party’s pro-abortion position, earning the praise and endorsements of such organizations as Reproductive Freedom for All, which he proudly announced on his campaign website. Senator Casey, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, called for restoring the “protections” of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized throughout the nation abortion on demand. Casey’s father knew that Roe v. Wade did not protect the most vulnerable members of the human family — unborn children.

While Casey Jr. apparently betrayed his pro-life position and abandoned the pro-life cause for political reasons — forgetting the words of St. Thomas More in the movie A Man for All Seasons that “it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world if he should lose his soul” — what is the University of Scranton’s excuse? Why does a Catholic university hire a pro-abortion former politician to “mentor” its students? What message does that send to the student body and the surrounding heavily Catholic community of Scranton and its suburbs? Just what kind of very expensive “Catholic” education are those Jesuits providing to their young charges?

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