St. Vincent will welcome President Bush

The last thing I want as the 16th president of St. Vincent College is to disagree publicly with the ninth one, Maynard Brennan. But his May 2 Perspectives piece, "Mr. President: This Place Is Not Your Place," requires a response because Mr. Brennan misses the point about why St. Vincent invited President Bush to be commencement speaker this year and reflects a myopic view of Catholic moral teaching and the Bush presidency.

Jim Towey is president of St. Vincent College in Latrobe and former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (www.stvincent.edu).

Inviting an individual to speak on campus is not an endorsement of his or her policies or politics. I understand that during his presidency in the 1960s Mr. Brennan invited Herbert Aptheker, a leader of the Communist Party USA, to speak on campus. Was the college endorsing Mr. Aptheker's policies and politics? Why the double standard?

Our college has a distinguished record of inviting speakers who are controversial -- from U.S. Rep. John Murtha to former House Speaker Tip O'Neill to William F. Buckley Jr. Following the tradition of getting the best speaker possible for the college, Archabbot Douglas Nowicki extended the invitation to President Bush.

We are deeply grateful that President Bush has accepted our invitation, and it is worth noting that graduate participation in the ceremony will be nearly 100 percent -- the highest ever. The only person we could invite as commencement speaker whose views completely coincide with Catholic teaching is the pope himself (and some within the church would picket him just as they did beloved John Paul II).

The fact that nearly every eligible senior has decided to walk the aisle at graduation does not mean that they agree with any or all of President Bush's actions during his tenure. It means that they learned something at our liberal arts college -- how to think critically and develop their own opinions. And they also learned that on our campus we extend Benedictine hospitality to our guests whether we agree with them or not.

Mr. Bush is the president of the United States and having the president as commencement speaker is an honor for our students and our college.

As a Catholic and former member of President Bush's senior staff, I was accustomed to hearing critics of President Bush selectively cite Catholic moral teaching as Mr. Brennan did. It is difficult to take Mr. Brennan's criticism seriously when he makes no mention of President Bush's efforts in opposition to abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, or in support of marriage and family life, abstinence education for our youth and the fair treatment of faith-based organizations that have effective programs and often find government in opposition to their efforts. He omits the fact that it was President Bush who launched the largest and most comprehensive human-rescue mission in history: the global AIDS initiative for those suffering in Africa and around the world.

And did Mr. Brennan notice the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on partial-birth abortion and the role played by the Bush appointees on the court?

I will leave to others the discussion of how "Catholic-friendly" President Bush has been. Mr. Brennan's take on Catholic moral teaching hardly provides an objective examination of the Bush record.

In January, Democratic congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid welcomed President Bush to deliver the State of the Union address before Congress and respectfully listened and applauded him, despite their stark differences over policy. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will welcome President Bush at the Vatican next month with warmth and hospitality. St. Vincent College will do the same next week.