By Ralph Ranalli and Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | August 17, 2005</p>
<p>A conservative Catholic group billing itself as a ''movement to rescue Catholic higher education" has called for the ouster of three Boston College professors who it says supported removing the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose parents fought to keep her alive.</p>
<p>A spokesman for Boston College, Jack Dunn, issued a statement criticizing the group, saying, ''The publicity-seeking rhetoric and unfounded accusations of the Cardinal Newman Society are a disservice to Catholic colleges and universities and the church that they proudly serve."</p>
<p>The Rev. John Paris, one of three Boston College professors targeted by name in a recent fund-raising letter from the group sent to 75,000 people, said in an interview last week that the Cardinal Newman Society ''is sort of like a Christian Taliban, determined to make Catholic institutions hew their line."</p>
<p>The group, based in Virginia, has made similar accusations in the past. It has attacked Catholic colleges for what it calls anti-Catholic teaching, criticized colleges that provide funding for gay and lesbian organizations, and complained that colleges allow performances of the play ''The Vagina Monologues."</p>
<p>In their fund-raising letter, which is not dated, the society attacks what it calls ''the 18 faculty members at 10 Catholic universities who helped pave the way for the killing of Terri Schiavo."</p>
<p>''It’s nothing short of a disgrace that the pro-death movement which led to the deliberate killing of Terri Schiavo includes so many representatives of Catholic higher education in the United States," says the letter, written for the society by Eugene F. Diamond, who is identified in the letter as the former president of the Catholic Medical Association.</p>
<p>In addition to Paris, a bioethics professor at Boston College, the letter cites Charles Baron and Milton Heifetz, professors at BC’s law school, among 18 academics and Catholic universities singled out for taking public stances on human life issues that were at odds with Vatican pronouncements and teachings.</p>
<p>Patrick J. Reilly, founder and president of the Cardinal Newman Society, stood by his fund-raising letters and accusations, saying: ''We are responding to the public actions of statements of faculty members at these institutions. We are responding to their advocacy contrary to Catholic teaching. We don’t think those positions are appropriate. We don’t think they should be using platforms at Catholic institutions to present those positions."</p>
<p>The Cardinal Newman Society, a lobbying group founded in 1993 to fight doctrinal dissent at Catholic colleges and universities, shares a name with but is not affiliated with Cardinal Newman Clubs at colleges and universities across the United States, which generally function as social, religious, and service organizations for Catholic students.</p>
<p>Boston College blasted the Newman Society yesterday as a fringe group bent on grabbing public attention at the expense of academic freedom.</p>
<p>''Boston College is firmly committed to its Jesuit, Catholic mission and heritage," the college said in its statement. ''Accordingly, its faculty members openly engage the issues of the day, especially those concerning faith and culture."</p>
<p>The society’s letter quotes Paris as having been ''perhaps Pope John Paul II’s most strident critic" on the issue of Terri Schiavo. The letter quoted Paris as having said the Vatican view on the issue was pandering to ''radical right-to-lifers." The letter expressed concern about the views of Baron and Heifetz on what it called assisted suicide.</p>
<p>Baron said last night that he had been ''a little stunned" to learn that he had been singled out in the letter from the Newman Society, a group he had never heard of before.</p>
<p>He said his inclusion smacked of publicity-hunting, since the brief he signed in the Schiavo case was primarily about constitutional issues and not about Catholic moral teaching.</p>
<p>''I didn’t see the Schiavo case as some big Catholic doctrine issue," said Baron, who teaches state and federal constitutional law and medical bioethics. ''It is a very complicated case involving a lot of legal questions."</p>
<p>In 35 years, he said, the college has never objected to his teaching and has encouraged a robust debate on many issues. ''The idea of causing the removal of faculty for not hewing to some politically correct line – it’s ridiculous," he said.</p>
<p>Heifetz could not be reached for comment.</p>
<p>In the recent letter, the society says it has an urgent need for money in order to compile ''absolutely air-tight documentation of every instance of a Catholic campus providing entree to the Culture of Death."</p>
<p>The society’s fund-raising letters and accusations have drawn the ire of the Association of Catholic College and Universities.</p>
<p>In 2003, the association’s president sent a letter to the society, saying, ''I am writing to protest, in the name of truth and Christian charity, your spreading through the media across the country accusations against our member schools that are distorted, inaccurate and in some cases simply untrue. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church those are sins of calumny and detraction. They do not serve the unity and well-being of the Church."</p>
<p>Ranalli reported from Boston and Kranish from Washington. Kranish can be reached at <a href="mailto:kranish@globe.com">kranish@globe.com</a>.