It looks like not nearly as big of a deal as the headline might make you think. Gonzaga apparently has a relationship/partnership with an independent newspaper called The Fig Tree, which has an office in one of GU’s buildings and has a page or two on GU’s website. The “Family Services Directory” looks like it may have been removed already because I can’t find it via GU’s website, only via the link from the linked article. Not that this makes it OK, but the three abortion organizations were buried among about a hundred others listed that by my quick glace did not look problematic. It is possible that whoever is making appropriateness decisions for the GU website missed these entries.
There was also an article about a GU employee making sympathetic comments about Planned Parenthood and crude comments about conservatives in an email with her GU account. It’s not clear to me what the context was.
There was also another article in the linkage somewhere relating an anecdote about a Gongaza student saying that there is an anti-Catholic bias on campus and among some professors, some of them Jesuits. I have a child at GU and have kept my ear to the ground pretty well, visited the campus twice and talked to many people, read lots of their material looking for issues, etc. I have been pretty satisfied with what I have seen. I talked to others including my parish pastor who is very knowledgable and plugged in to the University scene, and he says GU stands well apart from virtually all the other Jesuit schools and has not lost its way like the others have.
Here is an anecdote of my own about GU and the issue of abortion. During parent orientation, there was a session on health services. A panel including the doctor in charge of the campus clinic gave a presentation and answered questions. One parent asked what about referrals to Planned Parenthood or the like, and the answer was crisp and clear that as a Catholic university there would be no providing of information to help a student to obtain “birth control of any kind” (clearly meaning to include abortion). The doctor gave the answer, and his air and body language was pretty clear that he believed what he was saying. A very welcome message to good Catholic parents, as you can imagine. The woman who asked the question was miffed, however.
Yes, there are some things that have made me cringe a little bit, but for the most part I am very comfortable with my child at Gonzaga and am convinced that being there is helping and not hindering her growth as a Catholic.
