When Fr Bob Drinan SJ, aged 86, collapsed with respiratory failure at Georgetown University in January, he promptly told the nurse that he was due for class at 11am. There were to be no more classes. Having been a long-time Democrat and one time congressman for Massachusetts, he then joked, “Some Republican must have done this”.
His funeral was, by all accounts, a grand affair with the eulogies becoming more political as the order of speakers proceeded, the last two being Senator Teddy Kennedy and the new leader of the house, Nancy Pelosi.
I had first met Bob in South Africa in 1995. He was larger than life, on his way to Australia, where he met my father, then Chief Justice. Later that year in Washington DC, I lived in the room opposite him for one semester, and attended his international human rights course. He was indefatigable. He taught a full class load even at an advanced age, and every weekend he was off to some other city in the US to talk to the local Bar or to some church group about human rights."
I happened to be back at Georgetown the week after the funeral. It was a delight to hear the reminiscences about this Jesuit lawyer who had served in Congress after being a successful dean of Boston College law school. When Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ, the Superior General of the Jesuits, insisted that he retire from Congress, he then took up a teaching appointment at Georgetown Law School.
One of his political claims to fame was that he had moved the first motion of impeachment against Richard Nixon. He chose the issue of Nixon’s unauthorised bombing of Cambodia. Though morally outrageous, this offence did not have the political clout to carry forward an impeachment. Some of the mourners at the funeral had said that Bob almost blew the impeachment which later was carried on Watergate.
Mixing politics and religion is always difficult, especially on Capitol Hill when it comes to the abortion question. Even after leaving Congress, Drinan continued to buy into the question, incurring the wrath of pro-life groups for his 1996 opinion piece in the New York Times urging Congress not to override President Clinton’s veto of the ban on partial birth abortion. Much of the article made good sense, but it went a step too far in trying to shelter the Democrats from the political fallout