[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 19 (Wednesday, January 31, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Page S1381]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TRIBUTE TO FATHER ROBERT DRINAN

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last October, my alma mater, Georgetown 
Law Center, established an endowed chair in human rights in honor of 
Father Robert Drinan. At the ceremony, Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh 
called Robert Drinan ``a father in more senses than one.'' Dean Koh 
said:

       He is the father of a remarkable revolution--a human rights 
     revolution--a person of simple, radical faith.

  Sunday night, at the age of 86, Robert Drinan died. The world has 
loss a courageous champion for justice, human rights, and human 
dignity.
  I just missed Father Drinan. I graduated from Georgetown Law before 
he joined the faculty, and he left Congress before I arrived. So I 
never had the chance to study and work with him directly. But like a 
lot of others, I was inspired and challenged by him.
  Georgetown University estimates that Father Drinan taught 6,000 
students in a teaching career that stretched over more than five 
decades. But those are just the students who enrolled in his classes at 
Boston College and, later, at Georgetown. In fact, he taught a lot of 
people. He taught all of us about the responsibility each of us has to 
speak out for the voiceless and the oppressed, not just to speak, but 
to work for justice.
  In the 1960s, as dean of Boston College Law School, Father Drinan 
showed courage by calling for the desegregation of Boston's public 
schools. He challenged his students at the law school to become active 
in the civil rights movement.
  In 1970, the people of Boston's western suburbs elected Father Drinan 
to represent them in Congress, making him the first Catholic priest 
ever to serve as a voting Member of Congress. He ran as a strong 
opponent of the Vietnam war. He was the first Member of Congress to 
call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon, but not over Watergate, 
rather over the undeclared war against Cambodia. He fought to make 
human rights the cornerstone of American foreign policy and to 
establish a bureau for human rights within the U.S. State Department. 
He fought against government abuses of power and led a successful 
battle to finally abolish the House Internal Security Committee, 
formerly the Un-American Activities Committee, which we recall was 
responsible for so many unjust findings by this Congress, ruining the 
private lives of so many American citizens.

  In 1975, he became the first American to receive his own CIA and FBI 
files under the Freedom of Information Act. With Congressman Frank 
Church and others, he worked to safeguard our right to privacy.
  Father Drinan was elected to five terms in Congress, each time by 
larger margins. Finally, in his last race in 1978, he didn't have an 
opponent. He would have been reelected again in 1980, but he was forced 
to step down when Pope John Paul II barred Catholic priests from 
holding elective office. Father Drinan left office, but he never left 
the struggle. He continued to work and speak out for justice until the 
day he died.
  In 1981, he took a post at Georgetown Law Center where he taught 
human rights, civil liberties, and government ethics. He taught his 
students that the central commandment of the Bible is that ``the people 
of God must be devoted to justice in every way.'' He taught that it is 
a sin that 31,000 children die of starvation every day in this world. 
He urged his students, all of us: ``Sharpen your anger at injustice.'' 
Use the talents God gave you to make this world better.
  Two months ago Father Drinan told a reporter that he hadn't given any 
thought to retiring; there was just too much left to do. And, he said, 
``Jesuits don't ordinarily retire. We just do what you do.''
  Earlier this month Father Drinan was called on for a particularly 
symbolic ceremony. He celebrated Mass for Speaker  Nancy Pelosi at her 
alma mater in Washington, Trinity College. It was a special mass in 
honor of ``the children of Darfur and Katrina.''
  Father Drinan spoke to our conscience. He spoke for the overlooked 
and underpaid, for those who were too poor or too weak to speak for 
themselves. He spoke out in passionate defense of the great moral and 
political values of our Nation.
  In his lifetime he received many awards. Last May he received 
Congress's Distinguished Service Award for his service in the House. 
The American Bar Association honored him with the ABA medal for his 
work on behalf of human rights. He was a founder of the Lawyers 
Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control; president of Americans for 
Democratic Action; a member of the national board of Common Cause, 
People for the American Way, the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, 
the National Interreligious Task force on Soviet Jewry, the American 
Civil Liberties Union, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
  He received 22 honorary degrees from colleges and universities. One 
of those degrees, given to him by Villanova University in 1977, hung on 
the wall of his office in the House of Representatives. It read:

       Your life's work has provided proof that service to God and 
     country are not inimical.

  How true.
  In his sermon on the mount, Jesus told us:

       Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after justice: for 
     they shall have their fill.

  Robert Drinan is, indeed, blessed, and we were blessed to have him 
serving America for so many years. Those of us who admired him and 
loved him were saddened by his death. But we take comfort in knowing 
that just as his influence in Congress has lasted beyond those 10 years 
of service, Robert Drinan's influence on this world will continue to be 
felt long after we are all gone.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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