[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3247-3248]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     REST IN PEACE, FATHER TED HESBURGH AND PROFESSOR CHARLES RICE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROTHFUS. Mr. Speaker, last week, the Notre Dame family lost two 
larger-than-life figures.
  One, a Holy Cross priest, Father Ted Hesburgh, served as Notre Dame's 
president for 35 years and oversaw remarkable growth of the university 
named for Our Lady. Father Hesburgh was known and recognized around the 
world.
  The other was a layman, Charles Rice, who taught at Notre Dame Law 
School for 40 years and was a retired Marine, a devoted husband to his 
wife,

[[Page 3248]]

Mary, without whom he could never have accomplished his work, a devoted 
father, and an academic who dove deep into the philosophical 
underpinnings of the law. It is estimated that he taught half of the 
living alumni of the Notre Dame Law School.
  While much has been written and said these last few days about Father 
Hesburgh, given the international stage on which he walked, 
comparatively less has been said of Professor Rice, except for the 
recognition that countless law students, colleagues, and pro-life and 
religious liberty advocates have given in the days since he passed 
away.
  To my left is one of those iconic figures from the 1960s. In it, we 
see Dr. Martin Luther King and Father Hesburgh, standing together for 
racial equality in Chicago.
  What allowed these two remarkable men to come together, in spite of 
different backgrounds and traditions, was a common understanding of 
justice that was grounded in our Western and Judeo-Christian philosophy 
of law.
  It was this same philosophy that was at the heart of what Professor 
Charles Rice taught at Notre Dame.
  In Martin Luther King's ``Letter from Birmingham Jail,'' written 2 
years prior to the famous Selma March that will be commemorated this 
weekend, Dr. King addressed his fellow clergymen, many of whom were 
criticizing his tactics in confronting unjust Jim Crow laws.
  One may well ask, Dr. King wrote: ``How can you advocate breaking 
some laws and obeying others?''
  The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws, just 
and unjust.
  I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only 
a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one 
has a moral responsibility to obey unjust laws. I, Dr. King said, would 
agree with St. Augustine that ``an unjust law is no law at all.''
  Dr. King then asked, Now what is the difference between the two? How 
does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?
  King answered that a just law is a manmade code that squares with the 
moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of 
harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas 
Aquinas, Dr. King continued, an unjust law is a human law that is not 
rooted in eternal law and natural law.
  These words would be very familiar to any of Charlie Rice's 
jurisprudence students. Indeed, a significant amount of Professor 
Rice's work dealt with the concept of natural law.
  Natural law principles were recognized in our Declaration of 
Independence, with Jefferson referencing the ``Laws of Nature and 
Nature's God'' and the recognition that individuals are endowed by a 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, including a right to life.
  Charlie Rice was a fierce defender of the right to life. He believed 
that every human being, whether an elderly grandmother who could no 
longer care for herself, a young adult who was incapacitated through an 
accident or a degenerative disease, an unborn child capable of feeling 
pain, or a 3-week-old unborn child whose heart had just begun to beat, 
had an inalienable right to life. And for Charlie, those lives, and all 
human lives, are sacred because they are a gift of God.
  In the years since Roe v. Wade, Professor Rice never wavered from his 
core conviction on the right to life. He became increasingly concerned 
for the religious freedom and conscience rights of individuals when he 
saw government coercing them into practices that violated those rights.
  Professor Rice told his students: ``Never be afraid to speak the 
truth.'' He certainly never was.
  For him, the truth was clear. The right to life and freedom of 
religion, both of which are specifically mentioned in our Nation's 
founding documents, are under attack.
  But Professor Rice never gave up. He believed that one day those 
rights would be protected again, and he continued to defend those 
rights to the day he died.
  His work in defending life and religious freedom will continue. It 
will live on in his wife, Mary, his children, and grandchildren, as 
well as the countless lives he touched.
  May Professor Rice and Father Hesburgh rest in peace.

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