Editor:

Paul Rankin’s Feb. 18 letter, “Play content inappropriate for Catholic school,” raises some very cogent and pertinent points. In any portrayal of lesbianism, for example, there are grounds for believing that natural law teachings may be treated with some indifference if no internal (dialogue) counterpoint exists.

However, I believe a larger, trumping point also enters: Is Loyola, as a higher educational institution, dedicated to training its students in the basics of critical thinking or not?

If one is only exposed to homogeneous pabulum and “uni-thought” with which everyone concurs, there is a danger of leaving the university as a one-dimensional thinker. St. Ignatius aside, my reading of the Jesuits is that they’ve always promoted a forum or basis for debate and the exercise of thought.

In doing this, argument and reason is invoked to show why an argument or presentation is flawed – not pre-empting exposure ab initio.

As a final footnote, I attribute my path to atheism to attending a discourse by Jean Paul Sartre at the old Loyola Field House while a student there in 1964-65. The Jesuits then – as I hope now – let students hear, think and see novel ideas and presentations, then make up their own minds.

Philip A. StahlFormer Loyola student