Hundreds remember Drinan at BC
Inspiring teacher, politician praised
On the Boston College campus where he served for more than a decade as dean of the law school, the Rev. Robert F. Drinan was recalled yesterday as an inspirational and unassuming teacher as well as a prominent national political figure.
In a memorial that featured equal doses of warmth and wit, solemn prayer and song, hundreds of former students, colleagues, and local politicians paid tribute to the first Roman Catholic priest elected to Congress.
"So many young people here were inspired by his teaching," said the Rev. William C. McInnes , who delivered the homily yesterday at the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola. "Even now they're saying they agree with him, they disagree with him."
A passionate opponent of the Vietnam War, who filed the first resolution to impeach President Nixon in 1973, Drinan was praised as a legislator who unabashedly fused his convictions as a Jesuit to a liberal political vision. He was also recalled as a disarmingly funny presence, both on Chestnut Hill and on Capitol Hill.
Harold Koh , dean of Yale Law School, who delivered one of three eulogies, recalled one time when Drinan was asked how he had accomplished so much in life.
"The answer is simple," Koh quoted Drinan as saying, "celibacy."
US Representative Barney Frank, who holds Drinan's seat in Congress, recalled Drinan's prodigious intellect.
"Bob Drinan wrote more books than many of his congressional colleagues have ever read," Frank said, bringing a round of laughter from packed pews of mourners, who included Governor Deval Patrick, US Senator John F. Kerry, and US Representative Edward J. Markey.
Frank spoke about Drinan's commitment to his political beliefs, whether, in the case of Drinan's opposition to the death penalty, they upheld church teachings or, in the case of his support for abortion rights, they put him at odds with his church.
"This funny, open, remarkable human being dedicated an entire life to the central cause of exemplifying what a moral approach to politics truly means," Frank said. "For that we all owe him a debt."
Drinan, who died last Sunday at the age of 86, served in Congress from 1971 until 1981, when Pope John Paul II ordered him to forgo reelection or leave the priesthood. Yesterday's Mass was the second memorial, after scores of political leaders paid tribute to Drinan in Washington on Thursday.
Yesterday's speakers focused on his life as a teacher and administrator at Boston College, the campus that Mary Beatty Muse, a retired judge and longtime friend of Drinan, called his home. As an undergraduate at BC from 1938 to 1942, Drinan was a features editor for the student newspaper, The Heights, and an honor student. After he became a priest and lawyer, he returned to campus in 1955, as an assistant dean of the law school, and was named dean in 1956, at the age of 36. He held the post until 1970, when he ran for Congress.
Koh said that when his father, a South Korean doctoral student at Harvard, came to see Drinan in his office at BC to plead for admission to the law school, Drinan decided to accept the elder Koh on the spot. "He said, 'Mr. Koh, you're in, and I'm happy to have you here,' " Koh said, adding, "He was not one of those lawyers who loves human rights but can't stand human beings."
McInnes noted that whenever Drinan returned to Boston from Washington, he would stop first at the Campion Renewal Center, a Jesuit retreat in Weston, to spend time with elderly and ill priests. Yesterday, many priests attended Drinan's funeral Mass. One of them, the Rev. Thomas J. Regan , the top Jesuit priest in New England, recalled being a sophomore in high school and going to see Drinan at a campaign event in a backyard in Waltham.
"He inspired a lot of us," Regan said. Noting that many students at BC and Georgetown University Law Center, where Drinan also taught for years, have been moved by Drinan's death, Regan said "it shows he continues to have an impact."
Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com. 