Over at Georgetown’s daily twice-weekly newspaper The Hoya, we learn that a part-time chaplain in the Office of Protestant Ministry has resigned after a ban against a handful of Protestant Evangelical student groups went into effect on the Catholic University’s campus.

The chaplain, Reverend Derrick Harkins, said his decision stemmed largely from the additional work he was assigned resulting from the ban, which he said was more than he agreed to take on before he began the job on Aug. 25. He said that he was assigned many of the functions that the affiliated ministries had filled within Campus Ministry, including programming and leading services …

Jacques Arsenault (COL ’01), the university’s media relations officer, did not comment on details surrounding Harkin’s resignation.

Harkins said that he thought Campus Ministry should have worked more closely with the affiliated organizations, and that they should not have been removed from campus.

Now, we realize that a private, Catholic university has the right to set its own policies about which groups have access to its students. But banning proselytizing Protestants seems to us to be more than a little intolerant, and goes against the spirit of a learning and exploration one would expect a high-caliber university, Catholic or not.

Students at Georgetown seem to agree, and their vocal displeasure has led the university to have a committee look into the effect the ban is having on the student body. In the meantime, we’re curious about two things: Was there any specific event or action on the part of the affected Protestant ministries which led to the ban, and are there any non-Catholic former Georgetown students reading who can tell us about the religious climate at the university?