Timothy S. Healy, S.J.
![handle is hein.journals/glj81 and id is 2205 raw text is: IN MEMORIAM:
TIMOTHY S. HEALY, S.J.
WILLIAM J. BRENNAN, JR.*
Timothy Healy was not a lawyer and that is the law's loss, for Tim
brought boundless energy, sheer brilliance, and an unquenchable thirst for
justice to everything he encountered, and he would have left the law far
better as he left all that he touched.
Although he was not a lawyer, Tim was as deep and sharp a thinker as
anyone I have known. Tim loved learning; his life was a constant quest for
truth and knowledge. Few people know (because Tim was not a boastful
man), that he earned six advanced degrees, including a doctorate in
English from Oxford. Tim's doctoral thesis, John Donne: Ignatius His
Conclave, was published by Oxford University Press, and, together with
Professor Dame Helen Gardner, Tim edited John Donne: Selected Prose.
As he loved learning, Tim loved teaching, particularly poetry and espe-
cially the works of John Donne and T.S. Eliot. Students often described
Tim as an inspiring teacher. He taught that words are powerful and
holy things, [that] they put us in touch with one another, with the world
around us, with our dreams and visions for the future and with the God
who dwells in His creation, as one former student, Michael Collins (now
Dean of Georgetown's School of Summer and Continuing Education) has
so eloquently described.
To Tim, no principle worth believing in was too weak to withstand
robust debate, and he was accordingly a strong believer in the freedoms
embodied in the First Amendment of our Constitution. As President of
Georgetown, Tim brought his beliefs to practice, proudly allowing student
groups that challenged Catholic teachings to flourish on campus and
asking that all prayers at official meetings be ecumenical. Rabbi Harold
White, the Jewish chaplain at Georgetown, said of Tim: Around here
he's been so sensitive to the feelings of non-Catholics that some people
have criticized him for not being Catholic enough. Tim's final post as
President of the New York Public Library, where he was unconstrained by
the obligations he had as leader of a Catholic institution, allowed him
more room to exercise his passion for free flow of ideas. He worked
doggedly to help scholars and others pursuing all walks of knowledge, and
he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Library's efforts to collect books on
AIDS, despite their explicit references to gay sexual behavior.
* Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States (retired).
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Timothy S. Healy, S.J.
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