Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I rise with a sad duty, although also a proud one. It is a chance for our colleagues to mourn
the death and celebrate the life of one of the ablest and most principled people ever to serve as a Member of this body, the late Father Robert Drinan…

Madam Speaker, Bob Drinan was an extraordinary man. He had several careers, any one of which would have been extremely impressive. He was
a Member of this body for only 10 years. By Congressional standards, that is not a long career, and many people are surprised to learn it
was only 10 years, because his impact on this body and through this body, this country and this world was so significant. He was a man of
such force of intellect and strength of character and energy and determination that he made 10 years here do more than many do in 30 or
more years.

He was a prolific author of serious and thoughtful books. As I said in Massachusetts on Saturday, Father Drinan wrote more books than some high officials in this town have ever read.

He was a very distinguished educator. Had he been nothing but the Dean of Boston College Law School, and two of our colleagues who attended
that law school during his deanship, the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey and the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Scott, will be
addressing us soon, had he simply been that dean for 16 years when he helped make that into the first rate educational institution it is today, that would have been a significant career.

Then on leaving this place, he spent 26 years teaching at Georgetown. At 86, Bob Drinan was a vigorous and engaging teacher who was widely
sought after by students interested in the intellectual stimulation that they got from him.

Now, with all of this, he was, of course, a Jesuit priest, and it was striking to me last Thursday here in Washington, Saturday at Boston
College, to see the justifiable pride that his fellow Jesuits had in this man. And not just their pride in him, but their pride and
gratitude that he remained first and foremost a member of that Jesuit community, an extra community of people who have made such
contributions to education and other important causes in this country.

But what was particularly striking was the gap between the immensity of his accomplishments, the dignity of his intellect and his person.
No one was ever less inclined to stand on ceremony. He was a down-to-earth individual. People who met him, and simply met him
without knowing who he was, although that became increasingly harder as his fame grew, would be surprised to learn that he was a man of such accomplishments.

He was a delight to be with. He was one of the most irreverent reverends you will ever meet, and did not need ceremony, did not need any kind of false dignity. He had the talents.

What I want to talk about now is the common theme in that multiplicity of careers, of teacher and law school dean and Member of Congress and priest and author.

We have a lot of debate in our society and American politics about morality in politics, what is the role of morality in politics, and
there are some who style themselves as very religious, who believe that they are the exemplars of morality in politics and who have been critical of people like Father Drinan and said that he failed in that task.

Absolutely the contrary is true. Father Drinan's life was dedicated to public morality. Few people worked as consistently and effectively to
bring a moral tone to the relationships we have with each other.

Now, people have said, ``well, what about on some of these individual matters?'' Let's be very clear. This is a man who lived by an
extraordinary exacting moral code personally. He was a priest. He was a priest for over 60 years and a member of the Jesuit community. As a
Member of Congress, he served the Jesuit community in Georgetown. When he went back to his district, it was the Jesuit community at Boston College. He voluntarily subjected himself to the very stringent discipline that the Jesuit community and priests in general follow.

In 1980, when he was ordered by Pope John Paul II not to run again for Congress, that was a decision that caused him great anguish. It denied
him the chance to do something that he thought was terribly important to his very being, and he wished that he could reverse the decision.
But when it became clear that that decision could not be reversed, there was no hesitation.

People who want to talk about living by a moral code should look at the example of this very important Member of Congress with great
accomplishments behind him who voluntarily left this body because the moral code of the priesthood to which he had committed himself
required him to do that.

So in his personal life, he lived by the code of celibacy and of obedience and of poverty. And it was a voluntary decision, and anyone who knew him knew that he had talents which would have allowed him to break those bonds, but he didn't see them as bonds, he saw them as an essential part of his being.

So for those who wonder about his dedication and personal morality, look at his life. Look at this man, who at 86 awoke 10 days ago feeling ill, feeling very sick, and ignored the advice of others to stay home and went to class to teach at 86 and collapsed in class, because he had a sense of duty and an insistence on living by that personal code that no one could deny.

On the other hand, he did not believe, and I do not claim that this is something he told me, he was a man who taught in his life by example
as well as articulately. As the Speaker said in her eulogy, he quoted Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, ``Preach the gospel, and sometimes
use words,'' and Bob Drinan preached the gospel by his life and his life's work very effectively.

I believe that his view was that, yes, he was happy to follow a stringent moral code personally that few human beings would be able to
do with the dedication and discipline that he did for as long as he did, but he also felt that that was his personal choice. It was a choice that he would urge on others. He was a member of that important religious community, and through that religious community, yes, he would convey that message.

But he did not believe, and this is what is critical, that it was legitimate to use the coercive mechanism of government to impose his
personal choices on others, and that is the distinction that Father Drinan stands for. In those matters of life where we affect each
other, where human beings come together and impact each other, than morality must guide our actions.

I would caution many of my liberal friends who say, well, we don't want to have morality in politics, because they are reacting against
people who would use the government to impose personal choices on others. That is not morality, and the problem there is not that they
are imposing morality in politics, but that they are intruding politics into personal lives.

What Father Drinan stood for in his writings, as a Member of Congress, as an activist, as an advocate, as a teacher, was that in those areas
of life where we come together and affect each other, we are obligated to follow a moral code, and that is a moral code which focused on the
dignity of human beings and the right of every human being to be treated decently, because that was the common core of Bob Drinan.

What issues did he care about? He cared most about those issues where there was a danger that some people would be mistreated. In the
fifties and sixties, he was the leader in the fight against racism and for racial justice, one of the great examples of wrongdoing in
American history, of people of African descent being mistreated. Bob was a leader in the civil rights movement.

He was a great civil libertarian, opposing efforts to oppress people who spoke in terms that other people did not like.

He was a great defender of the Jewish community, against anti-Semitism.

He then became the founder, more than any other individual, of the doctrine of international human rights. Before the seventies, there
were people on the left who criticized governments on the right for not respecting human rights. There were people on the right who
criticized left governments for not following human rights.

Bob Drinan was one of those who forged the doctrine that we could demand respect by any government of any political stripe, that they
respect the rights of individuals, and he was a leader in his writings and his work here in the Congress. That was the central core, whether
it was racism or anti-Semitism, whether it was governments denying people basic rights, whether it was our own government denying the rights of our own citizens in the name of security.

He was a very good lawyer. In fact, in the seventies, he was working hard on rewriting a criminal code which some of the people on the left thought was too tough, because he understood that people had a right to be protected against those who would violate their rights and property. But he also believed deeply from his experience that there was no need for the government to disregard basic human rights in
protecting all of us, and there were no more articulate defenders of that principle.

When he stood up against Richard Nixon, it was because of his conviction that the Nixon administration was defying fundamental human
rights, a conviction which, of course, proved to be absolutely true.

That is the common thread. And Bob Drinan believed, and this is very important I think to note, that it was as a priest that he wrote, as a
priest that he served here, as a priest that he advocated for human rights, because he genuinely believed that in his insistence that we treat each other with the dignity that human beings are entitled to, he was following the word of his God as he understood it, a God that created in his mind human beings with this inherent dignity.

So this is a man whose life had many parts, but they had a common theme. They had a common theme, whether it was in his religion or his
politics or his writing or his teaching. It was that we owe each other the duty of respect and dignity. And, yes, morality belongs in politics, and Bob Drinan's life, both as a Member of Congress, as a political activist afterwards, yes, it was dedicated to morality in politics.

He was a man who understood that there is no greater political immorality than an unjust war; that nothing more greatly degrades human beings than wars which violate the doctrine of the just war. And he came to this Congress as a leading opponent of the Vietnam War at a time when it was not the most popular thing, and up until his last days he was a leader in agitation against another unjust war as he saw it.

So I am very proud to be the inheritor of that tradition. I do not claim to exemplify all aspects of it. But I do share with him this
commitment, that people have a right to make personal choices; that your personal choices ought to be guided by a moral code; and that we
ought to urge on each other that we bring out the best. But that when it comes to using the coercive mechanisms of the government, the
central point is to make sure that people are treated fairly by each other, that the role of morality in politics is to enforce the
fundamental right of each person to be treated with dignity and respect.

Bob Drinan was an exemplar of what is appropriately morality in politics. We will miss him terribly, but we have, enduring, his example to drive us forward.