As Fordham’s president, and as the only educator to serve as chairman of both the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, Father O’Hare found himself, more often than he liked, refereeing rifts in the church over dogma and academic freedom, differences between American bishops and the Vatican, and ideological conflicts among an increasingly diverse student body about issues like abortion and gay rights.

While acknowledging his own orthodox moral position, he tolerated a decision by the student government to recognize groups that discussed or promoted an “enlightened understanding” of both those issues.

Similarly, he defended the right of American bishops to denounce abortion, just as they did racial injustice or the nuclear arms race.

“It is neither anti‐Catholic nor un-American to argue against the bishops in this debate,” he wrote of abortion in a New York Times Op-Ed article in 1976, “but to question their right to be heard is a persistent form of bigotry.”

Still, he said he bristled when some Catholic politicians who dissented from doctrine were threatened with excommunication.

“It’s unfortunate for the bishops to equate pro-choice with pro-abortion,” he told The New York Times in 1990. “That’s too broad a label to apply to Catholic politicians.”

That same year, he expressed relief when Pope John Paul II issued a document on education that urged Catholic universities to maintain their fidelity to Catholic education, but that also recognized the legitimacy of academic freedom, institutional autonomy and the latitude to hire non-Catholic faculty. (In 1984, the Fordham faculty included 70 Jesuits; today, about 24 Jesuits are teachers and administrators.)