Ex-Congressman Who Chose Priesthood Still Active as Teacher, Liberal : Religion: Robert F. Drinan shows neither pain nor regret for his decision. His forum now is the classroom and his subject is one that stirs the Jesuit juices: legal ethics.

A decade ago, Pope John Paul II told Father Robert F. Drinan that he must choose between the priesthood and serving in Congress.

The collar that Drinan still wears speaks of his choice.

In his office at Georgetown University Law Center, Drinan pulls out a thick volume of church law and reads aloud: “No priest or nun may hold any office. . . .”

“They changed canon law after my case,” he says. “Now, it’s very clear. They legitimized their preference. It’s all spelled out, with long footnotes about Drinan.”

He sums it up with a bit more bite:

“The Pope threw me out,” says Drinan, who is known for espousing liberal causes as a U.S. representative from Massachusetts.

On May 5, 1980, Drinan accepted the Pope’s order “with regret and pain.”

But neither pain nor regret is evident in his chosen role as Drinan the priest. Nor is it surprising that he chose a ministry in the Jesuit order, the priesthood of intellect.

His forum now is the classroom; his subject is one that confronts conflict, challenges certitude and stirs the Jesuit juices: legal ethics.

Drinan greets his 7 p.m. class, seated at desks in seven rows in a large, cinder-block room painted blue. Four television sets are suspended from the ceiling, but they are silent.

Legal ethics?

“Anyone who says that legal ethics is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, will have to leave the room,” Drinan had joked earlier.

Now, he is asking questions.

“Does a lawyer have an obligation to report on his fellow lawyers when he sees something wrong?”

He tells of a lawyer in Chicago who was suspended for a year, caught between the competing demands of the attorney-client privilege and the obligation to report another lawyer’s wrongdoing.

“Was there an injustice?” Drinan asks his students. “Should he have gone to jail, had his finger cut off, or what?”

Drinan moves out from behind the lectern, paces, hands shoved deep in his pockets, continuing in a strong, raspy voice.

“There’s a lawyer in New York who represents the bad lawyers. He seems to enjoy this line of work. Maybe you’ll get into legal ethics as a career after this midsummer night’s dream?

“No?”

Drinan scrawls case citations and legal rules on a blackboard, then selects a book from a desk covered with staggered piles of books. He licks his thumb and turns a page.

“We now come to a very juicy subject: Should you turn in your brother and sister lawyers?”

Drinan interlocks his fingers, pulls them apart, laces them back together.

“What to do? It’s not black and white. That’s the nature of it.”

Drinan’s fingers splay up, framing his balding head.

“Would you require every lawyer to have malpractice insurance? There would be a whole new wave of litigation. It would bring up more problems than it would solve.”

Drinan folds his hands on his chest.

“Confidentiality,” he says. “This is the biggie. This is going to haunt you all of your life. Lawyer-client privilege.

“It’s based on the theory that somewhere in society there must be secrecy, that someone needs a father confessor.

“We’ve had it for 400 or 500 years, and for 400 or 500 years lots of people have been banging on the desk and saying, ‘Why do these clowns have this?’ ” Drinan bangs on his desk.

The 90-minute lecture is over.

“Most of his students are repeats,” one of them says as they leave the room. “He has a real strong following here.”

Drinan has never been one to avoid controversy, and he has never lacked a following.

He can tick off the activities that drew the Vatican’s attention to him: Opposition to the war in Vietnam, opposition to the draft, his leadership in the abolition of mandatory retirement, his work within the House to abolish the Internal Security Committee (formerly the Committee on Un-American Activities).

He mentions his campaign for the release of Soviet activist Natan Sharansky, the legislative work on civil liberties, crime, copyright and bankruptcy.

“I am grateful to have had these opportunities as a moral architect,” Drinan says. “I can think of no opportunities more worthy of the involvement of a priest and a Jesuit.”

When he gave up his seat representing Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District, he did not give up his voice or abandon his causes. For two years, he was president of Americans for Democratic Action, one of the most outspoken liberal political organizations.

In addition to teaching, he continues to write and speak.

His interest in the ethical conduct of the legal profession led to the founding three years ago of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, which has won praise as an important source of scholarly ideas and information on the issues that lawyers and judges face.

A recent issue included articles on legal malpractice, lawyer advertising and whether elected judges should disqualify themselves from cases involving campaign contributors.

Drinan, who is the journal’s faculty adviser, said: “There has been a renaissance of legal ethics in America, and this is the bible.”

There is more to the Drinan agenda, and much of it stems from his experience as a congressman--concerning human rights, civil rights, arms control.

He has written three books since leaving Congress. The latest is “Cry of the Oppressed--The History and Hope of the Human Rights Revolution.”

Drinan takes credit for persuading the American Bar Assn. to endorse the Civil Rights Act of 1990. He soon will become chairman of the Bar’s committee on individual rights.

He has received 20 honorary degrees, 11 of them since he left the House.

What does he miss about Congress?

“I still use the swimming pool,” he said. Then he added, with a laugh: “The taxpayers pay for the towels. . . . I guess the thing I miss most is the parking perks at the airport.”

There was, of course, more to Drinan’s government career than that.

He was in the thick of the battle to end the war in Vietnam, the issue on which he was first elected.

“Mr. Speaker, I urge all of these people to make war on war,” Drinan said in a 1971 speech.

His congressional papers--520 linear feet of them--are housed at Boston College, where he was a law professor and dean of the law school from 1956 until 1970.