Former commissioner of baseball Fay Vincent has resigned from the board of Jesuit-run Fairfield University (in my hometown) because of the ouster of dissenting editor Thomas Reese from the Catholic magazine America.

He has also refused an honorary degree from Bridgeport’s Sacred Heart University, also a Catholic institution.

Vincent, an honorable baseball commmissioner, has steadily and quietly shown himself as an honorable man. His protests may have no larger impact, and, as if he knows that, he has not publicized them. And yet, they reflect an individual act of conscience far more powerful than anything Benedict XVI has yet done.