A Look Back: Liberal Professors Didn't Get What They Wanted

Note: It is a rare day indeed when I use a post to America Magazine to make a point. You can be assured that the point is about dissent which that magazine is the best source of. Usually I use Catholic sources but this will have to do. I wonder how exactly this guy "ministers" on campus?

San Jose Employs Dissenter as Professor and Campus Minister

Ron Hansen is a contemporary "Catholic" novelist, a married deacon in the liberal diocese of San Jose, California, and member of the Campus Ministry staff at the Jesuit Santa Clara University, where he is also the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., Professor--especially of "creative writing."

His religious opinions in the April 25, 2005, issue of America magazine entitled "What Should the Next Pope [after John Paul II] Do?":

The first thing I would like to see changed is the current restriction limiting priesthood only to those who are male and celibate. Also, the questions of Humanae Vitae should be revisited. A culture of suspicion, particularly concerning the American church, seems to exist in the Curia now. I find it unnecessary and in many ways evil. I hope the next pope will ratify the brilliant new English-language Sacramentary that has been waiting, unused, for too long. And I would like to see intensified an ecumenical outreach, especially to those Protestant denominations with which we have much in common.

(http://www.americamagazine.org/gettext.cfm?articleTypeID=1&textID=4136&issueID=528)

His endorsement of a liberal Protestant Bible with "inclusive" language:

"I HAVE USED THE HARPERCOLLINS STUDY BIBLE FOR LITERATURE CLASSES AND FOR MY PRIVATE PRAYER. THE NRSV [New Revised Standard Version] TRANSLATION IS OUTSTANDING." (http://www.nrsv.net/purchase.html)

Thus, he dissents from important matters of Catholic discipline (clerical celibacy) and infallible teachings on faith (priestly ordination only for baptized men) and morals (the "questions" of Humanae Vitae: marriage as well as the authority of the papal magisterium and of the natural moral law). Also he thinks highly of two literary works which (while being translations rather than novels) have both been discredited by the Holy See especially for their use of inclusive language and "deconstructivsm" (the text means whatever the writer or translator wants it to mean); so much for his literary tastes.

Heresy Not Corrected at Bishop's University

Note: People such as this professor, allowed by their Catholic University presidents to openly defy and degrade Catholic Church teaching from their safe tenured perches, are what got this writer to start this blog in the first place. The professor is only partly right. It is lukewarm assent and even open dissent from Humanae Vitae that undermines the Church. The dishonest reaction by CUA is typical these days, claiming that "private opinions" held by faculty members are OK when the opinion is obviously quite public or we wouldn't know about it. If strong action were taken by the university, terminating or publicly rebuking this professor, it would not only send a clear sign that the university is indeed Catholic, but would also defeat the professor's argument. Doing otherwise confirms it - that the leadership in the Church does not support Catholic moral teaching.

"Dishonesty at Heart of System" Keeps Catholic Church "Pretending" on Birth Control, CUA Prof Says
Catholic society says Catholic University prof undermining Catholic Church's "message of sexual purity"
By Peter J. Smith

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A history professor at Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C. has blamed Paul VI's 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae," for creating what she calls "paralysis" in the Catholic Church that constitutes "dishonesty at the heart of the system." The 1968 encyclical was a response to calls during the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s to permit artificial birth control; Pope Paul VI, however, surprised those agitating for a loosening of the Church's "rules" on sexuality, by instead teaching that the use of artificial contraception is a grave sin that would harm human love and have disastrous effects upon society.

"Nothing was as devastating to the Church's credibility as Humanae vitae and the paralysis it generated," CUA History Professor Leslie Woodcock Tentler told the National Post, a national paper in Canada, for an article on the document's upcoming 40th anniversary.

"It makes for dishonesty at the heart of the system. Do ordinary Catholics believe it's a mortal sin? No, they do not. Do they believe their leaders think it's a mortal sin? No, they do not. Yet we keep pretending."
Tentler has taught at CUA as a history professor since 1998, and made the comments for the July 12 article "A hard pill to swallow."

Patrick Reilly, President of the Cardinal Newman Society, which lists CUA among the most orthodox Catholic institutions, said Tentler was completely out-of-line in her remarks.

"At a time when all Americans, whether Catholic or not, are coming to the realization that the 'Sexual Revolution' has destroyed lives and tarnished souls, Professor Tentler is using her influential position at the U.S. bishops' university to undermine the Church's message of sexual purity," Reilly told LifeSiteNews.com.

However this is not the first time the professor, who teaches at an institution founded by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and committed to presenting Catholic orthodoxy to its students, has been critical of the Church for its stand on artificial birth control.

In an April 23, 2004 article in Commonweal, "A bitter pill: American Catholics & contraception," Tentler criticized the US bishops for developing what The New York Times described as "an easily understandable booklet," presenting the Catholic Church's reasons against artificial contraception.

Tentler maintained in the article that the teaching on contraception creates "major credibility problems for the Church" and said of Catholic leader Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput "he - along with many younger advocates of a harder line on contraception - simply underestimates the damage done to the church by Humanae vitae."

Tentler went on to contest "the bishops' seeming assumption that collectively reiterating the church's teaching on contraception will have only transitory negative effects on the laity." She concluded her article saying that both priests and laity "deserve better" than an "episcopal fait-accompli" about why artificial birth control is wrong.

Tentler also was a contributor to the one-sided PBS documentary "The Pill," and has written a book called "Catholics and Contraception: An American History."

Philosopher Janet E. Smith's review of the book said Tentler "maintains that as Catholics become more mature, they reject their Church's teaching on contraception."

LifeSiteNews contacted Tentler several times over several days through e-mail to ask her if as a Catholic and a professor she assented to the Church's teaching in Humanae Vitae. While Tentler did respond to one of the e-mails, she did not clearly state whether or not she accepted the teaching in Humanae Vita.

Comment was also sought from CUA; however, in a response to LifeSiteNews, a spokesman for the university neither addressed the substance of Tentler's statements in the National Post nor Tentler's position on Humanae Vitae.

"The Catholic University of America is the national university of the Roman Catholic Church in our country. As such and because of its special status as a pontifical university sponsored by the bishops of the United States, The Catholic University of America fully embraces all the teachings of the Catholic Church in their entirety," CUA spokesman Victor Nakas said in a statement. "Although some members of its community may privately hold contrary positions on some matters - as may be the case within the Roman Catholic Church at large - the university itself professes an unambiguous institutional commitment of fidelity to the Church and all its teachings."

However Reilly told LifeSiteNews that Tentler's criticism of Humanae Vitae fly in the face of her responsibility as a Catholic educator. Reilly quoted Pope Benedict XVI's April 17 statement to Catholic educators: "any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission." "As a historian, she violates the principles of academic freedom by wading into matters properly discussed by theologians," Reilly continued. "As a Catholic historian at a Catholic university, she has an added obligation to support the mission of Catholic education - which Pope Benedict describes as providing 'a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth.

'"Read the National Post article "A hard pill to swallow":http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=649220

Read Prof. Leslie Tentler's April 23, 2004 article in Commonweal, "A bitter pill: American Catholics & contraception": http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_8_131/ai_n6242935/pg_10?tag=artBody;col1

Read Janet Smith's review of "Catholics and Contraception: An American History"http://aodonline.org/aodonline-sqlimages/shms/faculty/smithjanet/publications/HumanaeVitae/CatholicsandContraception.pdf

Read the transcript of the PBS documentary "The Pill": http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/filmmore/pt.html

To contact respectfully Catholic University of America's President:

Very Reverend David M. O'Connell, C.M.
The Catholic University of America
620 Michigan Ave., N.E.
Washington, DC 20064
Telephone: 202-319-5100
E-mail: cua-president@cua.edu

Notre Dame Faculty Senate Scores are in -- Hetrodox Faculty 1, Pope Benedict, nothing

Notre Dame Faculty Senate Scores are in -- Hetrodox Faculty 1, Pope Benedict, nothing
7/5/2008 6:49:00 PM -www.projectsycamore.com

"The University should not compromise its academic aspirations in its efforts to maintain its Catholic identity." Notre Dame Faculty Senate, April 9, 2008

On April 17, 2008, the Pope, in his address to Catholic educators, described a Catholic university in terms of the fullness of its Catholic identity. The day before, the Notre Dame Faculty Senate urged that the University's "academic aspirations" take precedence over its Catholic identity.
This startling disjuncture evidences both the degree to which secularization has already taken hold at Notre Dame and also the grave risk that this process will continue until the University's claim to Catholic identity has been entirely undermined.

The Pope delivered a pastoral address that was warmly received. He chose not to discuss any of the particular issues that have troubled some educators. Rather, he held up a radiant image of a truly Catholic university as the proper goal for all Catholic institutions.

The address has been comprehensively reported, and we need not replicate that coverage. The text itself is its own best guide (link above). We recommend in particular the National Catholic Reporter's overview and the commentary of George Weigel.

We will, however, discuss certain elements of the address pertinent to issues that have arisen at Notre Dame.

We defer to our next newsletter an analysis of the Pope's address in relation to the Vagina Monologues controversy. Here, we describe the collision between the recent statement of Notre Dame's Faculty Senate (the "Senate"), on the one hand, and both the Pope's address and Notre Dame's Mission Statement, on the other.

Both the Pope and the University's constitutive documents describe a university in which faith and reason together infuse the life of the institution. Thus, for example:
The Pope: "The Catholic identity of a university demands "that each and every aspect of your learning communities reverberates with the ecclesial life of faith."

Notre Dame's Mission Statement: "A Catholic university draws its basic inspiration from Jesus Christ as the source of wisdom and from the conviction that in him all things can be brought to their completion."

To this end, the Mission Statement declares: "The Catholic identity of the University depends upon, and is nurtured by, the continuing presence of a predominant number of Catholic intellectuals" on the faculty.

We have repeatedly described how this essential foundation of Catholic identity has been seriously eroded. All agree that under the Mission Statement a majority of genuinely committed Catholics is required. Yet, the proportion of Catholics has declined from 85% in the 1970's to about 52% today. Worse, with a reduction to account for dissident and nominal Catholics, there is no longer a faculty sufficiently Catholic to sustain the school's historic claim to Catholic identity.

The Mission Statement tells us so. And still worse, as we have shown, the Administration's new goal of hiring 50-plus percent Catholics is a recipe for turning Catholics into a permanent minority. The demographics of an aging and rapidly retiring Catholic cohort tell us so. (see, New Faculty Hiring Policy).

The Senate statement, to which we now turn, is striking evidence of the attenuation of Catholic identity that has already occurred as well as a portent of more to come.

The Faculty Senate Statement

The Senate is elected to represent the faculty "in the formulation of policy affecting the entire life of the University." Its "Response to University's Initiative on Hiring Catholic Faculty" was directed at statements of Father Jenkins and Provost Burish respecting Catholic identity and the Mission Statement.

The Faculty Senate opened by describing how it had canvassed faculty opinion in order to "speak for the entire faculty." It then proceeded to urge the demotion of Catholic identity to secondary, even tertiary, importance. Concomitantly, it disparaged the Mission Statement requirement of a majority of Catholic faculty and even the Administration's inadequate 50-plus percent hiring goal.

The statement is animated principally by a driving ambition for recognition of Notre Dame as a top-tier research university. An important subtext is the aim that the University's "commitment to racial, ethnic, gender, and religious diversity" take precedence over hiring Catholics. There is, the Senate warns, "widespread concern among the faculty that too narrow a focus upon Catholic hiring will seriously jeopardize our chances of achieving [these] other two goals."

Still, the Senate says reassuringly, "[T]here is no reason why Notre Dame cannot...remain a Catholic university." All that is necessary is to move the goal post, so to speak, by repealing the mission statement requirement of a Catholic faculty majority. Thus, the Senate asserts, while "the number of Catholic faculty is a significant component...of the Catholic character of the University," it is "not the primary determinant." It is necessary only that there be a "significant presence" of Catholic intellectuals." Accordingly, the administration "should not impose numerical targets."

What this all amounts to is summarized in the Senate's jarring first recommendation:
"The University should not compromise its academic aspirations in its efforts to maintain its Catholic identity."

A faculty in which committed Catholics predominated surely would invert this declaration to read:

"The University should not compromise its Catholic identity in its efforts to achieve its academic aspirations."

And while the Senate doubtless did not speak for every faculty member - 500 of some 800 faculty members responded to its questionnaire, and surely they were not of a single mind - the Senate's statement does correspond with the results of a 2003 study by Baylor scholars that we have previously described. There, a solid majority of the faculty opposed taking religion into account in hiring.

Conclusion: Of course diversity is important, and seeking top-tier research status may be a worthy goal as well, though not all would agree. But the soul of Notre Dame is its Catholic identity; that identity is in jeopardy; and once lost it would never be regained. A secularized faculty would stand in the way. In contrast, improving diversity and academic standing are long-term goals that, if affected at all, would not be foreclosed by according priority to the most urgent need, shoring up Catholic identity

Nevertheless, the Senate has proposed offering up a Catholic Notre Dame as the price of admission to the inner circle of secular universities. Surely the Senate does not expect those in governance to embrace this policy. What it may hope for is silence or a muffled reaction that pronounces all goals as important and assigns no priorities. Such a mixed-signal environment, together with the existing inadequate hiring goal, is an open invitation to the further weakening of Catholic identity.

####
Project Sycamore Officers and Directors

Officers
William H. Dempsey ('52)

President
Joseph A. Reich, Jr. ('57)

Vice President
George L. Heidkamp ('52)

Treasurer & Secretary
Directors

Richard V. Allen ('57, '58)

Dr. Daniel M. Boland ('56, '61)

Lauren Galgano ('05, '08)

Timothy M. Dempsey ('89)

Dr. John A. Gueguen, Jr. ('56, '58)

Dr. Susan Biddle Shearer ('88)

Email: news@projectsycamore.com

web: http://www.projectsycamore.com

Catholic University of San Diego Honors Radical Non-Christian Feminist With Theology Chair

Catholic University of San Diego Honors Radical Non-Christian Feminist With Theology Chair
By Peter J. Smith

SAN DIEGO, July 10, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This year the University of San Diego has awarded an honorary chair in its Catholic theology department to a radical eco-feminist theologian, who calls God "Gaia," supports abortion and contraception, and a host of other views that put her in conflict with essential Catholic and Christian beliefs. The selection comes just months after the Pope's April visit to the United States in which he told Catholic educators to be faithful to Church teachings.

The USD Department of Theology and Religious Studies says Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether is a "leading Church historian and pioneering figure in Christian feminist theology" and will accept the honorary Monsignor John R. Portman Chair in Roman Catholic Theology for 2009-10 academic year.

A USD press release says Ruether will be teaching one undergraduate course in the fall semester of 2009 and will also deliver the annual Portman Lecture on a date to be determined to USD students.

When the Portman Chair was established in 2000, USD President Alice Hayes said, "It will be a strong and palpable symbol of the depth of the university's commitment to Catholic theology as an academic discipline and another sign of the Catholic character of the university."

Oddly enough, however, Ruether has a rather undisguised rejection of and antipathy toward Christianity, especially the Catholic Faith.

A regular columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, Ruether boasts multiple professorships, twelve honorary doctorates, and an extensive list of books, including The Church Against Itself (1967), Sexism And God-talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (1983), Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (1992), Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History (2005), Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization, and World Religions (January 2005)and America, Amerikkka: Elect Nation and Imperial Violence (2007).

California Catholic Daily reports that Prof. Ruether is an advocate of women's ordination and since 1985 has served as a board member for the pro-abortion dissident Catholics for a Free Choice - now Catholics for Choice (CFC). The group has been described by the US Bishops as "not a Catholic organization, does not speak for the Catholic Church, and in fact promotes positions contrary to the teaching of the Church" and is "an arm of the abortion lobby in the United States and throughout the world."

In 2005 Ruether explained to an audience at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles her view that "Christianity is not necessarily worse than other religions, but it is the vehicle of Western Civilization."

Reuther has stated Christianity is riddled by hierarchy and patriarchy that created a social order in which chaste women on their wedding night "were, in effect, raped by young husbands whose previous sexual experience came from exploitative relationships with servant women and prostitutes."

In the CFC article "Sexual Literacy" from its Summer 2003 Conscience magazine, Ruether continued in this vein saying "The young bride went into marriage without knowledge of how to experience pleasure or prevent pregnancy."

Ruether added, "the Christian Right, Catholic and Protestant, is trying to roll back the sexual revolution by returning to a patriarchal puritanism based on a classist separation of females into 'good' girls and 'bad' girls, exploiting the bad girls while denying the good girls personal freedom."

Ruether has also rejected the notion that Man has a higher dignity than the animals in creation.

USD's selection of Reuther to the honorary theology professorship is a rejection of Pope Benedict XVI's admonition given to Catholic educators during his papal visit to the United States to be faithful to the Church and its teachings. "

Any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission," the Pope told Catholic university and college presidents in April.

Benedict also spoke openly about "the scandal given by Catholics who promote an alleged right to abortion."

State's Most Pro-Abortion Judge on the Board of Catholic University

State's Most Pro-Abortion Judge on the Board of Catholic University
By Tim Waggoner

MINNEAPOLIS, July 10, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - LifeSiteNews has learned that a notorious abortion advocate and Appeals Court Judge is holding an executive position at a large Catholic university in Minneapolis.

Judge Diana Murphy is the chairwoman of the Executive Committee for the Board of Trustees of the Catholic University of St. Thomas. However, throughout her tenure as a judge with the Eight Circuit U. S. Court of Appeals, she has consistently overturned legislation seeking to further the Culture of Life.

On September 11, 2000, the appeals court judge ruled against multiple legislators, pro-life groups, physicians and citizens, who objected to the State of Minnesota paying for abortions with their tax dollars. The federal government had banned such use of taxpayer funds and so had the Minnesota legislature. Murphy and the State Supreme Court, however, found the State ban on funding to be unconstitutional and ruled the plaintiffs had no standing, preventing the case from being reviewed at higher levels.

On October 25, 2006, Judge Murphy ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood, striking down legislation that would have required doctors to inform women that an abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.

Judge Murphy is also a donor and Vice Chair of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), which, according to Dr. David Pence of the DocSociety, is intent on severing the university's ties with the Church. According to its website, DocSociety is "a brotherhood of Catholic men working to restore fatherhood and fraternity among Catholic priests and laymen."

Dr. Pence and the DocSociety have been for years closely monitoring the questionable happenings at St. Thomas University.

"Why is a notorious pro-abortionist judge holding a executive position at a Catholic University?" asked Pence in a LifeSiteNews interview.

Pence said that one might expect that given that the chairman and vice-chairman of the university Board of Trustees are the former Catholic bishop of the diocese, Archbishop Flynn, and former Vicar General of the diocese, Rev. Kevin McDonough, the board of the Catholic university would be composed of members who preserve Catholic teachings.

But considering the track record of Archbishop Flynn and Rev. McDonough, Pence said he is not surprised that pro-abortion Judge Murphy is chairing the Executive Committee for the Board.
Archbishop Flynn retired from the diocese after years of complaints by faithful Catholics over his handling of a host of scandals involving homosexual activists both within and without the archdiocesan administration. Under his rule, a notoriously pro-homosexual parish, St. Joan of Arc, was allowed to continue openly supporting the Gay Pride parades and the homosexual lifestyle. The parish's opposition to Catholic teaching was so brazen that it resulted in a 2004 rare direct intervention by the Vatican. Flynn was named by homosexual political activists as one of the US's four most "gay friendly" bishops.

McDonough came under fire in 2006 after he attempted to brush off the rampant homosexuality in the diocese, stating, "I don't believe in this archdiocese there has ever been an active subculture of homosexual priests who were sexually active and justifying their behavior."
McDonough's public assertion was surprising, especially since his own brother William McDonough, a priest (active as such at least until 1998) in the diocese, is on public record going against Church teaching on homosexuality.

To add to the controversy, LifeSiteNews covered a story in November of 2007 that saw the board vote unanimously to remove a 125 year-old bylaw that declared the chairman and vice-chairman of the board should be the sitting Bishop and Vicar General of the Diocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. The board, headed by Flynn and McDonough, made this strategic move just five months before Archbishop Nienstedt was to be installed as the new archbishop of the Minneapolis diocese, thereby preventing him from assuming the position of chairman of the Board of Trustees of St. Thomas University.

The board of directors also voted to re-install Flynn and McDonough as chairman and vice-chairman for an extended five year term. The move was feared to be an effort by the university to override the authority of and possible reforms by Archbishop Nienstedt, Flynn's more orthodox Catholic coadjutor bishop who has since succeeded him as head of the archdiocese.

The vote thereby extended the contracts of chairman Flynn and vice-chairman McDonough for five more years, after which the board could vote in whomever they desire to fulfill the roles - essentially eliminating the Church's and, more specifically, Nienstedt's role in the university.
Archbishop Nienstedt's authentic Catholicity was not welcomed by the Board of Trustees after he said he would not accept a proposed plan by one of the board members that sought to merge the school with a medical association, because the move would involve teaching abortion procedures as part of the curriculum. This happened only weeks before the vote was cast that saw the removal of the bylaw.

The spokesperson for St. Thomas University did not respond to calls by press time.

Catholic Boston College Sponsors Panel Focusing on Homosexual Couples

Note: For those who believe the scandal has passed and all is well in the Archdiocese of Boston, read this closely. A Catholic institution is promoting immoral counterfeit arrangements between homosexuals and the Church leaders are hiding and doing nothing.

Catholic Boston College Sponsors Panel Focusing on Homosexual Couples

BOSTON, MA, June 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today criticized Jesuit administered Boston College for sponsoring and hosting Love Across Boundaries, which is being advertised as "a panel conversation with Boston couples who focus on their own interracial, interfaith and same-sex Love Across Boundaries". Featured participants will include Paul McLaughlin, Assistant Dean of Harvard College and his homosexual partner Jason Shumaker, Assistant Director of Financial Aid at MIT.

The event, sponsored by the New Center for Arts and Culture and Boston College's Office of the Provost, will be held this afternoon and this evening at BC's Bapst Library as part of Bloomsday Boston, the annual celebration of James Joyce and his novel Ulysses. Among those reading excerpts from the book will be former Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O'Neill III, who is a longstanding supporter of legal abortion.

The Catholic Action League has called the event "another shameless betrayal of Catholic principles by the leadership of Boston College and its parent religious order, the Jesuits".
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle stated: "No reasonable person could be expected to believe that the Catholic Church is serious in its opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage as long as Catholic institutions publicly affirm homosexual relationships and prominently showcase pro-abortion political figures. Boston College, with the complicity of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus, continues to flaunt its infidelity to Catholic moral teaching and callously compromise what is left of its Catholic identity, while the Archdiocese of Boston, through its silence and inaction, functions as its enabler".

"This disgraceful episode is one more example of the systemic collapse of Catholic loyalties in the very leadership of the Church in the United States"

LifeSiteNews attempted to contact the Archdiocese of Boston, but they were not immediately available for comment.

URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061605.html

"Catholic" University Hires Homosexual Director for Gay Campus Centre

Note: Georgetown is the gift that keeps on giving for those of us looking for evidence of apostasy in Catholic higher education. They're so far gone they don't even know it. Is this their response to the Pope's call to fidelity?

Catholic University Hires Homosexual Director for Gay Campus Centre

By Tim Waggoner

Washington, D.C., June 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic University in the U. S., has hired lesbian Shiva Subbaraman to act as director for its new Homosexual Campus centre that is to be opened in the fall.

Subbaraman was formerly the associate director of a homosexual equity office at the University of Maryland campus in College Park. After the school threatened to cut funding for the office, Subbaraman started looking for a new job.

The pro-homosexual newspaper, The Washing Blade, reports that Georgetown decided to start the LGBT Equity office after two "anti-gay incidents" occured on campus. In the first case a student was arrested and accused of assaulting a homosxual student and shouting anti-homosexual slurs at him. The case, however, was dropped due to lack of evidence. In the second incident campus police prevented a group of homosexuals from presenting a petition for the LGBT resource center to the university president. According to the Blade, the police said they were restricting access to the building due to the fact that there was a special event going on inside.

Georgetown University, which is fully funding the new homosexual campus centre, including paying for two full time staff members, has been known to proclaim itself a Catholic institution while going out of its way to support things dramatically opposed to Catholic teaching, including abortion, homosexuality and certain bioethical issues.

In one of the more obvious examples, the institution's High School Bioethics Curriculum Project seeks to provide high school teachers literature on bioethics in an attempt to "enrich their high schools' curriculum." The curriculum however, conveys messages contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, and poses questions on bioethical quandaries that are worded in such a way as to lead students to make conclusions that oppose Catholic morality.

One sample of the curriculum referring to anencephalic babies (available at http://highschoolbioethics.georgetown.edu/units/unit1_3.html) states that, "They will never be able to think or achieve what is called 'personhood.'"

"Yet there is general consensus that heroic measures should not be used to keep them alive. In fact, anencephaly may be one of the few medical conditions that all doctors agree is futile to treat," continues the sample.

After statements such as these, the section describes a mother who was forced to go to the Supreme Court to force doctors to continue to treat her child, entitled Baby K.

The section then asks questions that seem to ascribe a monetary value to human life, such as, "Do you think individuals have the right to demand and get expensive long-term care in futile cases such as the case of Baby K?"

Similar questions ask: "Baby K lived for 2.5 years; her medical bills totaled half a million dollars. Do you think this is an appropriate use of the money? Do you think Baby K's mother's religious beliefs should trump issues of fair distribution of resources?"

The high school curriculum project is partially funded by a grant from the Greenwall Foundation, an organization known to support the culture of death. (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/1999/feb/99021705.html)

The latest news about the founding of the LGBT resource center comes as little surprise to those who have been following Georgetown's movement away from its Catholic identity:

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Catholic Georgetown University to Fully Fund Campus Gay Center
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/oct/07103008.html

SHOCKER: Catholic Georgetown U. Will Now Fund Law Students to Lobby for Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/sep/07092605.html

Georgetown, "Catholic" University Honours Abortion Crusading Jesuit
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/oct/06102506.html



URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08060508.html

The pope and the universities

Published: Friday, May 23, 2008
The pope and the universities

Pope Benedict XVI had barely left the Catholic University of America on April 17 when the Catholic higher education establishment's spin machine shifted into high gear.

One university president said that what most impressed him about the papal address to Catholic educators was what it was not: a dressing-down. Still another president cooed that she felt "affirmed." An administrator at yet another institution said that, as the pope hadn't cited Ex Corde Ecclesia, John Paul II's concerns about Catholic identity were clearly old hat.

One got the distinct impression from the spin that a lot of people thought they'd dodged a bullet --- and were grateful they weren't going home to face irate alums and dubious donors. The "Benedict loves what we're doing" blah-blah has continued ever since.

The facts, to put it gently, suggest something rather more complicated. Consider these excerpts from the Holy Father's address:

"A university's or school's Catholic identity ... is a question of conviction --- do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear? Are we ready to commit our entire self --- intellect and will, mind and heart --- to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals?"

[What percentage of this year's Catholic college and university graduates could honestly answer those questions with a convinced "Yes?" What percentage would even understand the first question?]

"While we have sought diligently to engage the intellect of our young, perhaps we have neglected the will. Subsequently we observe, with distress, the notion of freedom being distorted. Freedom is not an opting out. Freedom is an opting in --- a participation in Being itself. Hence authentic freedom can never be obtained by turning away from God."

[Might these sentences be printed, framed, and posted in co-ed dormitories on Catholic campuses?]

"We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good ... an assumption that every experience is of equal worth and a reluctance to admit imperfection and mistakes. And particularly disturbing is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of 'risk,' bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love."

[How many freshman orientation programs and student life offices on Catholic campuses would have to examine consciences here?]

"....I wish to affirm the great value of academic freedom.... Yet ... any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church's [teaching mission] and not somehow ... independent of it."

[Will the theologians at prestige Catholic universities who affirm Humanae Vitae's teaching on the morally appropriate means of regulating fertility, the Catechism's teaching on the disordered character of homosexual acts, and the teaching of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis on the inadmissability of women to Holy Orders please raise their hands?]

The spin machine notwithstanding, Benedict XVI put serious challenges before the nation's leading Catholic educators. To resolve any doubts that the pope has a different idea of what befits a Catholic college or university than a lot of the Catholic higher education establishment, however, I propose a simple test.

Whether or not to produce Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" --- a "play" that mocks the settled teaching of the Catholic Church --- has become a tedious annual ritual on many Catholic campuses. Prominent among them is Notre Dame: to the public mind, the flagship among U.S. Catholic institutions of higher education. There, the university's president, Father John Jenkins, CSC, has allowed Ensler's "play" on campus, acquiescing to the demands of some Notre Dame faculty while rejecting the counsel of other distinguished faculty members and the arguments of the local bishop.

In the patristic period, disputes within and among local churches were submitted to the Bishop of Rome for adjudication. So here's my proposal and my test-case: let Father Jenkins send Pope Benedict XVI a copy of Ensler's "play," asking the pope whether he considers this material appropriate for production or useful for discussion on a Catholic campus.

The answer, I predict, will not please the spin machine.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

"Irrational and Ridiculous" Thug Tactics of Depaul Administrators

Note: Typical how the left can frame arguments it disagrees with as "hate speech" or "intolerant" but allow the most odious of ideas such as Churchill's in the name of "academic freedom" and the exchange of ideas. DePaul is morally bankrupt and doesn't realize that in the exchange, you need to have something of value.

"Irrational and Ridiculous" Thug Tactics of Depaul Administrators to Stomp Out Conservative Views on Campus Exposed by THE STATESMAN: Independent Campus Newspaper Struggles to Represent Catholic and Conservative Views on Campus

5/18/2008 8:38:00 AM
By The Depaul Conservative Alliance and THE STATESMAN at www.depaulca.org -Joseph Blewitt, Editor-in-chief

The Depaul Double Standard: Liberty and justice for some and repression for others"DePaul is a basket case!"

These were the words of Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), on the Hannity & Colmes show in January of 2006. This description of the nation's largest Catholic university might be hard to believe, but as I continue my fourth year here, I am sorry to confirm it.

Mr. Lukianoff's statement accurately sums up the outrageous actions of DePaul's administration and far left faculty. At the same time as his appearance on the show, DePaul conservatives were in a battle with the University over their right to protest.

The University invited Ward Churchill, a favorite of liberal academia, to speak on campus. He has publicly proclaimed those who lost their lives in 9-ll to be "little Eichmanns," referring to the Nazi war criminal who oversaw deportations to the extermination camps.

When the DePaul College Republicans sought approval to hang posters displaying some of Churchill's most egregious quotes, the school created a new rule to ban the posters! Then the school officially reprimanded the DePaul Republicans for creating "propaganda."

In addition, the DePaul Republicans were subsequently banned from attending the "human rights workshop" with Churchill. Mr. Churchill, the DePaul faculty's chosen Academic and intellectual speaker, was since fired from his teaching post at the University of Colorado for plagiarism.

Read the rest here

Cardinal Newman Society Lists Dissident Commencement Speakers

2008 Commencement Speakers & Honorees

College of Saint Rose (NY), May 10, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: New York Governor David Paterson. Paterson is an advocate for abortion rights; he received a 100 percent rating from NARAL and the 2004 "Margaret Sanger Award" from Family Planning Advocates of New York State. Paterson proposed a bill providing $1 billion in taxpayer funding for embryonic stem cell research, and he has endorsed cloning stem cells for research purposes.

Mount Mercy College (IA), May 17, commencement speaker: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lt. Governor of Maryland. Townsend is a vocal advocate of abortion rights and was endorsed by NARAL and Emily's List. In her book, Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches are Mixing God, she takes the Catholic Church to task for its strong positions on abortion.

Regis College (MA), May 18, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: Massachusetts State Rep. Lida Harkins (D-Needham). Harkins has supported abortion rights, including public funding for abortions, and opposed a two-parent consent law for minors seeking abortions. She supports gay marriage and was a key leader in the defeat of a state constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

St. Ambrose University (IA), May 11, honorary degree recipient: Margaret Tinsman, former Iowa State Senator. Tinsman advocates abortion rights and in 2006 received a $1,000 campaign contribution from Planned Parenthood's state action committee known as "The Freedom Fund." In 2004, Tinsman voted against the Unborn Victims Act, which would have acknowledged unborn children as victims of violent crime against pregnant women. Tinsman has opposed legislation to supply women with information on abortion alternatives, to prevent human cloning, and to require a 24-hour waiting period before having an abortion.

Saint Edward's University (TX), May 3, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: Cokie Roberts, political commentator for ABC News and senior news analyst for National Public Radio. Roberts has publicly attacked Pope Benedict XVI as "really lacking in the theological virtue of charity," "an extremely controversial choice" and "the most conservative voice of Catholicism." In her syndicated column with husband Steve Roberts, she has espoused abortion rights and ridiculed pro-lifers as "extremists." The Robertses characterized the federal ban on partial-birth abortion as "off the track" and "cynical games-playing" by pro-life activists. They have argued that the authority of the Catholic bishops has been significantly weakened, in part because of their teaching on homosexuality and contraception: "It's as if they are asking to be ignored."

Santa Clara University School of Law (CA), May 17, commencement speaker: Judge Phyllis Hamilton, United States District Judge for the Northern District of California, San Francisco. In 2004, Hamilton struck down a federal ban on partial-birth abortion as unconstitutional, claiming "the act poses an undue burden on a woman's right to choose an abortion." In contrast to a similar case in New York that same year, Hamilton prevented Justice Department attorneys from presenting as evidence the medical records of women who had partial-birth abortions, key to the government's argument that the gruesome procedure is unnecessary. Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee said that "Hamilton's deep personal hostility to the law has been evident throughout the judicial proceedings."

University of Notre Dame Graduate School (IN), May 17, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: Marye Anne Fox, chancellor of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). As UCSD chancellor, Fox is an architect and leader of one of the nation's foremost initiatives in embryonic stem cell research, the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, which will open its $115 million facility at UCSD by 2010. UCSD research is partly funded by California's $3 billion grant program for embryonic stem cell research, independent of ethical restrictions that President George W. Bush has tied to federal funding.

What Is a Catholic University?

Cardinal Arinze's Homily on Christendom's 30th

FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, APRIL 27, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the homily Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, gave April 20 at the closing Mass of the 30th anniversary celebrations of Christendom College.

* * *

1. A Day of GraceThe Eucharistic Celebration is our supreme act of worship of God. It is the highest tribute of thanksgiving which the Church can offer to our Creator. It is therefore very fitting that on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Christendom concludes its celebration of its 30th Anniversary with this Solemn Mass.

As we gather at this Mass, we are in spiritual union with the Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI, who is at this time celebrating the Holy Eucharist in New York City. Having commemorated yesterday the third anniversary of his election to the See of St. Peter, we are in a special time of grace. For a Catholic educational institution such as Christendom College which has a particular and deep link and attachment to the Church and her Magisterium, this is reason for added joy.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, for thirty years Christendom College has given distinguished service as an authentic academic institution. It has performed admirably to live, to show and to share its Catholic character. And it has educated citizens that are a credit to Church and society. These will now be the points for our reflection.

2. An Authentic University or College

A university or college is expected to be a centre of studies and research, a community of teachers and students who are engaged in the joint love and pursuit of knowledge, and an institution which is at the service of the wider society.

Christendom College has admirably fulfilled this role. As a liberal arts college, it has given dynamic leadership to its students on how to discover the true, the good and the beautiful, and how to pursue these goods which are so deserving in themselves. The students are educated to work hard to be free and to remain free persons by disciplining themselves to choose the good, both for themselves and for others. This is the avenue that leads to becoming men and women of virtue, of justice, of prudence, of temperance, of fortitude and of knowledge. This leads to true wisdom. The students are taught not to be afraid of the truth, of reality.

When students in the beginning of their higher studies acquire such a solid foundation, then they can safely go on to pursue a vocational training, a technical specialization or a career. Christendom College has done well in helping students acquire this indispensable foundation.

3. A Catholic College or University

Christendom College is above all a Catholic educational institution. It does not just give proof of a rigorously serious member of the national and international community of knowledge and research. It importantly expresses its Catholic identity through an explicit profession of the Catholic Faith, and through studies given unity and a sense of direction by sound philosophy and authentic Catholic theology.

The College knows that the true, the good and the beautiful is finally God himself. And God has manifested himself to us in his Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. The splendour of divine truth, goodness and beauty shines forth in Christ. In the Gospel just read, Jesus tells us: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me" (Jn. 14:6). If we follow the light of Christ, we shall have true freedom and be able to arrive at wisdom. "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (Jn. 8:31-32).

A genuine Catholic university or college, therefore, distinguishes itself by developing and showing a harmonious relationship between faith and reason. Revealed truth and truths acquired by human reason and experience both come from the same God. They do not, and cannot, contradict each other. As the First Vatican Council says: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth" ("Dei Filius," 4: DS 3017).

For this reason the Second Vatican Council encourages this harmony and therefore the contribution of a Catholic university or college under the light of the Christian revelation. It says: "Therefore, if methodical investigation within every branch of learning is carried out in a genuinely scientific manner and in accord with moral norms, it never truly conflicts with faith. For earthly matters and the concerns of faith derive from the same God. Indeed, whoever labours to penetrate the secrets of reality with a humble and steady mind, is, even unawares, being led by the hand of God, who holds all things in existence, and gives them their identity" ("Gaudium et Spes," 38: cf also Catechism of the Catholic Church, 159).

All this means that a Catholic university or college would have abandoned its identity and specific role if it did not allow the light of the Catholic faith to bear on such areas of study as history, psychology, ethics and the humanities in general; if it did not see the necessity of reference to higher truths or morality as authoritatively interpreted by the Magisterium; if, in short, it did not allow theology to be a core subject.

A Catholic university, says the Servant of God, Pope John Paul II, needs to develop "courageous creativity and rigorous fidelity" ("Ex Corde Ecclesiae," 8). "While each discipline is taught systematically and according to its own methods, interdisciplinary studies, assisted by a careful and thorough study of philosophy and theology, enable students to acquire an organic vision of reality and to develop a continuing desire for intellectual progress" ("Ex Corde Ecclesiae," 20). Pope Benedict XVI spoke on 4/17/08 of the duty of intellectual charity towards the students by their educators (cf. p. 6 of his Address to Catholic Educators).

We thank God that Christendom College has for thirty years rendered this service.

4. Alumni, a Credit to Christendom College

The alumni are a credit to Christendom College. By their fruits you shall know them (cf Mt 7:16). The College has equipped its students to ask fundamental questions: Where do we come from? Why do we exist? Where are we going? How can we get there? What have great men and women done in the past in their response? What does our Catholic faith teach us?

Is it any surprise that the students learn to be the salt of the earth, the leaven in society, lamps set on a lampstand, a city set on a hill, or, in brief, children of light (cf Mt 5:13-16; Jn 12:36)?

They therefore want to contribute to make this world a better place. They reject negativity and a withdrawal syndrome attitude towards society. They get involved. They work to build on what past generations have handed on to them and because they are Christians, they are people of hope which is finally based on Jesus the Saviour, who gives meaning, synthesis and a sense of direction to our life endeavours (cf "Spe Salvi," 27).

Is it any surprise that alumni have distinguished themselves as teachers, bank workers, medical practitioners, scientists, legal experts, sales people, industrialists and managers in various institutions?

Deserving of special mention as alumni whom Christendom College education has inspired to answer God's call are priests and consecrated people. I am informed that there is a total of 53 priests and 45 monastics, religious sisters and brothers originating from this institution. This is eloquent testimony to the service which Christendom College has rendered to Church and society.

5. A PrayerMay God bless the founders of Christendom College.

May eternal rest be the reward for those of them who have gone before us from this valley of tears.

We pray for the President, the Board Members, the Faculty and the Students of Christendom College. May they continue to build on Jesus Christ who is the cornerstone, as St. Peter tells us in the Second Reading of this Sunday.

May God bless the benefactors and all friends of Christendom College and all of us here gathered, and grant us daily growth in wisdom and grace.

By the intercession of Our Lady Queen of Christendom, may this dear institution ever flourish in its contribution towards restoring all things in Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the

Life.Francis Card Arinze 20 April, 2008
c Innovative Media, Inc.

Xavier University (LA) Hosts McCain Event

Note: Senator McCain's stance on this issue is perplexing because most scientists have said that there is little hope of any cures actually coming from this highly speculative research. Instead, adult stem cell research shows the most promise and technology has rendered the need for actual human embryos moot. McCain has come out strongly anti-abortion but that just echoes the GOP platform and there are plenty of other reasons for a Republican to appoint conservative justices, mostly related to commerce. Catholic colleges need to be careful to ensure that offering a speaker's platform to any politician is not a tacit endorsement of their entire range of issue positions.

Xavier University (LA) Hosts McCain Event
From Cardinal Newman Society

Presumed Republican Party nominee for President, Senator John McCain, held a campaign event today at Xavier University in New Orleans, La. Although McCain is strongly opposed to abortion, he supports embryonic stem cell research in opposition to the Catholic Church's moral teachings.

After touring the city with Governor Bobby Jindal in the morning, the Senator was scheduled to hold a private meeting with Xavier President Norman Francis and university officials, according to a McCain campaign news release. This morning McCain held a "town hall" event at the Catholic university to field questions from the public.

"Senator McCain's public support of embryonic stem cell research conflicts with the Catholic faith espoused by Xavier University," said Patrick Reilly, President of the Cardinal Newman Society. "Unless Senator McCain conforms his defense of innocent human life from abortion with a similar defense from destructive research, Xavier should not be lending resources and facilities to his campaign."

"Particularly troubling is the unavoidable implications of a Catholic university president meeting with a political candidate, who is touting the relationship to the media," Reilly said.

Presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barrack Obama - both supporters of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research - have made several appearances on Catholic campuses during the 2008 campaign.

The Cardinal Newman Society was one of 18 major Catholic organizations that endorsed a Statement of Principles Regarding Catholic Institutions, Sanctity of Life and Political Engagement in February 2008. Among the issues that were identified for vigilance regarding political speakers was support for embryonic stem cell research.

Written By: CNSweb
Date Posted: 4/24/2008

Too Catholic?

Note: This one is a new angle even for this blog. The college president wants to restore Catholic faith and morals to the school but the monks and students are resisting. "What's all this heaven stuff about," they seem to be saying. Well good for Mr. Towey and shame on the monks. Towey has answered the call to "make disciples of all nations" while the monks have sunk into the secular abyss of our culture.

As I wrote in the post about Assumption College, these new presidents have their work cut out for them. They have to act fast to make their changes before the forces of secularization overtake them and they either acquiesce or are replaced.

Too Catholic, Even for Many Monks

Saint Vincent College
H. James Towey

Whining and grumbling is frowned on at Benedictine institutions like Saint Vincent College. Benedict of Nursia, the Sixth Century cleric whose guidelines for living daily life underpin the philosophy of the Roman Catholic order, characterized "murmuring" -- the sort of internal bickering and in-fighting that all too often characterizes academic life -- as immensely disruptive to community living, and essentially banned members of the order from engaging in it:

For if the disciple obeys with an ill willand murmurs,not necessarily with his lips but simply in his heart,then even though he fulfill the command yet his work will not be acceptable to God,who sees that his heart is murmuring.

Few sins are as great in Benedictine philosophy as murmuring. Which makes the widespread expressions of unhappiness from staff members and students at Saint Vincent all the more noteworthy. A month ago, nearly three-quarters of the Latrobe, Pa., college's tenured faculty members wrote to the college's Board of Directors about the "unparalleled crisis" facing the institution because of the "systematic and pervasive disregard for collegiality and shared governance" showed by President H. James Towey. They focused most sharply on his decision to short-circuit a search for a vice president for academic affairs and to rewrite the college's accreditation self-study to limit unflattering material, and what they describe as his misleading comments about what he did and why.

Interviews with nontenured professors and staff members in recent weeks suggest that many of them share the impressions of the tenured faculty, but believe they lack the job security to speak out.

Note: "...lack the job security to speak out" means lack of courage to speak what you mean unless there are no consequences. That definition fits somewhere inside Ivory Tower for sure.

And last week, a group of student leaders sent their own letter to Towey, endorsing the faculty's concerns but adding their own. Although they declined to make it public, several students say that they and many of their peers at Saint Vincent are uncomfortable with the college's drift to the right (it made its first appearance in 2006-7 in a national ranking of the top 10 most conservative colleges) and with the president's unilateral decision to impose an Internet filter aimed at gambling and pornography sites, among other things.

Note: In other words, they were mad they couldn't get their gay porn downloads and had to cancel their subscriptions.

Towey, who came to Saint Vincent two years ago from the White House, where he oversaw the Bush administration's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, plays down the level of opposition to his presidency, acknowledging in an interview that there have been some "growing pains" but that he believes he and his critics on the faculty are "working in a renewed spirit of cooperation."

He writes off much of the dissension to a clash of cultures, noting that he is "new to academia" -- "I'm only a sophomore" as president, he says -- "and maybe the pace of change I'm accustomed to is different from what people are used to." He attributes some of the concerns about him to residual hard feelings among some faculty members over his 2007 invitation to President Bush to speak at Saint Vincent's commencement, and says that "if I were in their shoes, when I heard that the new president of Saint Vincent was coming from the Bush White House and was a stranger to academia, I wouldn't have been too happy."

To those students and others who contend that he and the Right Rev. Douglas R. Nowicki, who is archabbot and chancellor of the college, have pushed a hard religious line and increasingly pulled the institution to the right, "the reality is that this is a Catholic Benedictine college, and I embrace its identity and its connection with the church," Towey says. While some students and faculty members have bristled at what they describe as his overbearing emphasis on faith and his repeated references to the time he spent working with Mother Teresa, Towey does not apologize for his perceived orthodoxy and emphasis on the college's religious grounding.

"I said in my inaugural that my hope is that one day we're all together in heaven," the president says of Saint Vincent's students. "For individuals here at the college, setting their sights on a diploma is too low. They should be setting their sights on heaven."

It might be easier to dismiss the consternation about Towey's presidency off as unhappiness from liberals or heathens if less of the criticism was coming from the Benedictine monks on the campus. Saint Vincent has a strong concentration of monks because of its affiliation with the nearby Saint Vincent Seminary, which includes one of the world's largest monasteries, and the fact that monks -- who, unlike lay faculty and students, are bound by the Benedict's prohibition on "murmuring" -- have been among the most vocal critics of the institution as led by Towey and Father Nowicki speaks volumes.

"The mechanics of the university are grinding to a halt," says the Rev. Mark Gruber, one of a small number of the more than 15 faculty members, administrators and students interviewed for this article who agreed to be quoted. "The tenured faculty took the lead, fortunately, but there are a lot of other people who share their views, and who are tired of the overriding of collegial discourse, the discounting of the consensus way of decision making, and what I see as the obfuscation of our Catholic mission."

Note: Outside of academia this is called whining, a technical term for being put in one's place when an authority figure actually rules with authority.

Serious words, those, and ones that faculty and other critics at Saint Vincent say they did not offer lightly -- and insist that they did not intend to make public.

Two Years in the Making

Jim Towey came to Saint Vincent in July 2006, following four years heading President Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and after a career in which he worked for Florida's former Democratic governor, Lawton Chiles, and was the chief lawyer in the United States for Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity order of nuns.

His inaugural address focused on his hope that Saint Vincent under his leadership would produce students who could help change a culture that he described as desperately in need of change: "A culture that does not revere life and hold it sacred from conception until natural death; a culture that does not esteem marriage and family life and the complimentary nature of the sexes; a culture that abandons its elderly, discards its poor, and defaces its environment; and a culture that is so highly sexualized and violent that God-given human dignity is routinely degraded, is a culture that is living lies and in need of renewal."

Leaders at Saint Vincent were said to be drawn to Towey, who had no background in higher education, in part because they believed he would help raise the well-respected college's national profile. (He has maintained close ties with the Bush administration, gaining an appointment to the federal panel that advises the education secretary on accreditation, where he has been a voice calling for more accountability for colleges in the accreditation process.) Many faculty members say they had high hopes for him because of his energy and enthusiasm, and because he often acknowledged, in a self-effacing way, how eager he was to learn about working in higher education.

Starting last year, however, faculty leaders began talking among themselves about what they saw as a combination of troubling developments since Towey arrived in 2006: departures of significant numbers of senior administrators and faculty members (which Towey and his aides characterize as the usual turnover with a new administration, but critics say amounted to more than that); the president's seeming lack of interest in the academic life of the college; and, at the same time, his hands-on involvement in faculty hiring, which greatly exceeded that of previous presidents at Saint Vincent.

What had been topics for private discussions among professors catalyzed into something larger this academic year with two major events. In the first, Towey and his aides last fall criticized as "unrelentingly negative" a draft of the college's self-study report for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which had been developed through a process that included significant involvement by various constituencies on the campus.

In September, the president's office essentially took over the preparation of the document, producing a document that was widely portrayed as having stripped out virtually all critical language. Only after vigorous complaints from faculty and staff leaders did Towey's aides reconvene the original self-study committee to consider reinstating language that had been dropped. That negotiation restored some of what had been cut, but paragraphs questioning a perceived tilt in the ideologies of the outside speakers invited to the campus and suggesting that a decline in the tone of dialogue on the campus were excised from the draft and not restored.

Towey's chief spokesman, Don Orlando, concedes that administrators rewrote the document but notes that the self-study steering committee "approved the document" after some of the administration's changes were "adjusted to accommodate the request of the faculty.' He also points out that the early and final drafts were both posted on Saint Vincent's Intranet for comment, though he declined to make copies available to a reporter.

The other precipitating event was the search for the college's vice president for academic affairs. After approving a process to identify candidates for the key position, Towey scuttled the search committee called for in that process after all of its members but one had given a negative rating to an internal candidate seen as the president's favorite, John Smetanka. Three candidates were subsequently interviewed as finalists, and a reconstituted "host committee" organized those meetings. One of the three candidates was widely viewed as unqualified, and Towey, after seeking the opinions of the host committee, hired Smetanka, an assistant professor of physics at Saint Vincent who directs its honors program and opted not to be considered for tenure.

As recently as two weeks ago, at a campuswide forum, Towey told students that all members of the search committee had chosen Smetanka as either their first or second choice, a characterization that misrepresents the situation in two ways, faculty critics say. First, most members of the original search committee deemed Smetanka not to meet the qualifications laid out for the position. And by the time the members of the "host committee" were asked for their opinions, only two viable candidates remained. So being their first or second choice is no endorsement, they say.

Orlando acknowledges that Towey (who he describes as "very anxious for change at Saint Vincent") short-circuited the search process after deciding "that the process needed to change in order to bring it to a conclusion more quickly than the committee might have preferred... The fact that the process changed at the end is really irrelevant, particularly in light of the person that he hired... The procedure for the hiring of a vice president is really one that can be determined by the president."

Most faculty members probably wouldn't disagree that presidents have broad latitude to do what they wish. What troubles them most, though, and ultimately led them to take the unusual step (for a campus like Saint Vincent, where "murmuring" is discouraged) of writing to the Board of Directors, was that the president established processes and then abandoned them. That behavior is part of a pattern of actions, they wrote to the board in February, in which he has violated the principles of collegiality and shared governance that are central to any college but especially to one where the Benedictine concept of community is supposed to be "nourished by mutual respect, appreciation and charity."

“If the president were in his first year, one might consider excusing these deeply regrettable actions.... But the time is long since past that this president could have learned the culture of the institution, and made it work to his advantage.... We call on you to make the president understand the necessity of working in a collegial manner with all members of the community... In the absence of clear and decisive action on your part, it is unclear how long this faculty, or the dedicated staff and administrators of Saint Vincent College, can continue to do the jobs we love so well, and this institution will be damaged beyond recognition."

Or, as one faculty member put it: "He insists on saying he's going to play by the rules, in fact that he is playing by the rules. Except when he gets caught not playing by the rules, he apologizes and say, 'You didn't tell me I had to play by the rules.' The inability to be straightforward and truthful is extraordinarily disorienting. And it leads people to assume the worst all the time, because then you won't be disappointed."

Seeping Into Public View

Faculty leaders insist that they sent their letter only to the members of the board and to Towey, hoping to stimulate an internal conversation, and that they were surprised when it was appended to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last month entitled "St. Vincent's president a lightning rod for criticism."

In a statement, Susan Sommers, chair of the faculty council, said: "Articles dealing with difficulties between the faculty and administration at Saint Vincent College have recently appeared in the press. We are neither a contentious nor confrontational group, and had hoped to deal with the matters discussed in these articles internally. Faculty have taken extraordinary measures to maintain the confidentiality of documents to which the articles refer. We have also avoided making statements of substance to the press. Faculty deeply regret that members of the administration and of the Board of Directors have chosen to do otherwise. In the interest of fairness, it must be noted that their statements are at odds with what many faculty members believe to be true about the situation on campus."

Administrators dismiss the suggestion that they were the ones who released the faculty's letter or a stinging response, quoted in another article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, from Father Thomas Acklin, a member of the Board of Directors, that called the faculty's letter "so unprofessional and the allegations so unsubstantiated that I have troub