Notre Dame Scholars Begin Lining Up Behind Efforts to Re-Catholicize Notre Dame

Notre Dame Scholars Begin Lining Up Behind Efforts to Re-Catholicize Notre Dame: Author and Prof. Ralph McInerny Calls Sycamore Trust a Model of the Restoration Efforts

8/24/2008 10:37:00 AM
By William H. Dempsey (ND Class of 1952) -Sycamore Trust

Alma mater, By Ralph McInerny
The University of Notre Dame has always been blessed by loyal and generous alumni. This has never been truer than in the case of Project Sycamore, whose president is Bill Dempsey '52, retired after a most distinguished legal career that began with a clerkship under Chief Justice Earl Warren. Dempsey has rallied fellow alumni to address current campus outrages, and thousands of alumni have subscribed to the Sycamore website (www.sycamoretrust.org). The extremes of alumni sentiment might be called unquestioning, on the one hand, and carping, on the other. Project Sycamore, as evidenced by Dempsey's letters to ND president Father John Jenkins and his analyses of university proposals, is a model of calm and reasonable yet unrelenting friendly questioning of recent events on the South Bend campus.

The trigger for the Project was the incredible waffling of Father Jenkins about, and ultimate allowing of, campus presentations of the infamous and pornographic play The Vagina Monologues. The very title is an affront. Imagine Penis Ponderings, Malice Aforeskin or Anal Analyses. That such a patent effort to corrupt the young and to trash common morality, to say nothing of the enforcement and enlargement of that morality by Catholic moral teaching, should not require five minutes of reflection before being dismissed. Yet the unthinkable has happened, again and again. If only Father Jenkins had simply sought his mother's advice, none of this would have happened.

A meeting of bishops, scheduled to be held at Notre Dame, was moved because the prelates were given no assurance that the Monologues would not be shown again. Bishop John D'Arcy had previously, and publicly, expressed his dismay to Father Jenkins, in firm but gentle pastoral terms. Jenkins' latest compromise has been to meet the Monologues with -- dialogue; that is, to schedule discussions of this monstrosity after it is enacted. The problem is that those who had not fled gagging beforehand did not stay around for the "academic" discussion that followed.

The controversy brought to the surface the disturbing fact that a significant number of Notre Dame faculty are pleased as punch at the showing of the Monologues and characterize objections to it as an assault on - you guessed it - academic freedom. This led Project Sycamore to examine the alarming drop in the percentage of Catholics on the faculty, now hovering around 50 percent. To its credit, the administration too is concerned about this - a concern that would have been quickened by Pope Benedict XVI's remarks during his recent visit to the United States. The plan to remedy this that was proposed by the university revealed, upon analysis by Project Sycamore, that, far from meeting the problem, it would exacerbate it; the analysis is a model of the incisive comments one has learned to expect from Project Sycamore.

The administration would be less than human if they did not wish that Project Sycamore would just go away. What can one do with a group that does not accuse you of malice but rather exhibits the naivete and ineffectiveness of your actions? I doubt very much that Project Sycamore will become deciduous soon. They love Notre Dame too much for that. They are not trying to score points against Father Jenkins. They are appealing to his undoubted intelligence and good will. In the end, it is, in its way, a lovers' quarrel.

A few issues ago, The New Criterion ran a symposium on the parlous state of higher education. All of its exempla horribilia took place on secular campuses. Alas, many of them are what Notre Dame has come to refer to as peer institutions, a designation which is perhaps more wishful than factual. The New Criterion was only one of hundreds of lamentations about our colleges and universities that have appeared over the last decade or so, some of them written by former presidents of as well as by professors in those institutions.

Notre Dame is not a secular university. It is a Catholic university, as indeed were all the original universities. Universities arose, as John Paul II pointed out, ex corde ecclesiae. What the times require is not for Catholic universities to become more like their chaotic secular counterparts, but to recover and celebrate the great tradition in which they stand. The future of Catholic universities could be even more golden than their past, but only if they set aside an indecent respect for the opinions of mankind and celebrate the complementarity of faith and reason.

No one could imagine that Father Jenkins would take exception to this ideal. Only a churl would imagine that there is some plan to secularize Notre Dame. Our president is a good and holy priest, although a philosopher. Project Sycamore and Father Jenkins are children of the same mother, the lady atop the golden dome. She will bring them together in her historic roles as Advocata nostra and Sedes sapientiae.

#####

Notre Dame professor Ralph McInerny gave the inaugural Schall Lecture,"There was a man! On learning to be free" , at Georgetown University on April 10.

A NEW LOW, EVEN BY JESUIT STANDARDS: Georgetown Univ.

Our take: I don't want to be accused of stating the obvious but this pathetic display is completely contrary to the mission of a Catholic University and not befitting the oldest Catholic school in America. There is a clear teaching on the issue of homosexuality and anything that condones, empowers or glosses over the morally and naturally disordered act of sodomy is contrary to it. Sex outside marriage is sin. homosexual sex is sin plus disorder. Yet at Georgetown it is being glorified with a "temple" and is draining resources, energy and attention away from the mission of the school. Teaching truth isn't even a consideration since it might offend someone. Shame, shame, shame.

A NEW LOW, EVEN BY JESUIT STANDARDS: Georgetown Univ. Announces Director for Their New Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered, and Queer Resources Center

8/24/2008 9:34:00 PM
By www.thehoya.com -Connie Parham

Matthew 18:6 - He that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. As painters work to put the finishing touches on the newly created LGBTQ Resource Center, the center's first director, Sivagami Subbaraman, has been working to make a presence for the center as students arrive back to campus.

Subbaraman arrived at Georgetown four weeks ago to begin preparing the center, located adjacent to the Women's Center on the third floor of the Leavey Center.

GU Pride began pushing for the resource center last fall after two alleged hate crimes against Georgetown students, kicking off a university-wide movement led by GU Pride for increased inclusion of and education about the LGBTQ community on campus.

In October, University President John J. DeGioia approved several of GU Pride's requests, including the formation of three working groups that would address reporting, resources and education. Four months later, DeGioia announced his approval and backing of a proposal created by the working group on resources for an LGBTQ resource center.

After DeGioia's announcement, a committee began a nationwide search for the LGBTQ director. Subbaraman said she was invited to two interviews on campus, and, in May, Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson issued a letter to the university community naming Subbaraman as the center's first director.

"I really hope the center will be a space for LGBTQ students, faculty and staff as well as non-LGBTQ people," Subbaraman said of her vision for the center.

Subbaraman, originally from India, came to the United States almost 26 years ago to complete her education, attending graduate school at the University of Illinois, where she studied English and Women's Studies. Most recently, Subbaraman served as associate director of the University of Maryland's Office of LGBT Equity.

Subbaraman said she has a broader vision for the center that extends beyond her experience at the University of Maryland.

"I learned a lot from [Maryland]," she said. "But I think what I will bring to this job is where LGBT issues fit into general diversity."

Subbaraman said that one of her visions for the center is to help LGBTQ issues to be seen as part of a larger set of diversity issues, rather than in its own category.

"I don't want to be put back into the closet," she said.

Subbaraman said she plans to hire a full-time program coordinator by the end of the fall, as well as possibly a few student employees.

Subbaraman said at this early point, she is not sure what other concrete goals she has for the center and that she will first need to start a discussion with faculty, administrators and students.
"I need to build on that momentum and keep up that energy," she said of the work done by students and faculty last year.

Subbaraman said that working at Georgetown, which has such a strong Jesuit identity, will bring a "different set of challenges" than those that came with working at the University of Maryland, a school without a religious affiliation. She added, though, that she attended Catholic school in India, which made her "very comfortable in the Catholic education environment."

"I feel the university is committed to making this succeed," she said. "The center exists. That says something."

Jack Harrison (SFS '09), co-chair of GU Pride, also said he hopes to work closely with the new director in developing programming for the year.

While she said she could not comment on GU Pride's demonstrations last year, she did say that she hopes to work with the group to look at new ways to lead the community.

"In general the model that prevails is activism," she said. "We need to create other forms of leadership that will take us from the activist mold."

Harrison said GU Pride is looking to launch efforts this year to make the campus more "trans-friendly" by working to provide bathrooms and better housing options for transgender individuals.

In addition, he said he believes it is important to bring more diversity to the organization, particularly in bringing a greater variety of political views to the group.

Harrison said Subbaraman's work as the first director of the center will help to catalyze these efforts.

"Having a person who can advocate for our issues is a big achievement," he said.

He said Subbaraman has already emerged as a leader over the past week in training and giving presentations to members of various groups such as Young Leaders in Education about Diversity, New Student Orientation and Residence Life.

"I think that as people become slightly more sensitized, that will start to have a big effect on how LGBTQ people are treated on campus," Harrison said.

Subbaraman said she will be holding an open house on Tuesday afternoon and plans to make herself visible among students and parents throughout move-in weekend.

Looking on as workers finish construction of a large window next to the entrance to the center, Subbaraman said she hopes to continue the hard work of students and faculty in order to raise awareness for the LGBTQ community at Georgetown.

"The message it sends is 'we are open,'" she said of the new window. "We are open. We have nothing to hide."

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 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.

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 trouble understanding how it can further a spirit of dialogue that it seeks."

"There's no reason why we would feel compelled to share them," says Orlando, the Saint Vincent spokesman. "This difference of opinion is just an internal matter, and the issues really don't impact the public in any way."

Despite the faculty's strong language about Saint Vincent facing an "unparalleled crisis," Orlando characterizes the current unhappiness as typical cyclical unrest that occurs at all institutions, where "sometimes faculty morale is down, sometimes administrative morale is down, sometimes hourly employees morale is down." In this instance, he says, the only people who have spoken out publicly are "a small portion of the faculty -- those tenured faculty who have the luxury of tenure, which enables them to be braver in their outspokenness."

Wouldn't the fact that 31 of the college's 42 tenured faculty members signed the letter suggest similar levels of dissatisfaction on the part of others on the faculty of about 120? a reporter asks. "I would never generalize their views as more than the view of those people who signed the letter," Orlando says.

During an interview last month, Towey is sanguine about the turmoil around him. He says that he took the faculty's letter seriously -- "clearly I have work to do to communicate better" -- but also defends his performance so far, citing upticks in enrollment and academic standards, a rising endowment and, he emphasizes, a faculty pay increase.

He also says he doubts that the tenured faculty's view is representative of the "great majority" on the campus, and tells a reporter that "your story would have been more interesting in early March." Since the Board of Directors met at that time and both backed the president's performance and urged him to work more closely with faculty members, Towey says, professors are "getting a better understanding of what I'm trying to do."

In the interview, Towey also virtually gushes describing how much he enjoys dealing with Saint Vincent's students, noting that he and his wife have had more than a sixth of its 1,700 students over for dinner, that he is taking a dozen to Calcutta this summer, as he has in the past, to participate in Mother Teresa's work with orphans and other needy people. "I'm loving the student life here," he says.

Which must have made it all the more painful last week when a group of students reportedly delivered to him a letter of their own, expressing their own deep frustration about his leadership of the college. While they declined to characterize the contents of their letter, several of them said in interviews that they shared some of the faculty's concerns about governance and had their own example of the president's heavyhandedness.

Early in his time at the college, before the start of the fall semester in 2006, Towey ordered that an Internet filter be instituted to block sites related to gambling, pornography and "adult or mature content." As Towey explained in the entry on his blog last fall about the decision, "Saint Vincent College, from its founding 161 years ago, cares about the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional formation of the students who come here, and seeks to provide an environment conducive to such growth. We promote academic freedom and embrace it. I made this decision because I believe the Internet filter is consistent with both worthy goals. And quite frankly, my focus is not on what we are against as a College but what we are for -- beauty, human dignity, gender equality, justice, and the pursuit of the truth."

Note; Such filters can be found on other Catholic campuses such as Franciscan university in nearby Ohio.

Students say they object not so much to the decision, which some agree may be justified, as to the way the president put it in place -- secretly, and without consultation with those subject to it. That change, and the president's constant references on his blog and in his speeches to students' spiritual health and to seeing his job as helping them get to heaven, makes students feel like they're "being pontificated to all the time," says one student leader. "He's trying to make this into a more uber-Catholic place, and it's not what many of us signed up for."

Students griping about preachy college administrators -- not such big news. But perhaps the most striking aspect of the situation at Saint Vincent's is the extent to which many of the Benedictine monks on the campus feel that, as one put it, he is "imposing his narrow view of Catholicism" on a campus with its own vision established over 160 years. It's not, they say, that they are unwilling to have their views be challenged or to see the campus "revivify a genuine Catholic tradition here," as Father Mark Gruber says.

"I would have welcomed an intellectually sound reconsideration of the best way to embody the Catholic philosophy at a college," Father Mark says. "It would be useful to take John Newman's discussion of the university from the 19th century, or even Benedict XVI's scholarly approach, and having a set of faculty discussions about what we should do. Instead, we get Mother Teresa of Calcutta a great deal and a lot of talk about heaven.

"My mission in the classroom, and our mission as a university, is to inform and enlighten, to bring the kingdom of good and of God to this world. I don't see it as my mission, or his mission, to be a preacher of revival that gets students to heaven."

— Doug Lederman

Ivory Tower Heretics Yawn Through Pope's Remarks

Note: It's a good thing they didn't use leather chairs or the sound of uneasy shifting would have been deafening as the pope addressed the heretics who run most of the US Catholic Colleges and Universities. The speech was very good but I'm afraid that by talking from a theological perspective he talked over most of their heads. These professional wafflers mostly are tuned into fund-raising and homosexuality these days, not matters of authentic witness.

Full Text From Cardinal Newman Society Website

Crises of Truth and Faith Linked, Says Pope
Addresses Representatives of Catholic Education

WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 17, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The modern "crisis of truth" is rooted in a "crisis of faith," Benedict XVI told a group of leaders and representatives of Catholic education.

The Pope affirmed this today at the Catholic University of America in the U.S. capital. He was welcomed to the campus by the university's president, Father David O'Connell, and warmly received by cheering students chanting "CUA loves the Pope."

"Education is integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News," the Holy Father affirmed.

But he acknowledged that some question the Church's involvement in education. "It is timely, then," the Pontiff said "to reflect on what is particular to our Catholic institutions. How do they contribute to the good of society through the Church's primary mission of evangelization?"

"All the Church's activities stem from her awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself," the Holy Father explained. And he went on to say that "the one who seeks the truth becomes the one who lives by faith."

Thus, the Pontiff said, a 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? Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice, and respect for God's creation? Only in this way do we really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold."

"From this perspective one can recognize that the contemporary 'crisis of truth' is rooted in a 'crisis of faith,'" Benedict XVI continued. "Only through faith can we freely give our assent to God's testimony and acknowledge him as the transcendent guarantor of the truth he reveals."

Papal pondering

Though Catholic institutions should witness to the truth of Christ, Benedict XVI affirmed, it is also observable that people are reluctant to entrust themselves to God, he said.

"It is a complex phenomenon and one which I ponder continually," the Pope confessed. "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. It is an opting in -- a participation in Being itself. Hence authentic freedom can never be attained by turning away from God. Such a choice would ultimately disregard the very truth we need in order to understand ourselves."

Catholic identity

The Holy Father said that Catholic identity "demands and inspires" more than the "orthodoxy of course content" -- "namely that each and every aspect of your learning communities reverberates within the ecclesial life of faith."

"Only in faith can truth become incarnate and reason truly human, capable of directing the will along the path of freedom," he said.

In this way, the Pontiff contended, "our institutions make a vital contribution to the mission of the Church and truly serve society. They become places in which God's active presence in human affairs is recognized and in which every young person discovers the joy of entering into Christ's 'being for others.'"

Serving truth

Benedict XVI further noted that the Church's contribution to the public forum is also questioned.

"It is important therefore to recall that the truths of faith and of reason never contradict one another," he explained. "In articulating revealed truth she serves all members of society by purifying reason, ensuring that it remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths. […] Far from undermining the tolerance of legitimate diversity, such a contribution illuminates the very truth which makes consensus attainable, and helps to keep public debate rational, honest and accountable."

The Pope thanked the representatives of Catholic education for their witness and professionalism -- which brought applause from the crowd.

The Bishop of Rome then lauded the value of academic freedom.

"In regard to faculty members at Catholic colleges universities," he said, "I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you. Yet it is also the case that 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 'munus docendi' and not somehow autonomous or independent of it.

The Pope received another round of applause when he made a "special appeal" to religious brothers, sisters and priests.

"Do not abandon the school apostolate; indeed, renew your commitment to schools especially those in poorer areas," he encouraged them. "In places where there are many hollow promises which lure young people away from the path of truth and genuine freedom, the consecrated person's witness to the evangelical counsels is an irreplaceable gift. I encourage the religious present to bring renewed enthusiasm to the promotion of vocations. Know that your witness to the ideal of consecration and mission among the young is a source of great inspiration in faith for them and their families."

At the end of the address, the Holy Father exchanged gifts with the president of the Catholic University of America. He then greeted and shook hands with some of those present.

When he left the building to head to an interreligious dialogue session nearby, he passed by the waiting popemobile to greet the cheering students waiting outside the door. Later, after taking his seat in the popemobile, he had the window rolled down and leaned out to continue waving and greeting the youth along the path.

Georgetown University Professor Says Pope Must Atone for the Sins of His Past

Sterotypical Georgetown Professor Pops Off at Pope

There will be so much hot air being blown in the Pope's direction this week that it will be difficult to pick and choose which ones to post. This professor, secure in the comfort of his cushy 21st century ivory tower feels he can judge the actions of an 18 year-old boy in Hitler's Nazi Germany who later became arguably the greatest Catholic theologian of our time.

It's not that astounding that such hubris comes from Georgetown. If you've never encountered a real Catholic moral leader, you might have trouble knowing what to think, say or write about one.

Further, if you can't be bothered to read the writings of such a man, you might be constrained to the fishbowl of dissent at Georgetown where group-think and attack have replaced theological discussion and examination.

Ratzinger was thankfully spared by Providence from the fate of a bullet in the back of his head and a mass grave in Auschwitz so that he could be a prophet of our times, one of the most challenging in Catholic history, a time when the Church's own institutions have turned on her.

But then, Providence, Church history and the papacy would be subjects not taught at Georgetown, as least not by faithful Catholics.

Campus Alcoholics Clubs to be Established at Catholic Colleges

Should Drinking Clubs be Allowed on Catholic College Campuses?

A new national group - College Drinkers/Drunk Very Drunk (CD/DVD) recently announced their intention to establish Campus Alcoholics chapters on leading Catholic college campuses. And with that, Campus Alcoholics was formed.

"We think it's time that drunks come out of the closet and fully participate in Catholic higher education," stated the group's founder. "For too long drunks have been looked down upon by other non-drinking members of the college community. At CA meeting you'll meet other drunks in a completely non-judgemental environment."

Immediately, large well-known Catholic colleges jumped on board. One in Washington D.C. at first resisted but under pressure from on-campus drunks announced the full funding of a center for alcoholics. "I never realized how many drunks we already had here!" said the college president. "There may be something about our college that attracts a lot of drunks." The facility will be built using a donation from a foreign prince.

A Catholic college president in the Midwest at first stated that drunkenness is "incompatible with Catholic teaching" but later said the group could operate on campus as long as they "get faculty sponsorship and have a panel discussion" after they get drunk. Another Midwestern College immediately established a chair for alcoholic studies. Finding an alcoholic professor was not a problem.

The smaller Catholic colleges immediately established chapters not wanting to be left behind or considered anachronistic.

A right-wing Catholic group protested that alcoholism is unhealthy, leads to loss of employment, breakup of families, depression, disease, higher suicide rates and early death. They also pointed out that many Catholic priests had problems with alcohol, problems that Bishops covered up, sometimes causing scandal.

"Nonsense" said the group's founder. "That's just old-fashioned anti-drunk intolerance and we're going to fight the haters all the way."

Another Catholic organization suggested that it would be better to treat drunks with compassion and to help them avoid alcohol and bring them to Christ through active ministry. They indicated that it would be un-Catholic to encourage drinking in any way and that establishing clubs on campus could lead to behavior contrary to the Catholic Church's values.

"Another outdated form of bigotry!" claimed the head of Campus Alcoholics. "But not to worry, we have plenty of allies on our side."

Note: There are plenty of organizations, religious and secular, that will help people with alcoholism to get off alcohol and lead healthy and productive lives. Alcoholics need to be treated with compassion but also with the truth about their physical, psychological and spiritual condition.

Next week we'll have a guest columnist from the Fat-Thin Alliance write about wiping out teasing in American high schools.