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Ivory Tower Heretics

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Friday, June 5, 2009

From Spirit Daily

FROM THE MAIL: EXAMPLES OF TEACHING AT 'CATHOLIC' SCHOOLS DEMAND URGENT ACTION

The controversy over Notre Dame (allowing President Barack Obama, a pro-choice advocate, to speak at its commencement, and more to the point, awarding him an honorary degree) raised questions about what else Catholic colleges are allowing.

Indeed, commencement speakers are but the tip of the iceberg -- as our viewers can attest.

In one case, it was recalled that a priest named Matthew Fox taught at Holy Names, a small Catholic college in Oakland, for 12 years -- until 1996 -- despite his rejection of basic Catholic teachings, his extraordinarily unorthodox beliefs (he taught in a room with a skylight, expecting UFOs), and the fact that he worked with a practicing
witch (who instructed priests, while Father Fox was big with nuns)

The examples, allegedly, and unfortunately, are multitudinous.

"My daughter just finished her first year at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska," wrote Pam Percival of Nevada. "When her father and I visited the college before her enrollment, we were impressed by the positive, upbeat attitudes of the students and many signs of faith around the campus. The address to the parents given by Father John P. Schlegel, S. J., was no less impressive -- assuring the parents that he would not let us down.

"It wasn't long, however, that we realized that we had a serious problem to deal with: our daughter was losing her faith.

"We were hearing about all the drinking parties, alcohol and boyfriends overnight in the dorms. My daughter began to miss attending some Sunday Masses at first -- and then it became the norm. She told me that not many people went, 'The church is almost empty.' Never mind going to Confession! While she was living at home, she had never missed a Sunday Mass unless she was sick.

"In addition to having her attend CCD classes, I had taught her all that I could about her Catholic Faith from good traditional Catholic resources. Now her Theology Professor, a Protestant gentleman, teaching 'Christianity in Context,' was refuting things that I had taught her. She said he made her feel like a fool. One such argument was about the contents of the Ark of the Covenant (the staff of Aaron, the manna, and the Ten Commandments) -- and how these items prefigured Jesus, His priesthood, and the Holy Eucharist. He was teaching the students that no one ever knew what was in the Ark of the Covenant and that it didn't matter anyway!"

From a Boston College alumnus, Alice Slattery, come distressing details about a male theology professor who is allegedly "married" to another man.

He teaches a course in spirituality and sexuality!

Boston College seems to be a case in need of Rome's special attention.

For 33 years, a woman named Mary Daly taught there, and that would be okay if she was not a radical anti-male activist (she believes the number of males on the planet must be reduced) and advocates research on parthenogenesis -- the growth and development of an embryo or seed without fertilization by a male.

She is perhaps best known for her second book, Beyond God the Father (1973).

"Ex-nun Mary Daly teaches lesbian witchcraft," noted a major Catholic news site. "She has written several books, including the anti-male and anti-Catholic Beyond God the Father andWickedary, a dictionary of sorts for witches.

"In Wickedary, Daly provides definitions as well as chants that she says can be used by women to free themselves from patriarchal oppression," notes Wikipedia.

"She also explores the labels that she says patriarchal society places on women to prolong what she sees as male domination of society.

In Wickedary, notes Catholic Culture, Daly defines the Beatific Vision as: "the 'face to face' vision of god in patriarchal heaven promised as a reward to good Christians; an afterlife of perpetual Boredom: union/ copulation with the 'Divine Essence'; the final consummate union of the Happy Dead Ones with the Supreme Dead One."

Daly believes, apparently, that it's the role of women to unveil the "liberatory" nature of labels such as "Hag," "Witch," and "Lunatic," we learn. She was dismissed for not allowed males into a course she taught.

"I went to Boston College from 1976 to 1980," says a viewer named Benjamin S. Joyce of Cape Cod. "I took a theology course in 'liberation theology' by Dr. James Fowler, Harvard Divinity, in the fall of 1976 (I think this was before John Paul II 'condemned' it). My friend was told by [a Jesuit in the department], 'Let me let you in on a secret, Hell doesn't exist.'"

"Sadly my alma mater, the University of San Diego, falls into this category of Catholic in name only," writes another viewer named Sandy. "Not long ago, the head of the theology department was a homosexual; there is a 'pride' club on campus. The list of 'atrocities' at USD is a long one.

"We were taught by the nuns of the Sacred Heart, and forty years ago the environment was a truly Catholic one and contributed to the spiritual formation that I treasure. There is an exceptionally beautiful chapel on the grounds of what was the College for Women. We would process there in our caps and gowns for every First Friday Mass.

"Can you imagine that happening today!"

"A 'feminist theologian' who thinks that God can be called 'Gaia,' after the Roman mother-earth goddess, has accepted a one-year honorary professorship at the University of San Diego, according to an announcement by the school, which describes itself on its web site as 'a Roman Catholic institution,'" reported a Catholic news site.

"Rosemary Radford Ruether will hold the Monsignor John R. Portman Chair in Roman Catholic Theology at USD for the academic year 2009-2010." She is also "a board member for the pro-abortion Catholics for a Free Choice (now Catholics for Choice) organization."

"I agree with your past article in regards to Rome needs to have a faster response to what is happening here with our Catholic Church and universities," wrote yet another, Carolyn Wong. "What do you recommend us lay people do? Do we contact Rome? How? Whom? And do they really listen?

"My son who is in his third year in college was accepted and wanted to attend Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. When we went to tour the college there were signs all over the campus mentioning when the gay and lesbian club would meet!

"I was shocked, and even more shocked that the many of the so-called Catholic parents had no problem with it. I would be better off sending him to a secular college where he would not be attending classes that would corrupt everything the Church has to say, rather than sending him to a Catholic College where the Jesuits would just turn him away from what is right!"

"My daughter is a 1993 graduate of Scranton University," says Chris Dailey of Ocean Pines, Maryland. "Her philosophy professor was an avowed atheist."

"Where does one go when there is no place to go?" asked viewer William E Bauer, PhD, an instructor at Western Nevada College who could find no help in questioning a theology professor who taught atheism.

"Congratulations for your courage to denounce ('the Truth shall set us free') the real issue at Notre-Dame: the subjective teaching of each individual instead of the teaching of the Church," said Eugene Belair from Ontario, Canada. "

"I am now retired but had a career in Catholic education for 31 years as a consultant and a principal and by choice returned to the classroom because I could not suffer any longer the pagan administration of our Catholic board.

"I also wish to make the following point: we, as Catholic believers, are also responsible for permitting and enduring the secularization of our beliefs and institutions."

[see also: What Father Matthew Fox taught]

[resources: The Gold Book of Prayers]

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Friday, July 11, 2008

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."

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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

University of San Diego Hosting Pro-Abortion Speaker

From the University of San Diego website:

"The University of San Diego is a Roman Catholic institution committed to advancing academic excellence, expanding liberal and professional knowledge, creating a diverse and inclusive community, and preparing leaders dedicated to ethical conduct and compassionate service."

So how can it be that, as the Cardinal Newman Society reports, "Andrea Smith, a pro-abortion activist, is scheduled to present the 2007 Eugene Labovitz Lecture at the University of San Diego on Oct. 5. It is part of the university's annual Social Issues Conference held during the first week of October.Smith is a co-founder of the feminist group Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. As part of its agenda, the organization advocates that Native American women "have the same access to abortion services as other women."

It seems once again that a Catholic University or College has completely lost its way and forgotten He whom they were founded upon. Look the Virgin Mary in the eye at the foot of the cross, with the blood of Christ running down on her, and explain how you are giving a place of honor to someone who mocks her Son, someone to whom the buthery of 48 million American babies is a "human right". Isn't there anything these Catholic Colleges can think to do that is nin accord with the Holy Roman Catholic Church that they claim to mbe a part of?

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