Notre Dame v. Catholic U
Or Obama v. Boehner. Two years ago, conservative Catholics were upset when Notre Dame honored President Obama with the commencement address and an honorary degree. Now a group of Catholic scholars have signed a petition protesting Catholic University's decision to make House Speaker John Boehner this year's commencement speaker. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that
[i]n advance of his speech, more than 75 Catholic academics have sent Mr. Boehner, who is Catholic, a strongly worded letter that says his record in Congress strays from one of the Roman Catholic Church’s core teachings, preferential treatment of the poor, according to the National Catholic Reporter. Welcoming a politician to speak and be honored at a Catholic college’s graduation can be fraught, as the University of Notre Dame learned when it invited President Obama in 2009.
Meanwhile, over at NRO, Father Robert Sircio of the Acton Institute weighs in:
[W]hat strikes me about this letter to Speaker Boehner is how reactionary it is. Instead of seeking to contribute to a creative discussion about how we best meet the needs of the poor in a time of economic difficulty, its authors cannot even begin to contemplate that there may be better ways to address such problems than government welfare programs. For a group of people who, I suspect, pride themselves upon having “progressive” views, their attachment to broken models from the past is rather perplexing and frankly, tiring.
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Jun '10
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
Doesn't Boehner know that Jesus wanted us to send 50% of our silver coinage to Caesar, so that Caesar could keep half of it and use the other half to buy political support from the poor?
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
Bill,
Actually, the Catholic scholars didn't sign a letter protesting Catholic's decision to make Boehner commencement speaker. Rather, they sent a letter to Boehner saying he's a bad Catholic for supporting a particular budget.
I wrote about some of the other differences between this blistering letter and the outcry over honoring Planned Parenthood's #1 defender at GetReligion.
My big question is what these Catholic scholars wrote, exactly, about that issue (since assent to the Catholic teaching on abortion is non-negotiable while people can differ about the most prudential way to serve the poor) and, more recently, about previous speaker Nancy Pelosi's views -- ranging from abortion to vouchers.
Sep '10
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
That's pretty rich coming from tenured academics. Perhaps they can lend a helping hand to the working poor: non-tenured, adjunct faculty, the trireme rowers of the modern university.
Jun '10
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
Notre who?
I see a lot of Xavier, CUA, Notre Shame on that list. Lots of "SJ" too. Ah, these folks, secularists don't care what they think, nor do Catholics who actually follow the teachings of the faith. I can see why they're so angry. Kind of like the NCR, nobody cares what they think. At all. So they try to be scandalous to attract readers. Kind of sad really.
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
It strikes me as a sad argument. They know that the Democratic Party's absolute support for abortion is completely at odds with church teaching. So they don't defend it. Instead, they are left to argue, "the Republicans are as bad as we are."
Jun '10
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
Mr. McGurn: As a non-Catholic, I don't follow the inner workings of Roman Catholicism, so I'm looking for enlightenment. Are these scholars vestiges of the "liberation theology" days or is this kind of liberal Catholicism a permanent feature based on a different tradition?
May '10
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
The outrage against Republicans amongst certain members of Catholic faculties has always struck as contrived. Progressivism runs against very core elements of Catholic teaching and the only way to reconcile these issues, apparently, is to cry "the other guy is worse". Mollie is correct. How the United States federal government best serves the poor is a question for political debate and not the domain of the Church--the Church's role is to serve the poor in its own way, spiritual and temporal, and remind its members of our obligation to do the like. The Church teaching on the sanctity of life, however, is non-negotiable.
Jun '10
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
Liberal Catholicism has been firmly in place since my childhood. I had a priest teach religion to my classmates in 1976 and he brought in condoms during the sex-ed segment. When a deacon brought a bus load of us to DC to march against Roe v Wade he pulled a "prank" and jumped on top of us as we lay in sleeping bags at the home of a gracious right-to-life organizer who put us up for the night. I didn't datre tell my parents!
I attended a Notre Dame run roundtable last Fall that included EJ Dione and three incredibly liberal Catholics....one or two were ND faculty. The discussion was turned into a sanctimonious reproachment to us Catholics in the audience for not caring about the poor and failing to follow the Church's call for social justice. My suggestion that we all want to help the poor, but we can differ on how best to do that, was unwelcome to say the least. The panelist got downright snippy.
Current Catholic high schools, in my experience, teach social justice and spend very little time on Catholic Doctrine. It's truly shameful.
May '10
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
As a Catholic and former seminarian I feel that I am grounded in the Church's teachings fairly deeply, although I don't claim to know everything. And Catholics like me, which there are many, will see right through this shanagan. Remember it was Mother Theresa who told the people she was serving "you must work if you want to eat." The thing that needs to be realized is that so many of the academics at these University's are just as secular as you would find at Berkley or UW "Moscow", and they use the location of their liberal indoctrination as a weapon against the very Catholics they are teaching. The ones who are truly Catholic are from the era of the 60's and 70's when there was a liberal invasion into the clerical society which is the biggest reason why we had the Priest scandal. This is just a continuation of that problem. What will turn the Church around and it's teaching institutions is more conservatisim that is being demonstrated by Pope Benedict and great Cardinals like newly installed Raymond Burke, who was my former Diocesian Bishop.
Jan '11
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
So many issues. Where to begin?
There's a huge distinction between (1) the goals of social programs, and (2) the method by which they're financed. The whole point of these conservative budget proposals is that (2), the financing, is unsustainable. They're headed for a disaster, where the programs will be destroyed anyway. As Paul Ryan says, we're not trying to destroy the safety net ... we're trying to save it. Unfortunately, the signers of this letter assume that any change to these programs is evidence of abandoning the poor.
You've heard of the race card? This is the Poor Card. When they play the race card, liberals try to shut down discussion by alleging that their opponents are secretly racist. The Poor Card works the same. It tries to shut down discussion by accusing the opponent of sinful motives. Not only is it intellectually weak, it's morally dishonest.
Two hundred words is probably a wise limit, because on these issues I could easily churn out volumes. Let me stop here and take a very long breath.
Jan '11
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
Sorry - can't help myself.
This resurrects an issue that has bugged me for years, especially during my days in the Jesuits. There were some (not the majority, but some) who lived their faith through "social justice." But their understanding of social justice was entirely political, and for that matter, utterly liberal. They thought it was Christian to attend peace rallies, and that soon became a moral imperative -- you weren't Christian unless you were for "peace" (where peace was code for pacifism).
The clergy carries a degree of authority (at least it used to). The collar is like a badge. It tells people that you've been trained in theology. But there are too many ideologues who've used the collar as a badge to enforce their own private political agenda.
For me, the tell-tale evidence here is that nowhere did they invite discussion. They were trying to compel Boehner (through their credentials) that he must bow to their political perspective.
Aug '10
Re: Notre Dame v. Catholic U
The Catholic Church is a pretty big tent,they don't come much bigger.And it has more than it's fair share of Trojan horses-Catholics For Choice come to mind.I came through a Jesuit education with my innate conservatism completely intact, burnished even. I'm sure lots of my schoolmates came through with their innate socialism equally unshaken. These "academics" are blowhards: maybe they put on fake cop uniforms every other day?