Catholic Bishop Won't Attend Loyola U-New Orleans Graduation Over Abortion
This just in from LifeNews.com:
New Orleans, LA -- The archbishop of New Orleans is criticizing Loyola University for planning to honor a pair of pro-abortion politicians. He says he will not attend commencement ceremonies at Loyola University this weekend as a result. The university is offering a collective honorary doctorate to the Landrieu family, which includes Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu and her brother, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. Both support legal abortion. Archbishop Alfred Hughes said he was disappointed about the honor, and had told Loyola’s President, the Rev. Kevin Wildes, of his opposition to the decision to honor former Mayor Moon Landrieu, his wife, and their nine children. “Not all members of the family have been faithful to the church's teaching regarding public policy,” Hughes said in a statement. The archbishop said he would boycott the commencement because he did not want to “confuse the faithful” by giving the “impression that it is appropriate to include in an honor anyone who dissents publicly from Church teaching.”
The archbishop's statement cited an agreement reached in 2004 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. That agreement stated that Catholic institutions should not “give awards, honors, or platforms to those who act contrary to church teaching on fundamental moral principles.”
Jesuits oust lay helper
London Tablet has this, via Natl Cath Reporter:
A US Jesuit conference official has been forced out of his job after writing an article in a Jesuit national newsletter that advocated open church dialogue with homosexuals. The news comes a week after Thomas Reese SJ resigned as editor of the influential Jesuit magazine America after years of pressure from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over the journal’s content and editorial line (The Tablet, 14 May).
Erik Meder was summoned to meetings with his immediate supervisor, Fr Jim Stormes SJ, and the executive secretary of the US Jesuit conference, Fr Tom Gaunt SJ, as soon as his article “Strangers No Longer: Who is the Other Among Us?” appeared in the April/May 2005 issue of National Jesuit News. Following the meetings, Mr Meder resigned as the outreach coordinator for the Office of Social and International Ministries at the Jesuit Conference, a position he had held for about 10 months.
See The Tablet for the rest.
Commencing right now
"As a Catholic university, St. Xavier [University] promotes the vigorous discussion of a wide range of societal issues," said Nick Mariano, a spokesman for the school. "Although [Farley's] views have been interpreted as controversial, she has a long history of being a champion of human rights and social justice,"
reports Chi Trib. Issue is whether to have as commencement speaker someone who holds Vatican-verboten positions, such as this Sister Margaret Farley, who is apparently soft on abortion and o.k. with stem-cell work..
Perfect. Let her be introduced as vigorous discusser of wide range of societal issues who stands opposed to the teaching authority of Holy Mother Church in certain key issues, whom we of St. Xavier present to you as an example of our being “not church [but] an institution of higher education,” to borrow from what Loyola U.-Chicago spokesman Kelly Shannon told Trib, explaining why Loyola is on solid ground with its speaker, a biochemist and advocate of embryonic stem cell research.
These are wonderful teaching moments for the introducer, probably the university president, who in each case can announce proudly what his or her institution stands for. No problem.
San Fran no-shows
Neither LexisNexis nor Google has anything for “San Francisco pope mass,” a story that died the death after a 4/10/05 San Francisco Chronicle column told of the apparent boycotting of a memorial mass for Pope John Paul II, judging it as a sign of Catholics vs. City Hall in that most homosexual of big cities. No elected city official was among the more than 3,500 in attendance, who included reps of every religious sphere imaginable by most people plus “at least 20 consuls general” representing other countries, reported Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross.
“I had previous plans,” said one supervisor (one of 11, what Chicagoans would call aldermen). Another had to attend her daughter's second birthday party. The mayor, a Catholic who had met the pope three times (!), had a conflict — and not only that, neither could he find ANYONE to REPRESENT HIM (!). He considered it not cricket (“off base”) to complain about the governmental absences, as the archdiocese did, calling such complaining no way "to achieve harmony." (Ah harmony, that will-o’-the-wisp mourned so often by public figures facing CONTROVERSY when all they want to do is govern, proclaim, and in general bask in the limelight.)
A third supervisor, not knowing when he was ahead, however, said he hadn't gotten his invite until Tuesday afternoon for the Tuesday night mass, but that quite candidly, he wouldn't have gone anyhow and "would probably be more apt to attend when they have the first gay marriage at St. Mary's.” Of course.
Blago lies!
Ill. Gov. Blagojevich says a pharmacist is “in no position to decide who might or might not be someone you sell [contraceptives] to.” He was responding to Cardinal George calling for him to rescind his directive that they must sell “contraceptives, including the morning-after pill,” as the Springfield State Journal-Register put it, “even if the sale goes against their personal beliefs.”
But does Gov. Blago think the issue is the customer, not the product? And as to the product, the morning-after pill is not a contraceptive but an abortifacient. It does not prevent conception but aborts it, dislodging the fertilized egg so it can’t get nowhere on its otherwise inevitable way towards becoming a little baby.
Lots of people don’t buy that formula, but shouldn’t newspapers take responsibility here, being fair and balanced and letting readers decide?
