Catholic College Leaders Lobby Bishops to Withdraw 2004 Policy Banning Pro-Abortion Speakers

(Hat tip: Catholic Online)

LifeSiteNews reports:

June 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the wake of the Notre Dame commencement scandal, Catholic college leaders representing some of the worst violators of the U.S. bishops’ 2004 ban on honoring public opponents of fundamental Catholic teachings are lobbying the bishops to withdraw their policy.

Yesterday the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), which represents more than 200 Catholic institutions, released its summer 2009 newsletter, including a report on the ACCU’s board of directors meeting last week. The ACCU directors concluded “that it would be desirable for the [U.S. bishops] to withdraw” their 2004 policy, according to the newsletter.

The policy in question is found in the U.S. bishops’ 2004 statement “Catholics in Political Life,” which reads in part:

“The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

The bishops gather today in San Antonio, Texas, for their biannual meeting.

***
“Why is it so hard for Catholic college leaders to understand that a Catholic institution does great harm when it honors or gives speaking platforms to those who work against core Catholic values?” said Patrick J. Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society.

“The more than 367,000 people who signed The Cardinal Newman Society’s online petition and the scores of American bishops who publicly criticized Notre Dame’s honor for pro-abortion President Barack Obama clearly recognize that such actions by Catholic colleges are scandalous.”

The ACCU leadership suggests moreover “that juridical expressions of bishops’ or universities’ responsibilities should be kept to a minimum” in order to maintain a good relationship between the bishops and educators.

Reilly surmised that, in other words, Catholic colleges and universities would prefer that there are no clear rules to govern their conduct. He also pointed out that the statement implies that the educators believe that the bishops, and not college leaders, are responsible for tensions arising from scandalous activities on Catholic campuses.

“Catholic colleges and universities would like all of the privileges of being Catholic, but none of the responsibilities of being high-profile witnesses for the fullness of the Catholic faith,” Reilly said.

Allowing for the possibility that the bishops might not agree to simply eliminate the 2004 ban, but might instead draft a new policy concerning Catholic honors and platforms, the ACCU’s directors proposed that the policy “should acknowledge more clearly the differing roles of campus authorities and bishops.” Reilly said that this phrase appears to be an attempt to get bishops to refrain from commenting on internal decisions at lay-controlled Catholic institutions.

In May, ACCU President Richard Yanikoski told the South Bend Tribune that he saw a “degree of ambiguity” in the bishops’ 2004 policy. He claimed that the Church’s canon lawyers disagree whether the policy applies to speakers or honorees who are not Catholic, regardless of whether those individuals oppose Catholic teaching. Several bishops strongly rejected that same argument when it was made by Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., to defend his decision to honor President Obama.

(emphasis added)

Meanwhile, Archbishop Burke is working in the opposite direction to prevent a repeat of the Notre Dame scandal:

VATICAN CITY, June 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Archbishop Raymond Burke, the highest ranking American prelate in the Vatican has given an interview in a Catholic magazine, in which he says that Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Barack Obama was not only “profoundly shocking,” but also underscores a grave situation requiring action to ensure the incident is never repeated.

Burke is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court of appeal in the Church next to the Pope, and an outspoken advocate for life and family values. He has made headlines repeatedly for his insistence that ministers of communion should deny the sacrament to publicly and obstinantely pro-abortion individuals, especially politicians. He told the Catholic periodical, Inside the Vatican, that a number of lessons must be taken from Notre Dame’s high-profile conferral of an honorary doctorate on Obama, the most aggressive pro-abortion president in American history.

Burke said that the “betrayal of the Catholic identity of Notre Dame University” grew out of the danger of “pursuing a kind of prestige in the secular world, which leads to a betrayal of the sacred aspect of its work, namely the fidelity to Christ and His teaching.”

“So I think everybody now realizes the gravity of the situation. Also I believe that the whole situation has sensitized more people with regard to the gravity of the practice of procured abortion in our nation, that is, they realize even more how far we have gone away from God’s will for human life,” continued Burke.

“That the premiere Catholic university in the United States would give an honorary doctorate of law to one of the most aggressive pro-abortion politicians in our history is profoundly shocking.”

“Now, we cannot forget what has happened at Notre Dame,” said Burke. “We need to take the measures that are necessary so that this is not repeated in other places. If it could happen at Notre Dame, where else could it happen?”

[More]

(emphasis added)

The Mockery of the Good: "Purity Dances"

The Sunday Chicago Tribune had a front page article on the national phenomenon of "purity dances" among conservative Christians. These are formal social occasions where fathers take their daughters to formal dances, where daughters pledge themselves to sexual abstinence before marriage, and where fathers embrace the role of protectors of the purity of their daughters. If you're a young man, listen up: there is new hope here for you, for finding a pure woman to marry, even in these United States. If you're a young man, here's a great motivator for you yourself to abstain from premarital sex: be worthy of the pure woman who has saved herself for you.

Of course, the article is full of the mockery, cynicism, sarcasm, and disdain for the truly good that our present-day social customs aim at any idealism in the realm of sexuality. That mockery is, in my view, a reflection of the jaded who no longer believe in any romantic or chivalrous idealism in sexual relations. That mockery is also the terror of the guilty who don't want to see anyone achieve what they so cavalierly threw away forever. The saying is that misery loves company. In many areas of life, it is also very true, deep in the psychology of many, that mediocrity loves company. Mediocrity in sexual matters and in other matters wants to level the playing field so that excellence is flattened. Mediocrity reacts with envy, anger, and sarcasm when someone is going for the brass ring in life because, when someone else shines, they are obviously and emphatically left in the dark. The rational solution is to get out of the dark yourself, not to drag others into it.

Yet, in spite of the mockery in the article, the very fact that the article had to be written, especially in an elite, national newspaper, is very good. Some people even in our debauched United States are waking up to reality. Christians believe that we have a God-given human nature. Sin and the incessant social embrace of sin blind, deaden, and paralyze many of our natural, healthy human instincts. Ironically, in this post-Freud age, the widespread culture of promiscuity represses the truly human instinct for sexual purity. There is a natural human yearning for a pure spouse who has reserved the sexual act for marriage. We have repressed that instinct for so long in the United States that this idealistic yearning seemed all but dead and fictional, a concoction of another age, a caricatured "patriarchal" age of oppression. But nature has a way of making its comebacks because we are hardwired for the good. As an old commercial used to say, "it's not nice to fool mother nature." When we try to fool mother nature, reality bites back--hence so much widespread chaos and turmoil today in relations between men and women.

Part of the mockery of chastity comes in the classic attack that abstinence does not work--that even teenagers who pledge themselves to abstinence end up engaging in premarital sex. These critics also like to make the point that, once the teens break the abstinence pledges, they are more likely to engage in "unsafe" sex because they know nothing--or at least nothing "accurate"--about contraception. Let's take this bromide apart, step by step. First, as noted by one of the conservatives quoted in the article, virtually all teens know about contraception in today's America. Just walk into any drugstore; and you will see the products lined up in open shelves in a bewildering, vibrantly capitalistic array of colors and labels. Second, as also noted by a quoted conservative in the article, why not respect the full freedom of the teen by laying out all the alternatives, which include abstinence? As in the abortion debate, social liberals have a great fear of presenting alternatives, of presenting options other than those celebrated in the media. You have heard of politically correct thinking--well, we have among many social liberals, sexually correct thinking: you should not take seriously the option of abstinence before marriage.

But there is a more fundamental and radical critique that can be made against the argument that teens who break abstinence pledges are more likely to end up pregnant. This radical critique says that there is nothing wrong with preserving the natural link between cause and effect in sexuality: the undeniable (though not exclusive) purpose of sex is to reproduce. If x, then y. That causal connection is a big red flag: if sex leads to kids, it's a great sign that sex should be reserved for that person judged by you worthy to be a parent. When we find that person worthy of parenting our kids, we want to claim them permanently so that they stick around for the arduous task of raising and educating the kids. That arrangement is marriage. We have just reinvented the wheel for a society that thinks itself too clever to need the wheel. An unwanted pregancy is surely a great problem, especially for those in economic hardship; but we can address the problem by social compassion, by alternatives such as adoption, by re-teaching the need for abstinence before marriage, without cutting the natural, healthy link between sex and babies. Once we try to fool mother nature, we are the ones who end up as fools. Many can testify to that result.

Neutered

A recent front page article in the N.Y. Times had this headline that is supposed to elicit great civic concern on our part: "Big Rise in Cost of Birth Control on Campuses." In my experience, the story on which a journalist is focused is often not even close to being the most significant story involved in a particular set of facts. We have the "official" news story, and then we have the "real" news story. The role of analysis is to uncover the "real" news story. The ostensible "official" news story here is that college students [read: female college students] are having to pay more for their monthly contraceptive fix (whether birth control pills or various barrier devices). The "official" story goes on to discuss some arcane government regulations that, apparently, for years had the effect of subsidizing fornication on college campuses. Even I, as a lawyer, found the regulatory discussion foggy and off-putting. But the arcane legal regulations are not the real story.

Yet, even the "official" story found this social welfare program a bit odd: "Not everyone is troubled by the price increases. Some people said they wondered why college students, many of whom manage to afford daily doses of coffee from Starbucks and downloads from iTunes, should have been given such discounted birth control to begin with, and why drug companies should be granted such a captive audience of students" (N.Y. Times, Nov. 22, 2007, at above link).

What struck me as the real story are the prominent photos of two attractive female college students. The photo spreads explicitly identify their full names and their colleges of attendance. My friends, I admit it: I am shocked that these young women are willing to advertise in one of the most prominent newspapers in the world that they are sexually active outside of marriage. And not just episodically ready for sexual activity, but always ready to fornicate based on their regular monthly subscription to birth control pills. That reality is not surprising today, but I thank God that I still am capable of being shocked. One of the students even notes that she discussed with her mother how to get a better deal on contraceptives. They should rather be discussing why her attractive daughter, at a young age full of so many good possibilities, needs to be ready, always and continuously on a month-to-month basis, to have contraceptive sex.

What also struck me is how these young women and millions of others have evacuated sex of any meaning whatsoever. Once we neuter ourselves, we take any meaning out of the sexual act: we have "neutered" the sexual act. It is no longer about finding the special person whom you judge worthy to be a lifelong partner. It is no longer about finding someone you're willing to have as the father of and role model for your child. It's no longer about heroically and courageously giving one's life to another. The sexual act becomes as "neutered" as the females with a monthly subscription to contraceptives: empty of all meaning, ending up as sound and fury signifying nothing. And we wonder why marriage is delayed for so long or even skipped altogether or why marriages don't last like they used to last. Sex becomes a passionless, routine aerobic exercise dispensed at will. They have strangled a great gift to humanity, a great gift that they could have really possessed and really enjoyed for life. Forget about the official news story. That's the real news story.

Smut Merchant Makes a Biblical Slip of the Tongue

Frankly, I finally got tired of driving on the interstate highway over the Labor Day weekend and seeing gigantic billboard after gigantic billboard advertising "adult" (that is, pornographic) stores. My guess is that these merchants are especially preying on the vulnerabilities of truck drivers who, in many ways, lead a tough existence. The same billboard by the same store kept popping up mile after mile. When I saw it for, I think, the fourth time, I knew I had to write about it.

The pornographic merchant, oddly enough, calls itself "Lion's Den." Well, here, the devil has made a Freudian slip of sorts. Recall this passage from the Bible:

Be sober-minded. Be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:14 (ESV).

They are peddling poison, as poisonous as any illegal drug that is out there. Flee it. This incident is another example of how familiarity with the Bible can be instantly useful in seeing through the wiles of the devil--for clearly the devil is behind this poisonous attack on people who make a living on the road and see the same signs repeatedly in a high stress and lonely job. But when you connect to the Word of God, a light turns on; and you see what is really happening. The den is a trap.