I'm not Catholic, and have more than a few concerns about things that particular church says and does. I have no big feelings this way or that about Notre Dame, particularly in regards to their football team.
I'm no so ambiguous abot Sojo, so it's a safe rule that anything they support likely has something ugly behind it.
The Cardinal Newman Society, a watchdog group for perceived breaches of orthodoxy on Catholic campuses, calls it an “outrage and a scandal” and has circulated a petition admonishing Notre Dame to “halt this travesty.” Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, warns that the commencement would represent the “cultural rape of true Catholicity.” These stark responses betray a rich Catholic intellectual tradition revered for centuries for promoting the values of civil debate, prudence, and reasoned engagement.
It's always amusing how pomo's hate to call a spade a spade, unless they are the one's doing it, like the Sojo big guy himself, Jim Wallis, quoting this about Rush Limbaugh...
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as ‘losers.’ With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence…
As another rule, one should be ware when one comes on those who whine when they receive what they dish out. If you're going to engage in such vitriol, or quote those who do, you should be be sensitive when you receive it back in return.
The Catholic university is not a defensive fortress walled off from diverse ideas that flourish in a pluralistic democracy.
Being open to new ideas is one thing, but the President's views and supported positions one many things are rightly considered anathema to many Catholics, and they are right to see this as a serious breach.
Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins is facing furious backlash after inviting President Barack Obama to give the university’s commencement address next month.
One would assume that being invited to give a university'e graduation commencement is a thing that is an honor to do, that since these the university's last charges to the graduates (not counting student loan payments :-)), that the person asked to give it would be someone for whom the university largely approves, and doesn't disapprove of in any serious ways.
Some critics of Notre Dame have expressed their disagreement in measured tones that foster fruitful debate.
I suppose the question is, why should debate be fostered? What is there to debate? Does Obama not support abortion and even infanticide?
Sadly, this controversy has largely been exploited by ideologues and culture warriors more interested in scoring political points than advancing common ground and principled dialogue.
Exploited, perhaps, but by those like the Sojo writer.
The president’s commitment to a budget that uplifts the poor, universal health care as a human right, and finding common ground on divisive issues reflects traditional Catholic values in the public square.
A budget that merely spreads the poverty? Universal (bad) health care? Perhaps the writer should get his head out of his socialist hole, and look at the real world. A world where such budgets do far more damage than good. A world where universal government-run health care as he sees it has been an abyssmal failure.
Faithful Citizenship, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ election year political responsibility statement is clear that “direct assaults on innocent human life and dignity, such as genocide, torture, racism, and the targeting of noncombatants in acts of terror or war,” are also actions that “can never be tolerated.”
I’m still waiting to hear from outraged culture warriors when it comes to those moral scandals.
"Direct assaults on innocent human life and dignity". Someone who supports the current Presidents has lost a lot of credibility when it comes to any of those issues. Someone who thinks that it's ok for a person who supports abortion and infanticide to have the honor of giving a commencement address has no grounds trying to "call out" others.
And anyway, if he'd again get his head out of the little liberal socialist enclave he obviously lives in, he's likely to find that we conservatives are doing more than just have nice little protests about those things. We're actually doing stuff about them.
No comments:
Post a Comment