JUNE 21, 2006--Veteran state Rep. Kurt Granberg D-Carlyle
(ODELL MITCHELL JR. /P-D)
Posted on 04/11/2008 8:11:11 AM PDT by NYer
SPRINGFIELD - An Illinois state legislator says his former Catholic high school invited him to join the school's hall of honor in recognition of his political career - then yanked back that invitation after deciding his voting record wasn't in line with the church's positions on abortion.
"The school called me (this week) and informed me ¦ that they had serious concerns about my voting record," said state Rep. Kurt Granberg, D-Carlyle, describing the conversation in which, he said, he was effectively un-inducted from the school's hall of honor, shortly after being invited into it.
"I said, 'Why is that?' " Granberg said. "They said they were very concerned I wasn't 'pro-life enough.' "
Dennis Litteken, principal of Mater Dei High School in Breese, said he was the official who talked with Granberg, and he confirmed Granberg won't be in the hall of honor.
Litteken called the issue a "misunderstanding" but declined to discuss it further.
Granberg is a 1971 graduate of the high school and has represented the Breese area in the legislature since 1987. He calls himself pro-life and is generally aligned with anti-abortion forces on legislative issues. However, he has supported stem-cell research, which some consider to be at odds with the anti-abortion movement.
The question of whether the Catholic Church should pressure Catholic politicians on public policy was a major issue in the 1960 campaign of America's first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, and has been an undercurrent in U.S. politics since then.
As for Granberg, he said he isn't angry about Mater Dei's snub but is concerned about the message it sends regarding the separation of church and state.
"I have a great deal of respect for the school and the teachers and the students ¦ (but) I am concerned that a small vocal minority is making personal judgments ¦ in terms of morality," Granberg said.
Litteken, the high school principal, said nominations to the hall of honor are reviewed by a committee. He declined to name the committee members but said they include faculty, alumni and citizens.
Mater Dei is part of the Belleville Diocese. A diocese spokesman couldn't be reached for comment Thursday.
Granberg has announced he isn't running for re-election this year. His current term expires in January 2009.
Typical Lib-Dem, he doesn’t reaize actions have consequences. Kurt you can’t just blow through life and expect everything to turn out like the fairytale you seem to think the world to be.
Haha, what an idiot.
In no way am I saying that I disagree with the revokation of the “honor”... but I wonder who else is a member of the “Hall of Honor” and what, if any, of the Church’s teachings those people have violated, and what the Hall’s threshold for exclusion is - for example, are the divorced, or those with children born out of wedlock, or non-practicing Catholics also removed from their place of honor?
Just asking...
You don't have to be a Catholic if you don't want to. If you want to vote against human life, you've voluntarily opted out.
Good.
Errrr, I don't guess I knew "morality" was a personal judgment. So, according to his definition, being a little bit moral is like being a little bit pregnant! So, murder is "moral" if it is a baby, I guess.
DEMS!
It is a dogma of the Catholic Church that EVERY other person in that “Hall of Honor” is a sinner. Most sins are secret. The relevant distinction is, how public and obstinate is a person’s rejection of the Church’s teaching? When a person’s sins are in the form of voting for mass murder, that’s very public.
Excellent!!
Excellent response. I could not agree more.
It’s one thing to sin; it’s quite another to promote, encourage, or celebrate sin. The latter is evil. (I’m not Catholic, and don’t claim to be stating Catholic doctrine; it just seems an obvious distinction to me).
His comment "sends the message" that he is completely clueless about the U.S. Constitution, and what it means.
"Separation of church and state" ... Mr. Granberg, you've decided to suck up to the state, and you've thereby separated yourself from the Church. Nil habemus regem nisi Caesarem. Look it up, bud.
I can' answer those questions, except to say that every one of those who were honored are sinners. Duh. Not newsworthy. Join the club.
But I'd like you to consider an important difference between the transgressions you list here, and what it was that Granburg did.
Divorce, sexual relations ouside of marriage, and neglect of one's religious obligations are essentially personal, individual bad choices. Yes, they have public ramifications, but the choices that led to those ramifications were undertaken as a private person.
However, voting in favor of using human beings as nonconsenting subjects for lethal experimentation (which is what is objectionable about human stem cell research) is doing public harm in two distinct ways: first, because it involves a corruption of your public trust as a legislator whose first duty is to defend human dignity; and second, because it is done in the open view of everyone, which means it is a public scandal.
I am struck by the dumb-ass way this was misprepresented in the article:
"However, he has supported stem-cell research, which some consider to be at odds with the anti-abortion movement."
Wrong on both counts.
First, he didn't just support "stem cell research" (not morally objectionable), but he did vote to devote public funds to extracting stem cells from embryonic human beings, with invariably fatal consequences. (Morally objectionable.)
Second, it doesn't just put you "at odds with the anti-abortion movement." Much worse, if done with succifient knowledge, it's a mortal sin.
In fact, this revocation of a paltry honor may turn out to his spiritual benefit, since I'm guessing this is the first time he's actually been told that what he did is gravely morally wrong.
Pastoral negligence, that. (There's a lot of that these days.) But now he knows. I hope he may have the grace of repentance. I hope we all may have this grace.
Sounds like the school did the right thing, except that they shouldn’t have invited him in the first place
Pastoral negligence, that."
Possibly parental negligence, too. It seems a lot of people these days get pretty far along in life without being told that anything they do is morally wrong.
Unfortunately, pop psychology has convinced everybody that I’m OK/You’re OK and everybody is OK all the time, regardless.
Unless you put dead babies in a landfill in a plastic bag. Then we can object, of course, to the plastic.
I would LOL at that, but it’s too tragically true.
The name of the school, “Mater Dei,” means “Mother of God.”
Thank goodness Mary was pro-life!
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