Posted on 09/04/2007 7:41:05 AM PDT by NYer
p> OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Days after canceling a speaking engagement to a best-selling author who helped a friend commit suicide, a Jesuit university says it will review policies that govern how and why it invites certain speakers to campus.
The Rev. John Schlegel, the school's president, said Friday that Creighton University won't shy away from controversial speakers, including those whose opinions diverge with those of the Roman Catholic Church.
But, he said, the formats those speakers appear under will ensure more balance and debate than the one-way mode of lecture.
"We don't teach our students what to think," Schlegel told the Omaha World-Herald. "We teach them how to think."
Officials of the Omaha Archdiocese this week questioned why the school had booked a speaker whose opinions on assisted suicide and abortion are at odds with the church.
On Monday, Creighton officials canceled an invitation for California author Anne Lamott to speak Sept. 19 in Omaha. She will still speak that day at another Omaha location at the invitation of a group of local churches.
Creighton officials said they invited Lamott to speak before recently learning of her views on assisted suicide. The Fairfax, Calif., author wrote an essay published in June 2006 in the Los Angeles Times describing helping a friend with cancer commit suicide.
Lamott's booking agent, Steven Barclay, said Wednesday that university officials originally booked the author in June 2006 but sent a letter this summer asking her to not speak about assisted suicide and abortion. Barclay said Lamott's opinions were no secret.
Schlegel met with faculty leaders on Thursday, he said, and also met with Omaha Archbishop Elden Curtiss.
Creighton is overseen by the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order. According to the order, part of a Jesuit university's mission is to remain in good standing with the Catholic bishop.
IOW - how do we invite dissenting speakers without the risk of losing valuable contributions to the university.
Do we honestly HAVE to give Satan’s footmen a voice in educating our youth?
He's lucky St. Ignatius Loyola isn't alive, I'll put it that way.
"...[her] opinions on assisted suicide and abortion..."
These are not opinions, folks. These are actions. She aborted two of her own little ones, she spooned poisoned applesauce into the mouth of her "good friend," and she justifies--- no, glorifies --- both lethal actions, in print and in person.
Thoughtless commentators always call these "opinions" and "views," as if it were all nothing but talk, talk, talk.
The "abortion debate" was in the 1960's. They were talking, and we were talking. Now, for over 35 years, they're killing --- and we're still talking.
Well, if you're going to have ideals, aim high!
"Remain in good standing with the Catholic bishop" -- does that mean not get publicly excommunicated? ;-)
When someone from the left is asked to speak, it’s presenting both sides. If someone from the right speaks, it brings out those who oppose and disrupt and do everything they can to silence the speaker.
Yours is the correct response.
Ann Coulter can speak to this.
One would think that if someone fed another person poison it would appropriatedly be called 'murder'.
The debasement of the language continues unabated.
L
“We don’t teach our students what to think,” Schlegel told the Omaha World-Herald. “We teach them how to think.”
BUT, we don’t teach them what the Church teaches and why and we don’t teach Thomistic philosophy and we mush up their brains with mushy speakers from the secular world.
Oh yeah. And we teach modernist theology.
If you were to get a list of the speakers at all the Jesuit Unniversities in the U.S. I am sure you would find the overwhelming majority to be very liberal politically and religiosly. This is hypocrisy.
Where Catholics are concerned, the teachings of the Church about abortion and euthanasia are not controversial. Whay may be controversial is the application to particular cases. But this woman is not into cases: she denies the teachings.
Hypocrisy meaning the betrayal of the very principles they claim to hold to.
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