Posted on 07/10/2010 6:51:04 AM PDT by tcg
...One of the courses I have taught since 2001 has been "Introduction to Catholicism." Every semester in that "Introduction" class, I gave two lectures dealing with Catholic Moral positions. One was an explanation of Natural Moral Law as affirmed by the Church. The second was designed as an application of Natural Law Theory to a disputed issue in our society. Most of those semesters, my chosen topic was the moral status of homosexual acts. I would be happy to explain more fully the Catholic Church's position on this matter but, for the sake of brevity, I can summarize it as follows. A homosexual orientation is not morally wrong just as no moral guilt can be assigned to any inclination that a person has. However, based on natural moral law, the Church believes that homosexual acts are contrary to human nature and therefore morally wrong. This is what I taught in my class.
In previous years, I had students who might have disagreed with the Church's position but they did so respectfully and without incident. This semester (Spring 2010) I noticed the most vociferous reaction that I have ever had. It seemed out of proportion to all that I had known thus far. To help students understand better how this issue might be decided within competing moral systems, I sent them an email contrasting utilitarianism (in the populist sense) and natural moral law. If we take utilitarianism to be a kind of cost-benefit analysis, I tried to show them that under utilitarianism, homosexual acts would not be considered immoral whereas under natural moral law they would. This is because natural moral law, unlike utilitarianism, judges morality on the basis of the acts themselves... I was told that I would no longer be able to teach in the Department of Religion.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.org ...
It’s not over by a long shot. Howell will either become rich or reinstated.
How do you figure the rich part? U of I wasn't paying his salary. It was paid on a grant. Aside from that the state of Illinois is in worse financial shape than California. State workers, including university employees, don't know if their paychecks will bounce. Reinstated would be cheaper all the way around in no small part because otherwise the state would be handing out an IOU.
This one's not over, but I wouldn't bet on either side. Something tells me it's going to be pretty nasty.
I hope he gets reinstated. Becoming rich won’t help out the students regarding their faith. We’re in his corner 100%. I’m eager to find out the story on Monsignor Ketchum, as to why he won’t support Howell.
So you think this attempt to stifle free thought on university campuses is acceptable? Universities are the places with least amount of free-thinking going on and have been turned into indoctrination centers by the left, all with taxpayer funding.
Nasty, yes, but we have the truth and the constitution on our side.
Reinstation would be the best outcome for everyone, which is probably what happens.
Switch this around, and see if it was a NAACP supporter getting fired for playing politics? What kind of settlement would they get?
As I said, he’ll be rich or reinstated.
You got that from “Have a Guinness for your 30,000th post”? Weird.
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