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Posted on 04/19/2012 4:04:19 PM PDT by narses
Hundreds sign petitions objecting to honorary degree
Jody Lawrence-Turner The Spokesman-Review Gonzaga University is rejecting calls by social conservatives to find a new commencement speaker because of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s support for abortion rights and gay marriage.
Critics say the apartheid era hero and Nobel laureate’s social views contradict Catholic teachings, and more than 700 Gonzaga alumni, staff, faculty and students have signed petitions protesting Tutu’s campus appearance in May and the university’s plans to award the Anglican archbishop an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.
“It goes against Catholic teaching and so much of what Gonzaga stands for – or at least should stand for,” Spokane attorney Patrick Kirby said in a letter to GU President Thayne McCulloh.
A statement released by GU spokeswoman Mary Joan Hahn highlighted the archbishop’s fight against apartheid and emphasized the college is honored Tutu accepted its invitation.
“In the 1980s and early 90s, Gonzaga faculty, staff and trustees, together with a generation of students, worked to bring awareness of the evils of apartheid in South Africa to the forefront of the Spokane community,” Hahn wrote.
Tutu has been given several awards for his work as a Christian leader, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986. Additionally, he has campaigned to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism and sexism.
“At the University’s 2012 undergraduate commencement, we are privileged to welcome a world-renowned Christian leader and social rights activist whose faith-based lifelong dedication to the cause of justice so clearly resonates with our work as a University,” Hahn said in a statement.
The GU student body senate voted unanimously to approve a resolution for their support to host Tutu as a commencement speaker earlier this week, said Tyler Hobbs, student body president.
Support for the bishop has gone national as well. After hearing of the petition against Tutu, Faithful America, which describes itself as “an online community of tens of thousands of citizens motivated by faith to take action on the pressing moral issues of our time,” is circulating its own petition to encourage GU to keep Tutu as a speaker. The group has gathered more than 11,000 signatures.
The group previously fought efforts to have President Barack Obama disinvited from speaking at Notre Dame University in 2009.
Tutu speaking at Gonzaga isn’t the issue, Kirby said. “What we object to is Gonzaga honoring him as a commencement speaker and giving him a degree. We have tremendous respect for his work fighting apartheid and racism, but honoring him … is the height of hypocrisy.”
Kirby thinks Tutu’s public advocacy for abortion rights, including statements that contraception is an “obligation for Christians,” endorsement of same-sex marriage and reportedly offensive remarks against Jewish people, are all cause to rescind Tutu’s invitation.
Some of the petitioners have included comments along with their signatures. Here’s one example: “Gonzaga should be ashamed. … Serious consequences should follow if the school brings in such persons such as Tutu to indoctrinate young impressionable minds.”
The next move for Kirby’s group is to contact the petitioners and encourage them to write individually to the president of Gonzaga, and “show some moral leadership,” he said.
Spokane Bishop Blase Cupich has also been contacted and asked to intervene, Kirby said. But so far, Cupich has not responded to written requests and he appeared to support Gonzaga’s decision to honor Tutu when asked in person, Kirby said.
Cupich was en route to Rome and not available for comment.
Said Hahn, “Our students are excited for the opportunity to honor the determination and persistence of Tutu. The event is also an important opportunity to recognize our graduating seniors, whose commitment to social justice and to serve others around the globe inspired the Archbishop to join us.”
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Bishop Desmond “To Hell with the West” Tutu gets an honorary degree. Thanks narses.
The Church needs to remove the school from ANY and ALL connections to the church, NOW.
Notre Dame and Barack Redux.
Gonzaga is another CUINO.
“Spokane Bishop Blase Cupich has also been contacted and asked to intervene, Kirby said. But so far, Cupich has not responded to written requests and he appeared to support Gonzaga’s decision to honor Tutu when asked in person, Kirby said.”
Great. Another one of those “profiles in courage” rears it’s cowardly head.
I wonder what Madame Tutu has to say about the ANC thugs singing “kill the Boer, kill the whites”.
He’s pro abortion....
and he may have fought apartheid, but kept quiet when South Africa “legalized” homosexuality, and kept quiet when the government said HIV didn’t cause AIDS so didn’t give anti retroviral medicine to their people, and he is still keeping quiet over the huge rape problem in South Africa.
The comments are unreal!
Saturday, April 7, 2012
An Open Letter to Prof. Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI
Dear Joe,
Some years back when you were still the head of the Holy Office (“of the Sacred Inquisition” is, as you know, stilled chiseled in stone over its dark building immediately next to St. Peter’s square), I wrote you an open letter concerning the role of women in the Catholic Church. At that time I addressed you with a familiar “Dear Joe,” relying on our relationship from the late 60s/early 70s when I was frequently a Visiting Professor at the Catholic Theology Faculty of the University of Tübingen, and you were Professor Ordinarius there. I did so in the thought that this form of address would tell you that I seriously hoped you might open your mind and heart to hear what I wanted to say to you. I have no way of knowing what success I may have had, if any, in that regard. However, relying on our former “collegiality,” I am approaching you once again in this fraternal fashion.
I am disturbed that especially of late you have been giving signals that are in opposition to the words and spirit of Vatican Council II, during which you as a leading young theologian helped to move our beloved Catholic Church out of the Middle Ages into Modernity. Further, while a professor at our Alma Mater University of Tübingen, you, along with the rest of your colleagues of the Catholic Theology faculty, publicly advocated 1) the election of bishops by their constituents, and 2) limited term of office of bishops (see the book Democratic Bishops for the Roman Catholic Church).
Now you are publicly rebuking loyal Catholic priests for doing precisely what you earlier had so nobly advocated. They, and many, many others across the universal Catholic Church, are following your youthful example, trying desperately to move our beloved Mother Church further into Modernity. I deliberately use the word “desperately,” for in your own homeland, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, the churches are empty, and also are so many Catholic hearts when they hear the chilling words coming from Rome and the “radically obedient” (read: “yes-men”) bishops. In my own homeland, America, the birthplace of modern freedom, human rights, and democracy, we have lost — in this generation alone! — one third of our Catholic population, 30,000,000, because the Vatican II promises of its five-fold Copernican Turn (the turn toward 1. freedom, 2. this world, 3. a sense of history, 4. internal reform, and above all, 5. dialogue) have all been so deliberately dashed by your predecessor, and now increasingly by you.
Joe, you were known as one of the Vatican II theologians who promoted Pope St. John XXIII’s call for aggiornamento (bringing up to date) by the reforming spirit of returning to the energizing original sources (resourcement!) of Christianity (ad fontes!—to the fountains!). Those democratic, freedom-loving sources of the Early Church were exactly the renewing “sources,” the “fountains,” of renewal that were spelled out in detail by you and your Tübingen colleagues.
I am urging you to return to that early reforming spirit of your youth. I am reminded of that spirit now in preparation for the 50th anniversary celebration of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (JES), which my beloved wife Arlene and I launched in 1964. There in the very first issue of JES are articles by your friend and fellow Vatican II theologian Hans Küng, and yourself (!), looking to bridge over the isolating Counter-Reformation gulf that divided the Catholic Church from the rest of Christianity, and indeed the rest of the modern world.
Joe, in that spirit, I urge you to return to your reforming fountains: Return ad fontes!
Pax!
Len
Leonard Swidler, Ph.D., S.T.L. dialogue@temple.edu
Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue, Temple University
&
Co-Founder, Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church
I remember Reagan when asked his opinion of Tutu.
His answer: So so.
His holiness the Pope very recently took action against heterodox American nuns. Now he’s needs to do the same with his own military order, the Jesuits.
Tutu is a strange bird. Is anti-semitic as well as anti-Israel. One of his daughters in an avowed marxist (the one who attended Howard University), and he has supported numerous communist fronts and causes.
Also, anti-US, in case you have forgotten.
I think that the only Tutu that should be allowed at Gonzaga Un. is the one worn by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Obama advisor and ballerina.
Cupich also has a problem with pro-life efforts having banned the distribution of 40 Days for Life (totally non-controversial program of prayer and holding of 40 Days for Life posters outside abortion mills) material at the churches in his diocese. Cupich is an utter disappointment and one of the few bad appointments in recent years as the Vatican is diligently cleaning up the AmChurch mess. Cupich’s predecessor Skylstad was about as bad. Someday Spokane will get an actual Catholic as its bishop. Has Cupich issued the slightest peep against Obamunism and its war against Catholicism?
Nothing wrong with Swidler and Kung that a restored Inquisition could not cure by the traditional disciplines of excommunication and, ummm, a prompt final departure via the stake.
It’s not just Notre Shame any more. One more evidence of the need to suppress the Jebbies once more and with no remorse.
How long has it been since the peace prize was awarded for a reason that did not advance the communist/socialist agenda?
Maybe Gonzaga students should take this chance to educate the Bishop that violence is not the answer.
1 John 2:15
Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him.
HmMMmm,
Why would this person want the Church to become like the world?
Gonzaga has become a second-rate university. That fate was sealed when they kicked out the conservative Fr. Spitzer and installed the first layman president. It is going the way of all Jesuit universities, and apparently the entire Jesuit order...straight to hell. (By that I don’t mean every single Jesuit priest, mind you! Many of the really old ones, silenced though they may be, are still Catholic and some of the most educated men in the Church, but they are dying off rapidly).
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