When then Senator Rick Santorum delivered the commencement address at Saint Joseph’s University in 2003 there was a massive walkout of faculty members and students. According to an AP article at the time:
About one in every eight graduates walked out of Sunday’s commencement at Saint Joseph’s University before the keynote address by Sen. Rick Santorum, who recently infuriated gay groups and others with derogatory remarks about homosexual behavior.
Santorum, the Senate’s third-ranking Republican, didn’t mention the walkout or the controversy directly.
“We are all called to love one another, even people we disagree with, even people who hate us for what we believe,” he said.
Students were offered an opportunity to leave before Santorum was introduced to receive an honorary degree and make his speech, and about 100 graduates walked out amid competing boos and applause.
Some students had urged the Jesuit university to rescind Santorum’s invitation after he likened gay behavior to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery in an April 7 interview with The Associated Press. He later said he intended the remarks as a legal analysis and didn’t intend to comment on individual lifestyles.
“Senator Santorum and I are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum,” said graduate Sara Foglesong, among those who walked out. “I am not incestuous. I am not a bigamist. I just happen to be bisexual. It offended me.”
But the comment by Santorum was just the fig leaf the protesters threw over their contempt for Republicans because there was talk of a walkout before he even made the comments.
And what Santorum was saying was that if the court declared it unconstitutional to make laws regarding sodomy there was nothing stopping the court from saying the government couldn’t make laws regarding bigamy or bestiality. I was a legal point he was making concerning judicial overreach not an anti-gay slur.
But the protestors knew that as well. They just wanted something inflammatory to feign outrage over.
Now SJU has asked pro-choice liberal Chris Matthews to deliver the commencement speech. Matthews is famously pro-choice as he even compared pro-lifers to terrorists.
I’m wondering if there will be any faculty walk-out for this one? Anyone? Anyone?
April 6, 2009 at 2:43 am
Hardly. I checked out the place on Wikipedia, then followed it to their campus newsletter. It’s boilerplate modern heresy.
http://www.sjuhawknews.com/
This is past reformation, so why not apply the Wanderer’s recommendation for Notre Dame and petition the archbishop of Philadelphia (the diocese where SJU resides) to consider withdrawing the Catholic designation from that place? In the case of SJU, the address is:
His Eminence John Cardinal Rigali
Archdiocese of Philadelphia
222 North 17th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103-1299
When does this hit bottom? When we of the Church Militant start acting as the disciples of Christ we are supposed to be.
April 6, 2009 at 2:43 am
Hardly. I checked out the place on Wikipedia, then followed it to their campus newsletter. It’s boilerplate modern heresy.
http://www.sjuhawknews.com/
This is past reformation, so why not apply the Wanderer’s recommendation for Notre Dame and petition the archbishop of Philadelphia (the diocese where SJU resides) to consider withdrawing the Catholic designation from that place? In the case of SJU, the address is:
His Eminence John Cardinal Rigali
Archdiocese of Philadelphia
222 North 17th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103-1299
When does this hit bottom? When we of the Church Militant start acting as the disciples of Christ we are supposed to be.
April 6, 2009 at 5:24 am
Steven,
Don’t waste your time. Cardinal Rigali is far too mild-tempered to even consider doing anything as drastic as revoking the archdiocesan endorsement of SJU. All the same, it is already well known throughout the archdiocese that the school is a literal cesspool of heresy and disgusting practices. There is little point in trying to have their Catholic “identity” revoked, since nobody who actually believes in Heaven or Hell would be caught dead there, let alone any one who holds all the articles of the Divine Faith.
~cmpt
April 6, 2009 at 10:23 pm
I am an SJU graduate. When I attended, one of the Jesuit priests on the faculty read people’s palms. Need I say more.