LMU To Have LGBT Advocate Abby Wambach as Keynote Commencement Speaker

Jesuits, amirite?

Soccer legend and LGBT advocate Abby Wambach will the keynote commencement speaker at this year’s graduation ceremony.

What message is this sending to Catholic students? Sadly, it is likely the same message they’ve been receiving all four years of their time on campus.

Wambach, an Olympian, is most well known as an advocate for LGBT causes.

I didn’t do a great deal of research on Abby Wambach but here’s something that just jumped out at me. It’s from a podcast where she discussed her faith and her sexuality.

“My first memories of church were actually very beautiful. I remember the music. I remember loving to sing,” the 40-year-old former captain of the U.S. women’s soccer team said in the episode. “But (there) was a feeling … like an overwhelming sense of understanding both at the same time of who I was inside and who the church expected me to be and those things didn’t match.”

Wambach recalls being a teenager and telling her friend from church that she was gay. Her friend’s reaction reinforced Wambach’s feelings that she wasn’t welcome as herself.

“Sadly, we stopped being friends after this moment,” she said. “I understood that I had a choice to make. And it was I was either going to choose me or God … I chose myself.”

In a choice between herself and God, she chose herself. Is that the message LMU intends to be sending?

Later, in that same interview she said she is no longer an atheist and believes Jesus fights for the underdog. It sounds like she’s adapting her faith to her lifestyle choice. Many people do exactly that but is that what a Catholic institution should be honoring and putting forth as an example to emulate?

Parents, stop sending your children to Jesuit colleges. Please.