A graduation season begins, colleges look for commencement speakers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims to be Catholic. She is also in favor of abortion. This year the only commencement address she gave was at one of the eight campuses of Miami Dade College. Not exactly top of the charts.
Nine years have passed since Senator John F. Kerry (also pro-abortion) spoke at a Catholic institution.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, his major commencement address this year is at Wesleyan University, founded by Methodists. Methodists, sound the alarm!
After years of pressure from the Vatican and some American bishops, Catholic colleges and universities are now shying away from politicians - especially those who, like Kennedy, Kerry, and Pelosi, support abortion rights - as commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients. Go ahead and cheer. I am!
Finally, schools are scrutinizing the public records of potential honorees for evidence of open dissent from key church teachings, especially on abortion.
At the College of the Holy Cross, where the local bishop boycotted commencement five years ago because the speaker was Chris Matthews, an alumnus and television personality who had voiced sympathetic opinions about abortion rights, this year the speaker is Dr. Kevin M. Cahill, a specialist in tropical medicine who had worked with Mother Teresa.
Boston College, which in the past has given honorary degrees to abortion rights supporters such as Senator Warren B. Rudman and Attorney General Janet Reno, this year chose as commencement speaker the Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough. Catholic University of America graduates will hear from Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, and his wife, Dorian.
And the University of Notre Dame, which once spurned complaints from several cardinals and gave its highest honor, the Laetare Medal, to the abortion rights-supporting Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, this year chose as its commencement speaker Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the very prelate who chaired a task force urging colleges not to have abortion rights-supporting politicians as commencement speakers or honorary degree recipients.
No comments:
Post a Comment