Reasonable Boston Globe fails to get Fools again!

Will they ever learn. Witness that beacon of balance, the Boston Globe, as it attempts a hatchet job on the Cardinal Newman Society in this piece of reporting here.

BG reporters Ralph Ranalli and Michael Kranish manage a sliver of neutrality before the bring out the brick-bats. Then their pathetic try at a beat-down begins:

The Rev. John Paris, one of three Boston College professors targeted by name in a recent fund-raising letter from the group sent to 75,000 people, said in an interview last week that the Cardinal Newman Society ''is sort of like a Christian Taliban, determined to make Catholic institutions hew their line."

Ah, the "Christian Taliban" meme again. As if one's demand for a priest, and professor of Ethics, at a Jesuit university to publically hold to Catholic Teaching makes one a mullah. Yeah, the CNS sure has had it's hands full, what with demanding woman get out of public education and careers and return, barefoot and pregnant, to the kitchen. And look what they've done to the men. Why, every male under the age of 50 will be wearing the scepulchar before long. Honestly, how tired and naseatingly blown-up does a moral equivalency have to be before even a journalist gets it? The recipients of today's Higher education have apparently gotten even more dangerously naive than I thought!

Not to be undone by a little reality, our intrepid bards rise off the mat and try again:

In addition to Paris, a bioethics professor at Boston College, the letter cites Charles Baron and Milton Heifetz, professors at BC's law school, among 18 academics and Catholic universities singled out for taking public stances on human life issues that were at odds with Vatican pronouncements and teachings.

"Vatican pronouncements and teachings"? Are they serious? Have these reporters totally bought the twisted logic of the Spirit of Vatican II Catholic dissenters? Do they not understand that the Vatican does not issue teachings; the Church does. The Pope and his Curia--as Cardinals and Bishops in communion with him--exercise their authority to teach the Faith and morals. Thus, their "pronouncements" and "teachings" are in fact the teaching of the Church, not simply the vatican. In spite of what the dissenters say, this teaching is binding on the Catholic conscience, especially the teachings on the intrinsic evil of murder and the sacredness of life! These reporters may indeed be naive enough to believe the dissenters who say that this teaching is just "mischief-making at the Vatican." Or they could well understand that these professors defy the Church, of which their employer is a member (Jesuits, remember?). In that case, they evidently have enough sympathy for them to muddle up the truth on their behalf. This makes CNS look like an illegitimate organization filled with fundamentalist Catholic crazies. How convenient. Too bad such a tactic, if this is the case, is so utterly hollow as to make readers like myself laugh themselves out of their chairs!

What's truly revealing about this "Report" is what is says, and doesn't say, about CNS. For example, it says the following:

The group, based in Virginia, has made similar accusations in the past. It has attacked Catholic colleges for what it calls anti-Catholic teaching, criticized colleges that provide funding for gay and lesbian organizations, and complained that colleges allow performances of the play ''The Vagina Monologues."

Now, look at what it doesn't say.

For starters, Mssrs. Ranalli and Kranish fail to cite even one point of CNS' mission:

The Society's mission is to:

Promote discussion and understanding of the message of the Catholic Church concerning the nature and value of Catholic higher education;

Assist college leaders, educators, students, and alumni in their efforts to preserve the religious identity of Catholic institutions of higher learning; and

Advocate the faithful implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae by facilitating an active dialogue among members of the Catholic university community.

As a consequence of its mission, CNS has strongly advocated that professors of Catholic Theology or Morality at Catholic universities sign mandatums, as required by USCCB guidelines for Catholic institutions of higher education passed shortly after Ex Corde. Did these staff reporters mention that? Did they mention the grave reluctance of Academic Associations to agree to such an expectation? Did they mention whether or not the three professors in question did so? I didn't see it!

Secondly, BG's illustrious bards sugar-coat profoundly controversial issues on Catholic campus as if they were non-issues over which CNS simply hyperventilates. How pathetically wrong can journalists get and not get docked? One CNS' "attack" on Catholic Colleges for anti-Catholic teachings was this report on dissenters of Catholic Teaching in prominant academic positions at prestigious Catholic univerities. Among them:

Boston College: Professor of Moral Theology Fr. James Keenan, S.J., filled the prestigious Gasson Chair in the Theology Department just weeks after testifying before the Massachusetts state legislature that a law restricting marriage to one man and one woman was unfair to homosexuals and "contrary to Catholic teaching on social justice." Keenan said: "As a priest and as a moral theologian, I cannot see how anyone could use the Roman Catholic tradition to support [the bill]."

Fordham University: Holding the prestigious position of Distinguished Professor of Theology, Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., has argued against the Church’s infallible teaching on the male-only priesthood, which she described as "patriarchal resistance to women’s equality." Johnson’s feminism leads her to refer to God as "She Who Is."

Georgetown University: Feminist Diana Hayes, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, goes beyond dissent from Church teaching on the maleonly priesthood. While claiming the right of women to be ordained, she has rejected ordination in the Church "as it is presently constituted" and has recommended "dismantling of the entire structure,,,from within and from without, using tools of our own creation."

John Carroll University: Paul Lauritzen, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Program in Applied Ethics, testified before the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics in 2003: “I do not think the early embryo is a person, and I believe that both embryonic and adult stem cell research should go forward under a system of strict regulation.” Lauritzen has also called Catholic teaching on contraception “misguided” and argued “the moral necessity of using condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.” (emphasis mine)

Is it an attack to observe that anti-Catholic professors at a Catholic university are anti-Catholic? Is it an attack to demand that they either agree to the Bishops guidelines or resign their positions? I think many faithful Catholic parents would be appalled to learn that their tuition helped support these people's insanity. This is no case of wackjobs coming out of the woods to ravage perfectly ordered institutions. Would one know that from the report of the illustrious BG Bards? Unfortunately, they fare no better with the other issues.

The IBGBs claim that CNS criticized colleges that funded gay and lesbian organizations. Which colleges? Which organizations? I highly doubt that CNS would criticize Courage. In fact, they promote it! (scroll down to "announcements.") If these pillars of objective journalism, however, had organizations that promoted homosexual activity--which the Church has taught is immoral--then they may be right. What a scandal, too! A Catholic organization wants Catholic colleges and Universities to be Catholic! O' the humanity! Their casual condemnation over CNS' effort to enforce institutional integrity pales over their treatment of the Vagina Monologues controversy.

Again, they pass this off as though the play were no big deal. As if any one opposed to it must hate woman. Apparently our IBGBs did not feel that we, the lowly readers, needed to know why Catholics might object to this play:

Some 27 U.S. Catholic colleges and universities put on performances of The Vagina Monologues this year around Valentine's Day, and not for the first time.

The Vagina Monologues is a play in which, among other things, a woman seduces a teen girl during a lesbian statutory rape scene. It has no business being on a Catholic campus, but it was.

Change the gender of the seducer and every woman supporter of this play will scream bloody murder and burn the playwright in effigy. But since the seducer is another woman, then this is a celebration of grrrl power and a beautiful illustration of the One Thing that Matters. But no matter what Reasonable feminists say, the play virulently defies Catholic Moral Teaching. It celebrates what the Catholic Church has rightly denounced. It praises an act that Catholic consciousness recognizes only as a violation of the gift of sex. A Catholic college or University that sponsors it or supports it, officially or unofficially, in any way scandalizes Catholics by saying the Teaching does not matter. CNS fights Catholic colleges that support the Vagina Monologues for this reason.

Our culture demonstrates daily that it can no longer tell the difference between liberty and liscense. Our Reasonable elites shudder at Fool, for they believe we want to eliminate liberty in the name of religion. That's not true. We want to eliminate liscense in the name of freedom. We want every one to be free to live in the truth. We are called to the heights of our human potential. We are given a dignity so unique and precious that no one can take it away. Every one of us fits the cosmos like the perfect piece of a hand-carved puzzle, and the puzzle-maker is also our Father. He calls us to a life of Compassion and Service, a life of Love and Truth, that will bring us into the fullness of union with himself and with each other.

In less religious terms, each of us has a unique destiny for greatness that we can fulfill. In achieving this destiny, we honor our own dignity as we transform our lives, and the lives of those we influence, into great ones. We achieve this when we live in the truth: the truth of reality, in which integrity, excellence and commitment matter. A world in which we can know objectively the facts of the world, and interact subjectively with this world without slipping into solipsism and narcissism. The price we need to pay for living this way is humility: we can no longer live as though we are the Great-I-Am. We can't live by the terms of Absolute Individualism, in which we, like little Gods, make the sole determinations of right and wrong according to our own criteria. We need to live according to the contours of reality; we can't do that if we believe we create reality.

This means we live in the freedom to pursue this principled life. We live to serve one another. We live for the Truth.

Liscense is not liberty. It is slavery to the delusion that somehow we can judge right and wrong as though we are it's master. It's the delusion of self-centeredness, a condition that robs us of joy because it refuses to let us open ourselves to anyone. It's the habit of doing what kills us body and soul while saying it's what we want or what we can give up any time. It's the rationalization for addiction, whether to controlled substance or insane ideology. It renders us incapable of achieving greatness. For those that advocate liscense do not believe in sacrifice. Without sacrifice, no greatness is possible.

Many of our Reasonable elite are unwilling to accept the truth about liberty and liscense. They still long to push the Agenda, where everyone will be Absolute Individual Great-I-Ams free to define his individual right/wrong and exercise the One Thing that Matters. All while a Nanny State manages an economy that renders all scales balanced and negotiates all conflicts among Great-I-Ams through the Robed Masters that can find constitutional rights in a field of fresh manure. Some of these elites live entrenched in Academia. Others, in Media. Sometimes, if the Ka!Ching! factor isn't too high, the ones in Media watch the back of the ones in Academia.

Our illustrious Boston Globe Bards witness to this sad truth in this pathetic hatchet job. The only attack they successfully carried out was the one against their own professional and common sense. They would be better off leaving the brick-bats on the ground next time. It would hurt them less and help their professional accomplishment more.