Gonzaga University, a Catholic school, has invited Desmond Tutu to give the commencement address next month to Gonzaga’s graduating class. It also plans to give him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. But that doesn’t sit well with some graduates. They think he’s not good enough and not Catholic enough (the latter not all that surprising since he’s not a Catholic at all).
Patrick Kirby, a 1993 Gonzaga graduate, said Tutu is pro-abortion rights, has made offensive statements toward Jews and supports contraception and the ordination of gay clergy and shouldn’t be honored by a Catholic institution.
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“I don’t have any realistic expectations that they’ll do that (cancel Tutu’s invitation). The goal for me is to bring attention to it and hopefully remind administrators at Gonzaga about their Catholic identity and how far they’ve wandered away from it,” Kirby said.
He said Catholic institutions all across the U.S. are choosing popularity over morality by honoring and hiring people who do not represent Catholic values, which he said sends an unclear message to students.
Actually they’re choosing better morality over worse morality, or morality over authoritarian control-freakery. Catholic “values” are not identical to morality, and often they’re its opposite. (Trying to prevent people from using contraception, for instance – that’s staggeringly immoral.)
I suppose we should rejoice. They’ll do themselves in if they go on this way; no bums on the seats, no coin in the plate, no more bubble car.
“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (said by Yeshue bar Yussef circa 32CE)
Since Catholic values include homophobia, misogyny, and covering up child rape, I don’t consider those values to be particularly valuable.
That alone should qualify him for honorary catholic status.
Given that the Hilter youth alumni pope ratzinger welcomed back excommunicated holocaust denying bishop Richard Williamson into the fold, who has made a number of statements denying the full extent of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews, as accepted by mainstream historians.
In comments to Swedish television broadcast Wednesday, Williamson said “I believe there were no gas chambers” and only up to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, instead of 6 million.
Williamson said: “I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.”
“… pro-abortion rights, has made offensive statements toward Jews and supports contraception…”
Which was, of course, the key messages that Jebus wanted to make sure his followers kept close to their hearts.
All that other stuff about giving up all you own, helping the poor and sick, and visiting prisoners was just window dressing…
Sailor1031:
“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
The word was “log” not “beam” and it was a euphemism for something much more, er, earthy. Think about it: makes more semantic sense, does it not?
@Matt Westwood:
It’s a quotation – from Matthew 7.5. I didn’t make it up. If you have a problem with the translation from greek to english of something that may or may not have been originally said in aramaic I suggest you take it up with the authors of the KJV, from which the quotation is taken
@Sailor1031: duh wot?
The authors of the KJV are long dead, pal.
Indeed, the original Aramaic had “shit”, which translates as “log” which got translated further as “beam”.
When did I accuse you of making stuff up?
Oh I get it. Very droll!