|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Posted on 04/15/2005 4:09:25 PM PDT by Coleus
Sen. Hillary Clinton to Give Commencement Address at Catholic College defying Cardinal Egan
MANASSAS, VA (April 14, 2005) – Marymount Manhattan College has invited pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton to deliver its commencement address and receive an honorary doctoral degree on May 20, publicly defying New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan and the U.S. bishops who forbade such honors in a statement last June.
Sen. Clinton has consistently supported legalized abortion, speaking at gatherings of abortion-rights advocates and voting against a ban on partial-birth abortion. She also has advocated expanding embryonic stem cell research and has declared contraception “basic health care for women.” During a January 2005 speech to New York State “family planning providers,” in which Clinton was widely reported as softening her stance on abortion, Clinton in fact began by repeating her firm commitment to keeping abortion legal: “I am so pleased to be here two days after the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision that struck a blow for freedom and equality for women. Today Roe is in more jeopardy than ever, and I look forward to working with all of you as we fight to defend it in the coming years.”
“We are blowing the whistle on this and any other Catholic college that blatantly disrespects the bishops by defying their clear command and teaching,” said Patrick J. Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS), a national organization dedicated to the renewal of Catholic identity at America’s 220 Catholic colleges and universities. “After decades of scandal at secularizing colleges, last June the bishops drew a line in the sand. No college that deliberately crosses that line deserves the label ‘Catholic’ or the support of the faithful—most especially monetary support.”
CNS has written Marymount Manhattan president Judson Shaver, urging him to immediately cancel both the honorary degree and Clinton’s commencement address “in order to restore fidelity to the College’s Catholic mission, obedience to your bishop and public trust in your commitment to not lead astray the College’s students, your employees and the general public.”
CNS has also written Cardinal Egan—and other diocesan officials in his absence, as the Cardinal prepares to help select a new Pope—suggesting “immediate action to prevent scandal in the Archdiocese of New York.” CNS asked Cardinal Egan to consider advising the College privately to withdraw Clinton’s invitation, but also cautioned against waiting “until it is too late to inform the public that the invitation is in direct conflict with the U.S. bishops’ statement and the Church’s expectations for Catholic colleges, as presented in the 1990 apostolic constitution for Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae.”
In June 2004 by a near-unanimous vote, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved the statement “Catholics in Political Life” including the following mandate:
“The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”
The highly unusual demand from the bishops was heavily influenced by Cardinal Newman Society’s annual protest against inappropriate commencement speakers and honorees at Catholic colleges and universities—now in its seventh year. Last year, CNS protested 25 speakers and honorees at one in nine U.S. institutions. Just weeks prior to the bishops’ June meeting, CNS also released a special report, “The Culture of Death on Catholic Campuses: A Five-Year Review,” documenting nearly 200 incidents of speakers and honorees who vocally opposed Catholic teaching on abortion, euthanasia and contraception.
In December 2003, CNS wrote a letter to all the U.S. bishops urging them to consider diocesan policies banning inappropriate speakers and honorees at Catholic institutions.
“While sanctions against pro-abortion politicians are welcome, we urge you to implement diocesan policies that forbid all public advocates of legal abortion—regardless of whether they are Catholics or politicians—from speaking at Catholic facilities or receiving Catholic honors,” CNS wrote to the bishops on December 9, 2003. “This can be more easily enforced on Church-owned property, but it can also set an expectation for legally independent colleges and other Catholic services and organizations useful when determining their right to use the label ‘Catholic’—in the case of colleges and universities, according to the guidelines established by Ex Corde Ecclesiae.”
“We are monitoring the commencement speakers and honorees at all 220 Catholic colleges and universities in the U.S.,” Reilly warned, “and we will fight with bulldog tenacity to oppose any college president who chooses to embarrass his or her bishop. Our purpose is to restore Catholic identity where it has diminished, but if it has finally come to the point when a bishop must declare a college non-Catholic, he can rely on the support of our 16,000-plus members and many more grateful parents nationwide.”
Reilly points to precedent for such action. Three historically Catholic colleges have been declared no longer Catholic by their local bishops since Ex Corde Ecclesiae was issued in 1990. They include Nazareth College and St. John Fisher College, both in Rochester, New York, and Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. The latter college was singled out by CNS in 2003 for inviting pro-abortion New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to deliver a commencement address. Cardinal Egan, already well aware of Marist’s long path of secularization, resolved the issue definitively by declaring Marist “no longer Catholic.”
Last year, Marymount Manhattan College also hosted Spitzer as a commencement speaker with no apparent consequence, despite a CNS protest. Spitzer, a fervent advocate for abortion rights since becoming New York State Attorney General in 1988, has received campaign donations and get-out-the-vote support from NARAL Pro-Choice America and other pro-abortion organizations. One of Spitzer’s first actions as Attorney General was to seek an injunction against a coalition of pro-life groups. He later filed papers in federal court labeling abortion clinic protesters “nuisances” and demanding 60-foot buffer zones around clinics, a restriction on free speech for which he was rebuked by an appellate court. In 2002, Spitzer investigated 10 crisis pregnancy centers claiming their pro-life services were deceptive to women seeking abortions. He created his office’s first Reproductive Rights Unit to intimidate pro-life activists.
“Last year Spitzer, this year Hillary Clinton,” Reilly remarked. “Can anyone trust this college’s claim to a Catholic mission? They seem to have tried their hardest to honor the Church’s opponents in the fight against abortion, and now they publicly brush aside the bishops’ clear expectations. We trust there will be consequences from the bishops, but lay Catholics also need to stand up and confront this scandal.”
“Pope John Paul II has been laid to rest, but his legacy continues to be desecrated by heretics and public dissenters in ‘religious studies’ departments, campus entertainment like the offensive ‘Vagina Monologues’ and college officials who fail to uphold their colleges’ Catholic mission,” Reilly said. “The time to implement the Holy Father’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae is now, not later. Which class of students will finally be liberated from false teaching and fraudulent institutions? For how many more years do we abandon our young adults?”
For more information about Cardinal Newman Society and updates on Catholic college commencement speakers and honorees, see www.cardinalnewmansociety.org.
USCCB Guidelines Concerning theAcademic Mandatum
Ex Corde Ecclesiae: An Application to the United States
Judson R. Shaver, Ph.D.
President
jshaver@mmm.edu
Archdiocese of New York
1011 First Avenue
New York NY 10022-4134
212-371-1000
e-mail: contactus@archny.org
"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." - Hillary Rodham Clinton June 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/06/28/politics2238EDT0845.DTL
Pandering to people of faith... Shameful!
The arch Marxist Medusa. Plain and simple -- an unequalled lust for power, and that is ALL she has.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
(Under her breath, she mutters to her lesbian entourage, "I can't believe the crap I have to put up with, what with these Catholic morons")
Why am I not surprised?
Bump!
These's something revolting about a woman of ill repute when she silicits the masses for her own gratification and power. There have bee a few notible women in history like that.
The shame of it all is that this B**** gets away with it..TOTALLY!!
Why do I get the feeling that the Pope had very little control over the Catholics in America?
Between the Priest that abused kids, the Bishops and Cardinals that hid the Priests, and now the Catholic Colleges basically giving the middle finger to the Catholic hierarchy regarding Hillary and Spitzer.....
Marymount is under the jurisdiction of Cardinal Egan.Does anyone think he will do anything to Marymount?
Proves you can fool some of the people all of the time. Dupes!
I would think he better-since the whole thing has gotten this much publicity---
Besides, it is Hillary Clinton, not some relatively unknown liberal---Hillary, whose husband was doing the Monica as president---
I would think that this would be the last person the Catholics would want giving a graduation speech---gosh, she might even pass out campaign condoms, er, buttons!!!!
No, better yet, she and Patty Osama Murray are holding up the confirmation of the HHS chair because the "morning after pill" hasn't been okayed to be sold over the counter, so all the little tarts can kill a baby, JUST as it gets going.
Maybe she could pass out a goody bag with condoms, and morning after pills, pink t-shirts so the girls can be honorary members of CODE PINKO---and literature from Planned Parenthood---of course with Hillary pictures on all of these---
Is Hillary going to perform an abortion for the Catholics?
I wish you were right.But Egan is no John Cardinal O'Connor and Marymount knows that.
Well, this doesn't happen for a month--I dare say if enough New England, New York, Mass., Catholics got mad enough and made enough of a public protest about it, starting NOW, I bet it would stop---
On the other hand, it would give her Hitlerienss more publicity---dang, maybe someone could go PAY the graduate not to show up---and then her Hitleriness would be playing to an empty room...LOL
You have got to be $#!+ing me!
I sent an email to Cardinal Egan as well as Marymount Manhattan. This is an absolute outrage.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
