Posted on 04/28/2005 3:30:37 PM PDT by Diago
Thank you everyone who participated in Cardinal Newman Society's protest against Hillary Clinton's commencement address and honorary degree at Marymount Manhattan College! Your actions have led to a just outcome and will send a strong message to other wayward Catholic colleges. Please continue to help us protest several other commencement scandals -- more details to come next week! -- CNS
DURING CNS PROTEST OF HILLARY CLINTON HONORS, MARYMOUNT MANHATTAN COLLEGE DECLARED NOT CATHOLIC
(April 28, 2005)
The Archdiocese of New York has formally declared Marymount Manhattan College -- which has been under protest by the Cardinal Newman Society for inviting pro-abortion Sen. Hillary Clinton to give its commencement address and receive an honorary degree on May 20 -- no longer a Catholic institution. The College will no longer be listed in The Official Catholic Directory, which identifies institutions including Marymount Manhattan College that are formally recognized as Catholic.
This is the fourth time since Pope John Paul II issued Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the apostolic constitution on Catholic universities, that a bishop has declared an historically Catholic college or university to be not Catholic. The 1990 document gives local bishops the responsibility of determining whether colleges can bear the label “Catholic.” Catholic colleges established prior to 1990 are assumed to be Catholic and to conform sufficiently to the guidelines of Ex Corde Ecclesiae until a bishop declares otherwise.
Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, was declared “no longer Catholic” by Cardinal Edward Egan of the Archdiocese of New York in 2003, during a similar protest by Cardinal Newman Society of the college’s commencement speaker, pro-abortion New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer. CNS also protested Spitzer as the commencement speaker at Marymount Manhattan College last year, but no public action was taken by the Archdiocese and the College took no step to end its affiliation with the Catholic Church. Two other historically Catholic colleges in Rochester, New York -- Nazareth College and Saint John Fisher College -- have been declared no longer Catholic by Bishop Matthew Clark.
“The decision to honor one of Congress’ most outspoken and strident advocates of abortion rights was just the latest episode in a long history of secularization at Marymount Manhattan College,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS), in a press release. CNS is a national organization dedicated to the renewal of Catholic identity at America’s 220 -- now 219 -- Catholic colleges and universities.
“Why the College chose to remain officially Catholic while turning traitor against the Catholic Church, I cannot say," Reilly continued. "This is a good day for those seeking truth and clarity, but at the same time a sad day for Catholics, who founded, attended and funded this college only to be turned away for the sake of government funding and private ambitions.”
CNS wrote Cardinal Egan on April 14, complaining about Marymount Manhattan College’s plans to honor Sen. Clinton and 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 acknowledged “that the enforcement of Ex Corde Ecclesiae may require the declaration that an institution is no longer Catholic, and we support such action if Marymount Manhattan College obstinately refuses to acknowledge your pastoral authority as bishop and to uphold the Church’s fundamental teachings.”
According to the Archdiocese of New York, the College’s officials agreed with today’s action. Indeed, College employees had been rebuffing CNS protesters of the Clinton honors by claiming that Marymount Manhattan College has not been Catholic since 1961, when it separated from its parent institution, Marymount College of Tarrytown, and its founding women’s religious order, the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. In fact, the College’s actions in 1961 were similar to those of most other Catholic institutions throughout the country that incorporated separate from the Church to qualify for state government funding. The vast majority of those colleges continue to claim a Catholic identity while slowly secularizing, and Marymount Manhattan College is not much different -- any apparent trace of its Catholic identity has disappeared over time, even though until today it preserved its official status as Catholic, possibly to avoid alienating its Catholic alumni and donors.
“There is tremendous value to clearly and formally identifying wayward Catholic institutions as no longer Catholic, as Cardinal Egan has done so courageously,” Reilly said. “If Senator Clinton had a similar degree of dignity, she might have declined the College’s honor out of respect for faithful Catholics who are appalled by her stridency on abortion and embryonic stem cell research. If the College’s trustees and officials had a similar degree of dignity, they might have chosen to respect the College’s roots and give their students something young people today are longing for -- a moral education rooted in the truth about God and man.”
--- You are currently subscribed to catholic-higher-ed as: Subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your name or password at http://burst.sparklist.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=catholic-higher-ed.
"Catholic Higher Education Alert" is a free service of the Cardinal Newman Society to supplement the Society's quarterly newsletter, "MISSION".
I agree with all the above posts. This is a really big deal. I hope the whining dems lather the news with this, but I won't be surprised if they don't.
Great news! I bet somebody had to hold Egan's feet to the fire to get him to do this...but at least he did it.
This is a good start. Of course, there are still a number of other reputedly "Catholic" universities that need to be similarly delisted. Take the University of San Francisco, for example.
It will only get in the MSM when a Jesuit University is declared non-Catholic.....Georgetwon, Santa Clara ect...
Hillary Clinton used a Catholic Church in New York to deliver a talk to loyal Democrats when she was running for her senate seat. Protesting parishioners prayed the rosary while she spoke and they were thrown out of their own church by strongmen. The church allowed their own to be
tossed while this pro choice female pandered for votes.
What Parish was this??
This is excellent - now, if they could be forced to remove Catholic from their name, that would be even better.
Makes me remember when I was in a Catholic High School a million years ago. We had a Rabbi come to address our class on comparative religions, and he referred to the clergy as Priests, Nuns, Brothers and Jesuits. LOL Even then people were a bit confused as to whether Jesuits were indeed Catholic. My kids all went to Jesuit High Schools and Colleges (including University of San Francisco and Santa Clara) and emerged with their religion and conservatism in place. Maybe we were just lucky?
All your morals are belong to us!
No grants for you!
I Love Pope Benedict!
Don't miss this thread!
.
HILLARY =
Supporter of our terrorist enemy HO CHI MINH during the Vietnam War against Freedom's survival in South Vietnam
HILLARY =
Supporter of our terrorist enemies in a new time of war with our own Freedom now directly at stake here at home
.
The only use the name Catholic when seeking donations...never when teaching religion.
Papa Benedetto has it right that every act of intentional abortion infanticide, euthanasia, etc. is unambiguously condemned because its intention is to kill an innocent human being, either as a means or as an end.
War is more complicated because it is a complex of actions which must be judged one by one AND as a totality. It is possible for a war to be just in its inception and in its intentions (defensive, limited, legitimately authorized, last resort etc.) but still contain elements that merit unequivocal condemnation. Acts of war deliberately directed against civilians, for example, present precisely the same moral problem as abortion: the deliberate shedding of innocent blood, which is abominable in the eyes of God.
The death penalty -- carried out justly by the legitimate authoities --- is not condemned as murder, but is justified (according to the Catechism) if it is essential to the protection of public safety.
Pope Benedict, like his predecessor John Paul, has insisted that in modern times, maximum security prisons make its possible to incarcerate murderers and other violent felons without possibility of parole, and in such a way that they are no longer a threat to society. They have advanced the teaching that if this is possible, then executions should be vanishingly rare.
I myself wonder about the situation where a person already serving a life sentence, re-offends: say, by attacking another inmate or a guard. This would suggest that even imprisonment didn't suffice to secure public safety in his case; and I suppose that's where the death penalty would become legitimate.
As a Catholic I am obliged to follow the teaching here, as well as I can understand it. Anybody want to read what it says in Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism, and offer a fuller interpretation?
BTW HOORAY, punching the air and high-fiving for Cardinal Egan. I always rejoice to see a vertebrate Bishop.
Wow! I hope more bishops do the same with "Catholic" schools in their dioceses.
Fordham is a Jesuit school in the Archdiocese of New York. Have the Jesuits there been behaving themselves?
Get real. A friend of mine who has taught there refers to the Jesuit residence as the "Gay Bunker."
Do you think the Jesuits at Fordham will be worried about this or could they care less? I imagine something like this would have an adverse effect on fundraising.
Minor quibble: the Sacred Heart of Mary
She doesn't have one of those.
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.