Posted on 11/01/2005 2:04:26 PM PST by Coleus
More than 40 Catholic colleges were represented on Saturday at a conference that was billed as the nation's first on how gays and lesbians fit in at universities guided by a faith that says their sexual orientation is wrong.
But rather than lamenting the Catholic Church's stand on homosexuality, the two-day "Out There" conference at Santa Clara University showed that plenty of gay-related scholarship and student affairs planning is going on in Catholic higher education, said co-organizer Linda Garber.
"It's important and interesting to know there are Catholic universities that have offices and staff people specifically geared toward LGBT concerns," said Garber, director of the women's and gender studies program at Santa Clara. "There are a lot of people out there who are teaching (LGBT) studies without a national professional organization, a newsletter or anything."
The conference drew about 150 people, most of them faculty and administrators who deal with gay subject matter or students. Topics included "Curriculum and Same-Sex Marriage in a Jesuit University" and "Can I Be Gay and Catholic?"
The continuing tension was demonstrated into the oft-repeated anecdote that Notre Dame University has had an active gay and lesbian student group for years, but the college does not recognize or provide financial support to the organization.
One sign of how far the universities have come in openly addressing gay issues is that the dean's office and campus ministry at Jesuit-run Santa Clara provided money for the event, while the school's president sent a welcome letter to participants, said Lisa Millora, assistant dean for student life.
"There are a lot of people who subscribe to Catholic values as they relate to academic work, but don't necessarily agree with how the Catholic Church carries out its work," Millora said.
Among the universities represented at the conference were Georgetown, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga, Fordham, DePaul, Boston College, College of the Holy Cross, La Salle, Marquette and Emory.
These were off the list already...
The turning point came shortly after the Land o' Lakes Conference in the late '60s, when bishops surrendered ecclesiastical control of college boards to lay people. The rest is history. The only truly Catholic colleges that remain are on Coleus' list.
Nah, the turning point was when Christ said, "You will be hated because of me" (paraphrase, but not by much).
True. But the proximate cause, at least with respect to the decline of Catholic higher ed, was the Land o' Lakes conference.
A telling exerpt:
With Robert Henle, academic vice president of St. Louis University, serving as a sort of recording secretary, the Land O'Lakes document took shape, establishing in its opening sentences the operative terms of the debate: "The Catholic university today must be a university in the full modern sense of the word, with a strong commitment to and concern for academic excellence. To perform its teaching and research function effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.
True as well.
Many Christian churches were sytematically looted and destroyed of the Word from the inside at the exact same time: many or most Lutheran and Methodist (as well as several others) theological schools went the "all roads lead to heaven --- don't worry about the Bible" route at the exact same time.
It's a war that was declared circa 34-36AD, and people need to wake up and stop wishing they were under attack. The enemy is not going away.
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