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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
According to Inside Higher Ed, administrators at St. Thomas agreed Wednesday to allow Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak on campus.
While some questions remain about the demotion of a professor who criticized the administration's Tutu embargo, it seems like the issue is resolved and the St. Thomas community is moving toward a larger discussion about on-campus speakers. In a letter to the university, president Rev. Dennis Dease noted the school's history of mishandling speaker-related situations and called for an examination on the school's policies:
In the past, we have been criticized externally and internally when we have invited controversial speakers to campus — as well as when we have not. Rather than just move from controversy to controversy, might there be a positive role that this university could play in fostering thoughtful conversation around difficult and highly charged issues?
This is exactly what should come out of situations like this: St. Thomas messed up, but they've not only corrected the mistake but intend to examine the underlying problems it raised. It's heartening to see an attempt at actual conversation coming out of a situation that other schools would sweep under the rug.
Check out the continuing discussion of the Archbishop's controversial comments on Kay's original post.
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The University as a policy does not allow outside guests to speak on campus to any audience if they have previously expressed an opinion on abortion rights (as well as other issues) that conflicts with the Catholic Church's official position. That policy in 2003 prevented District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton from speaking in the University bookstore, after she had been invited. [7] In 2004, CUA came under fire for forbidding Stanley Tucci from presenting in a seminar about Italian cinema (after he was already scheduled to do so), because he had lent past support for Planned Parenthood, a pro-choice organization. [8]
In a letter to the campus that next month, CUA President David O'Connell wrote:
I consider any pro-choice advocacy — whether deliberate or accidental, whether presented under the guise of academic freedom or right to free speech — as incompatible with that fidelity and not worthy of The Catholic University of America. [1]
The next year, in 2005, the school was criticized for initially rejecting an application for a student chapter of the NAACP; one of the reasons officials cited in its rejection was the national organization's pro-choice stance [9]. In 2006 the CUA administration barred a student-run on-campus performance of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. The Editorial Board of the student newspaper The Tower, in supporting the decision to ban the production, stated that "as much as we love variety, diversity and open-mindedness, this University is not the best place for that to flourish."
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That last quote really captures it well.
My school is 'Catholic', but Catholic in name only -- just look at how we act, and we clearly put secularism above any god. And if it were otherwise, I would have gone somewhere else for school.
So if it's not in the Pope's most recent book, it's not part of the Infallible Doctrine anymore?
Come on, it sounds like you're trying to delude yourself about your own faith.
""As a church-goer who is self-identified as queer, I am acutely aware of the bigotry and intolerance that can be associated with Catholocism, but I also believe that these doctrines are adopted by individuals, and are not a large part of the faith as a whole.""
Here's an idea - rather than trying desperately to square a circle, how about admitting what your faith *actually professes*, and tossing it in the dustbin of history where it belongs? The idea that the Catholic version of god (Or that of any religion yet proposed, really) actually exists is, at this point, logically laughable.
Why not give it up and live your life as a moral, proudly unbelieving individual?
As far as the Church doctrine is concerned, most of the debates that happen within the Church are largely works of exegesis, which is to say, interpretation. It is therefore, not delusional for me to say that the Infallible Doctrine is somewhat pliable. My faith has the reputation of rigidity, but is in many ways subject to liberal or conservative slants in its interpretation. I stand by my earlier statement that the actions at Catholic U or St Thomas are not necessarily indicative of the Church. I'll remind you of the original post, in which Annika quotes the Rev. Dease as saying, "Might there be a more positive role this university could play in fostering thoughtful convesration...?"
It seems my faith might actually profess some sort of dialogue.