Fairfield University’s student newspaper The Mirror reports that Fairfield provided transportation for students to hear openly gay sex columnist Dan Savage bash the Catholic Church in his keynote address for the “Pro-Queer Life” conference on Saturday.
The lecture contradicts assurances reportedly made by Fairfield President Fr. Jeffrey von Arx, S.J., to Bishop William Lori that the conference would “not be a vehicle for dissent.”
The Jesuit university reportedly bussed students to Union Theological Seminary in New York as part of their “More Than a Monologue: Sexual Diversity and the Catholic Church,” an effort by Fairfield and Fordham Universities along with two non-denominational divinity schools to apparently cast doubt on Catholic teaching on homosexuality.
The Mirror reported that Savage:
…denounced the Bible as a credible source of model behavior, saying that sins, like masturbation, premarital sex and use of condoms and birth pills, once so adamantly prohibited in the past, can no longer be judged by the authorities of the church.
“We have got to ignore the b——t in the Bible about gay people, just as we’ve learned to ignore what the b——-t in the Bible have said about women … about polyester, about farming and about slavery,” said Savage.
Priests cannot see the sins of people, and according to Savage, homosexuality cannot be so easily judged from the outside.
“They can’t see past our homosexuality to see our shared and common humanity, which is hugely ironic considering how many of those priests behind those pulpits are gay,” he said.
In a slightly ironic twist, The Mirror reports that after Savage called for everyone to “see our shared and common humanity,” he called traditional marriage supporter Maggie Gallagher “vile.”
Savage’s lecture contradicts assurances to the bishops reportedly made by the presidents of Fairfield and Fordham Universities that the “More Than a Monologue” conferences, ”while sensitive to the experience of the participants, will not be a vehicle for dissent.” Those assurances were revealed in a September 22nd public statement by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, following a letter from The Cardinal Newman Society requesting Archbishop Dolan’s intervention and public concern arising from The Cardinal Newman Society’s reports on the conference series.
Meredith Marquez, assistant director of Student Diversity Programs, felt Savage’s speech was a fitting opener for LGBTQ History month.
“I feel like while we’re celebrating LGBTQ people of America,” she said, “One of the pressing things that’s going on right now … are the suicides that have been happening. This event allows students to go and hear from probably the most popular and the funniest—definitely the funniest—and, I would argue, the most effective person to talk about this issue.”
Marquez also noted that the conversation between homosexuals and the Church needs to continue.
“To [Fairfield University], being Catholic is being accepting,” she said. “That’s how we can be the best Catholic institution if we live up to that mission. [It] is to be the most accepting that you can of all people. I am hoping that little messages will get through and it’s things like these that I would love all students will come to.”
As part of the same series Fairfield will host its part of “More Than a Monologue” with a “Care of Souls” conference on October 29th. The theme of the event, according to The Mirror is, “pastoral care of and by LGBTQ Catholics.”
Adam Wilson
CNS Staff
Matthew Archbold
Charlotte Hays
38 Comments
Accept all people and love them as Christ commands. God hates all sin and we must as well.
I hope the bishops learned something from this and will take some action to set the record straight with those students and others who attended what amounts to another Catholic bashing hatefest.
It is so sad to see the beauty of the truth of our faith clouded by such distortions of the truth. Pope John Paul II had presented the beauty of God’s wisdom in his talks labeled “Theology of the Body”. There is no name calling or assaulting the dignity of others in the Catholic Church teaching against homosexuality…but there certainly is foul language and verbal assault in the presentations that students were bussed to see. Those responsible bear a heavy burden before the Lord for the damage to faith to which they are contributing.
I’ve been puzzled for years why people like Dan Savage will constantly bash the Catholic Church’s teachings but never leave to go to another church that accepts what they believe. It would be easy to do and would free them to worship and behave in a way that they find befitting to their beliefs.
I think I’ve finally come up with a plausible explanation. These people DO believe that the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ, at some deep level, and believe that whatever the Pope binds or looses on earth will be bound or loosed in Heaven. Because of this, people like Dan Savage MUST get the Catholic Church to accept sin, in this case homosexuality, to legitimize it and sanctify it. Only then will people like Dan Savage be able to be at peace with their beliefs and behaviors. No other church’s approval will suffice. It must be the Catholic Church or no other. As a subordinate reason, once the Catholic Church legitimizes sin (calling good evil, and evil good)the last thorn in the sides of those who wish to pervert Christianity will be removed.
You have a point. The Catholic Church is the only large, worldwide organization of Christians. Protestants groups are fragmented. The Orthodox Churches are smaller. Only the Catholic Church reaches across all continents in large numbers.
Yes, perhaps they do want her approval. Or perhaps they want to destroy her because she’s the last remaining obstacle to world wide hedonism.
You hit the nail on the head. If the church changes her teachings on alternative lifestyles. The rest of the world will follow suit and they know it. It does not matter that the lutherans, episcopalians, methodist, and presbyterians are changing their positions. Because they are only broken fragments of the one true church. They cannot change world view in the same manner as the catholic church.
A Jesuit University busing students to hear a speech that – forgive me for having to point this out – summarizes contemporary Jesuit thought. Is anybody here surprised? I’m not. It’s to be expected from these people.
The real question is why parents send their kids to these schools.
Cyril, I could not agree more except to add that I have never met, read, or heard a Jesuit that I could respect. Th order, in my opinion, should be shut down, permanently.
How about Fr. Mitch Pacwa? He’s a Jesuit and he’s as fine a Catholic as you would ever want to meet.
Except for Fr. Mitch Pacwa, among a very few others.
God bless,
Dan
St. Ignatius is probably sobbing at this point…it is no surprise to me that this is happening at “catholic” colleges run by the Jesuits. I have encountered a number of them (Jesuits) recently, and they are, excuse the antiquated term but, heretical. With the exception of faithful sons of Ignatius, like Father Fessio and those of Ignatius Press, the whole order should be shut down, including the schools they operate. How many souls are being lost because of these heretical teachings??? The devil is indeed at work here…and there this is no laughing matter anymore.
Saint Ignatius of Loyala would not recognise the Bolsheviks who took over the order.
Saint Ignatius of Antioch would quickly recognize today’s Jesuit colleges as the kind of heresy he was helping the Church avoid in its early years.
We have crossed the divide when there are more sickos than saints.
Good Grief, these people are destroying their bodies with unnnatural, injuty and disease causing behaviors, and they want us to approve the destruction of their own bodies and souls and those of others. Even if two men are “faithful” to each other in so-called “same-sex marriage”, the type of behaviors they engage in still give them problems and diseases. No way!
There is nothing that will make it right. They want us to call white, black and black, white, and I refuse.
I know these types. I’ve read Dan Savage a lot. The man is a very troubled, very confused and angry person.
Even worse is that this school has a diversity director. I know those types too. I wonder if they’d like to have some diversity in the form of hearing my story.
I lived decades in the homosexual world. It’s not a pretty picture. I’d like to speak to college students to make up for my activities as a homosexual advocate when I was that age.
I wonder about those students and how they responded to obvious acts of confusion such as where Dan Savage spins that old canard about blended textiles (customs that applied only to the Jews) and the morality that applies to all people.
I’ll put a plug in for a great on-line resource of orthodoxy. Check out Institute of Catholic Culture. All of their talks are on-line so you can listen to them slowly. This is all in the diocese of Arlington, VA, an oasis of orthodoxy just outside of DC. I’m blessed enough to have my home parish (St. John the Beloved) that does a Latin Missa Cantata (Sung High Latin Mass) every week. Orthodoxy works. In my parish I see large families with lots of kids, and at daily Mass today at St. James I counted over 100 people, which is normal here.
Thank you for commenting. You do come from a great diocese. As the homeschool program my oldest receives curriculum from is based out of the diocese of Arlington.
Thank you. Living in Alexandria I will seek out and attend St. John the Beloved…
Being a x gay man, you have so much to offer these young men and woman. Having lived that life style and have come full circle, makes you a true advocate of Christianity and of our Lord Jesus Christ. This should be your Ministry ! If its not,MAKE IT ! GOD BLESS YOU !
Savage’s “advice” column is simply depraved. It aims to entertain through being shocking while commenting and opining on the sexual dilemmas of letter writers. It was Savage who, some years ago, organized an effective campaign to associate Rick Santorum’s name with something foul and disgusting in internet search engines, an assault on Santorum’s good name that was retribution for his standing for Christian belief about marriage and about the sinfulness of homosexual acts. There is no possible way he could be considered in good faith an appropriate speaker in any sort of religious context. Anyone at all familiar with Dan Savage would know that he says very offensive things continually and is aggressively opposed to Christian sexual morality.
Hate the Sin, not the sinner.
We all know it is an unnatural act(homosexuality) for those committing the act they believe it is love, when it truly is Lust. To love someone of the same sex is a natural act but to love someone of the same sex to the point of sexual relations is lust and that is a product of the evil one. Pray!!
Memo to Meredith Marquez: Regarding her comment that Catholics always need to be accepting – Catholics can never accept sin or a sinful lifestyle; our faith is counter-cultural..we are to be in the world, but not of it. God help us.
Ms. Marquez ignores the fact that many out and open “gay” men and women kill themselves every year. Two years ago The Advocate, a homosexual magazine, listed the top ten deaths of famous homosexuals in the past year. Three out of ten were deaths by suicide, or a 30% suicide rate. These were all out, pro-gay advocates. Has anyone heard of this? Of course not. Homosexuality is associated with higher rates of every known sort of mental health problem, from depression, drug abuse to suicide and anti-social disorders. I’ve seen it all myself first hand.
How the mighty have fallen.
At Mass I was thinking of the bravery aqnd zeal of those Jesuits who knew what thye were getting into when they volunteered for the NA missions. Boy, the modern Jesuits sure don’t match up.
Amen!
How much gangrene can the church stand, and when will it be defined and amputated?
I am a Fairfield graduate from the 60s. This event is a good illustration of why I have long since stopped donating to Fairfield University.
I also graduated in the 60s and received a fantastic education, one that has helped me with the grace of God to succeed, and also stay faithful to Church teachings. I also stopped contributing shortly after the current president was installed, and exchanged correspondence with him.
This is another of the MANY examples of “Catholic” institutions allowing staff or invited speakers to condemn our faith. ANY staff of ANY Catholic Institution that berates the teachings of our church should be immediately FIRED and the most agregious attackers should be sued for calumny, insubordination, libel or any of the other deep offenses of which these sorry malcontents are guilty. The catholic faithful is … tired of the attacks and should assume a “muscular Christianity” as Pat Buchanan has suggested. The meek, mild and submissive posture is not the only way to adress EVIL!!!!!
My daughter went to USF and came home questioning the virginity of Our Lady because a theology class (taught by a protestant, no less!) stated Jesus had brothers, therefore the conclusion about Our Lady.
If the Jesuits won’t clean up their order, maybe S. J. should stand for Saboteurs of Jesus.
Charles, Your rightous indignation is more than justified. It seems a good God-fearing, Bible reading Protestant would be infinately better for you daughter’s spiritual wellbeing than a typical Jesuit professor – and better than the type of “Protestant” the Jesuits would hire.
I think Cyriil has a very valid point… Why have many Protestants continued to focus on the truth in The Bible, while the Jesuits have often gone off on a tangent…
Since you will run into teaching like this you have to have the information to counter it. We all have to be educated in the faith in detail so we can answer false charges like this.
Aramaic, the language of the Jews at that time has no word for cousin. They use one word to mean cousin or brother. Usually translators render this Aramaic word as brother or brethren, but it means something like a member of the family, either brother, cousin or nephew.
In the Old Testament, Lot is referred to as the brother of Abram (Gen 14:27), but in the genealogy Lot is clearly the nephew of Abram (Gen 11:27).
The verse that protestants and dissenting Catholics site is usually Mark 6:3, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon?”
But in Matthew 27:55-56, we see that a different Mary is the mother of James and Joses.
In John 19:25 we see again that that at the cross there were two women named Mary, one the mother of Jesus and the other the wife of Cleophus. In Mark 15:47 we see that this other Mary was the mother of Joses. So in our language Joses and James were the cousins of Jesus.
In Acts 1:14-15 we see that Jesus had close to 80 or 90 brothers. (120 people present, minus the 11 apostles, and probably Mary, Mary Magdalene, the other Mary and perhaps a few others.)
Finally, Jesus on the cross gives his mother to the care of St. John, which would be odd if he had any other full brothers.
I hope this helps.
One time I found a web site listing the top ten misinterpretations of the Bible. It listed mistakes like claims that Jesus had brothers, etc., things that are easy to disprove. I found every single one of these errors in a book called the Catholic Study Bible. They said that Jesus rebuked his mother, “Who is my mother?” (Matt 12:48), and they even claimed that this was the sword that would pierce her heart that Simeon had foreseen. (Luke 2:22-40) This is crazy stuff but you know it is being taught in the seminaries and in Catholic schools.
You can’t be complacent or uninformed. There are legions of people out there who love to misinform the faithful.
Are there any Jesuits out there willing to take a stand against this downward spiral in the values promoted at their colleges and universities?
“I feel like while we’re celebrating LGBTQ people of America,” said Meredith Marquez, assistant director of Student Diversity Programs.
I would rather celebrate the Eucharist.
Pray for the conversion of fallen away Catholics.
I have never had ‘much faith’ in the Jesuit organization….old, but it doesn’t mean that it’s remained faithful to the precepts of the One Holy Catholic Church…priesthood has been infiltrated by communist idealogy since world war II, on purpose. This is the result.
The liberal Jesuits think they are opening thought and expanding thinking by organizing such activities… However, when I read stories like this, I think…’Who did this, why, and what where they thinking…?!’ The Jesuits need to again espouse what their mentor Jesus would teach…
This cancer does not just affect the Jesuits, but many Catholic orders. My own order, the Benedictines, have followed this path, particularly the sisters. The only exceptions are the cloistered nuns and some new Benedictine foundations. The rest are dying out–literally. The same is true for the Dominicans, and the Franciscans, and so many more. But, not to lose hope! Remember: this is God’s Church. He knows what He is doing. We must have trust that He will do what is necessary. We have to pray very hard, especially for our Holy Father.
You are right, Sister, Terese Peter,
Many, many Catholic orders infected. A major part of the reform will come from people within religious orders who honestly acknowledge the crisis and set about to correct course. I’ve heard that the Benedictines have a good Catholic College in Tennessee that is on a better road. I hope they can build on this.
It is doubtful that Saints Ignatius Loyolla or Francis Xavier would belong to this order if they were on the earth now.
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