By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Already under fire for inviting pro-abortion President Barack Obama to speak at this year’s commencement, the University of Notre Dame is adding even more scandal to Catholic sensibilities by hosting a series of events during Easter week that celebrate homosexuality.
According to a report by The Cardinal Newman Society, an organization devoted to restoring the Catholic identity to the nation’s Catholic colleges and universities, Notre Dame is hosting “StaND Against Hate Week” from April 14-17 as a way of promoting an “inclusive spirit” in support of homosexual students.
Included in the week’s festivities is a screening of the film Prayers for Bobby, which portrays Mary Griffith, a faithful Christian mother who seeks spiritual healing for her homosexual son, as the cause of her son’s suicide. According to a review at ReligiousDispatches.org, the film biography ignores the real-life Bobby’s drug use and “stint as a gay prostitute.” The real Mary Griffith has renounced her faith and champions homosexual rights, including same-sex marriage.
Notre Dame will also participating in the national “Day of Silence”, a national event to oppose harassment of homosexual students in schools which will take place on April 17. Despite the worthy goal, the national event is used by the sponsoring Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to promote school curricula that equate “sexual identity” with racial and ethnic differences, without clarification about the moral and health consequences of homosexual activity.
Notre Dame’s announced agenda for the week includes no programs designed to explain Church teaching on homosexuality to students.
Coincidentally, April 17 marks the one-year anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s address to Catholic educators in Washington, D.C., during which he called Catholic colleges and universities to a stronger Catholic identity.
“We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good and an aimless pursuit of novelty parading as the realization of freedom,” Pope Benedict said. He continued, “[P]articularly disturbing, is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of ‘risk,’ bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love.”
Meanwhile, Notre Dame’s plan to bestow an honorary law degree on President Barack Obama on May 17 has been protested by hundreds of students and alumni, 31 Catholic bishops, 10 Holy Cross priests and more than a quarter million Catholics at www.NotreDameScandal.com, which was established by The Cardinal Newman Society.
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