Activities
The society sponsors conferences and speakers as well as producing Campus Notes and The Renewal Report, the society's newsletters. Its website indicates an emphasis on "researching activities both on campus and in the classroom;" the research leads to numerous press releases publicizing scandals in Catholic higher education, particularly what it regards as departures from orthodoxy or tolerance of ideas, activities and presentations it considers not in keeping with Roman Catholic teaching. The organization also produces The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College: What to Look For and Where to Find It claiming "to show students where they can learn and grow in a genuine Catholic environment without the nonsense that has overtaken even some of the most well-known Catholic universities." They identify 26 Catholic colleges and universities in the United States, abroad, and online where, in their view, "students can reasonably expect a faithful Catholic education and a campus culture that generally upholds the values taught in their homes and parishes."
An important initiative includes monitoring speakers at Catholic universities, and providing a mechanism for online reporting of what it believes to ve scandalous commencement speakers and honorees they believe to "have taken public positions contrary to Catholic values or teaching."
The organization is often at the center of controversy, as for example when it solicited donations to "finance a major effort to expose the heretics within our Catholic colleges," an effort which was called "red-baiting in ecclesiastical garb" by the Rev. John Beal, canon law professor at Catholic University of America. It has been criticized for "McCarthyite tactics" and a "fundamentalist agenda." Charles L. Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities said that the society's "attacks can no longer go unchallenged," and characterized their work as "a long trail of distorted, inaccurate, and often untrue attacks on scholars addressing complex issues." Michael James, vice president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said the society is "destructive and antithetical to a spirit of unity in our commitment to serve society and the church." Reilly has been referred to in Catholic publications as the "self-appointed ayatollah to Catholic academia in this country."
The organization partners with conservative groups like The Heritage Foundation to sponsor such events as their joint forum on academic freedom. It has a large presence on the Web, issuing "Catholic Higher Education Alerts" to publicize not only what it considers scandalous programming at universities, but in opposition to the ACLU, judges it deems activist or with whom it disagrees, and what it perceives as "liberal bias" more generally.
The organization has stated that "a Catholic bishop contacted Patrick Reilly to discuss how he could put the screws to a wayward Catholic college in his diocese, including ways of encouraging the removal of dissident theology faculty;" Reilly declined to identify the bishop, citing confidentiality. Rev. James Keenan, a priest and professor at Boston College who was targeted in a fundraising letter sent out by the society, said "Hopefully, someday our bishops will call us to end this awful conduct, which hurts not only those of us targeted, but more importantly, the unity of the church itself." Another of the targets, Fr. John J. Paris, said of Reilly "I think he is a fraud, a charlatan, and a snake-oil salesman" and of the society, that its purpose is "whipping up right-wing types to open their checkbooks."
In 2009, the society was one of the primary organizations that criticized the University of Notre Dame for inviting the President Barack Obama to receive an honorary doctorate of law and deliver the commencement speech, due to his pro-choice position and record in support of abortion. The society garnered more than 367,000 signatures to its online petition of protest.
The organization also deplored a commencement address given at Notre Dame de Namur University, by Sr. Helen Prejean, a nun opposed to capital punishment and author of Dead Man Walking, claiming the Josephite nun "is out-of-line with church teaching on, of all issues, capital punishment." The organization faulted Prejean's critique of a "loophole" in the Church's teaching which permits capital punishment under limited circumstances.
In the spring of 2012, the Cardinal Newman Society listed 12 Catholic universities whose commencement speakers were considered objectionable because of their support for abortion or gay rights. Among the speakers was Kathleen Sibelius, secretary of health and human services, who was invited to speak at Georgetown University. The Society presented a 26000-signature petition that called the choice of Ms. Sibelius "insulting to faithful Catholics and their bishops who are engaged in the fight for religious liberty and against abortion." (Sibelius supports abortion rights and has upheld the mandate in the national health care plan requiring all institutions to provide birth control coverage.) As a result, the Archdiocese of Washington sent a letter of rebuke to Georgetown's president.
Read more about this topic: Cardinal Newman Society
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“Love and work are viewed and experienced as totally separate activities motivated by separate needs. Yet, when we think about it, our common sense tells us that our most inspired, creative acts are deeply tied to our need to love and that, when we lack love, we find it difficult to work creatively; that work without love is dead, mechanical, sheer competence without vitality, that love without work grows boring, monotonous, lacks depth and passion.”
—Marta Zahaykevich, Ucranian born-U.S. psychitrist. “Critical Perspectives on Adult Women’s Development,” (1980)
“...I have never known a “movement” in the theater that did not work direct and serious harm. Indeed, I have sometimes felt that the very people associated with various “uplifting” activities in the theater are people who are astoundingly lacking in idealism.”
—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)
“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)