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Puzzled: Why is Fordham Univ giving an award to Justice Breyer?
Now that I am back home, I am catching up on news and mail.
I was aware during my recent travels that Fordham University was planning on giving an award to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. The prize is the Stein Prize in Ethics.
Now as I read more about this, and people continue to send me e-mail, I am left scratching my head even more than I did when I first heard the news a couple weeks ago.
Justice Breyer has been a long-time supporter of abortion rights. Not just abortion, but partial birth abortion. He wrote majority opinion for the 2000 case Stenburg vs. Carhart. This decision overturned state laws restricting partial birth abortion. Justice Breyer also supported the pro-partial birth abortion position in 2007 in Gonzales vs. Carhart.
Fordham University is a Catholic University. They are giving an ethics award to a Justice who has supported something morally and ethically indefensible: partial birth abortion.
I don’t understand this.
Can someone explain to me how this works?
Is there anything that would disqualify someone from being given an award by a Catholic university if this doesn’t?
Could they not have found someone, Catholic or non-Catholic I don’t care, who at least does not actively argue for and enable one of the evilest things that can be done to defenseless human beings?
What am I missing?
Yes, supporting Ex Corde Ecclesiae
I speak from experience having taught in a name-only Catholic University.
Comment by Aelric — 29 September 2008 @ 2:25 pmMaybe the fellow converted.
Anyway, this story reminds me of Chesterton using the example of cannibalism to say that the fact that people purposely do evil things because they are evil things proves that instead of being brutes, they are people, however fallen and sinful.
There is a certain kind of inverted reveling that people can “enjoy” in excercising this kind of cleverness. Fallen away Catholics are best at this kind of thing.
Mysterium iniquitatis.
Comment by Father Renzo di Lorenzo (TRILOGY) — 29 September 2008 @ 2:42 pmYou missed taking/passing the course now required in all “catholic” universities. Political Correctness 101
Comment by Jerry Boyd — 29 September 2008 @ 2:49 pmFather,
My wife is a graduate of the once great Fordham University. Fordham has a long, long history of such nonsense.
But it reminds me of another story.
A priest friend with whom I grew up once said to me over a beer, “You know, a few years back I even thought of leaving the Church.” I was incredulous, but fell for what I’m sure is an old joke.
“Yep,” he replied, “I almost joined the Jesuits.”
Comment by Jon — 29 September 2008 @ 3:15 pmHere is the text of a letter I emailed to Fordham University president Fr. Joseph McShane on September 15. To date, I haven’t received any reply.
============================
15 September 2008
Rev. Joseph McShane, SJ
President, Fordham University
Bronx, New York 10458
Dear Fr. McShane:
I was shocked to learn from the Cardinal Newman Society website that Fordham plans to honor Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer with the Fordham-Stein Ethics Prize next month. I understand that Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion in a Supreme Court decision that struck down state laws banning the practice of partial birth abortion.
Honoring such a prominent person would be truly a cause for scandal. It sends the message to everyone—including the young men and women sent by their parents to Fordham in the hope and expectation that attending the “Jesuit University of New York” would give them a good education while strengthening, or at least not injuring, their faith—that the value of human life and a person’s espousal of abortion and infanticide are really “no big deal.” It also makes a mockery of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops statement “Catholics in Political Life,” which says: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” I am sure that you and everyone in positions of responsibility at Fordham know this.
I have always been proud of having attended graduate school at Fordham and of its reputation as a Catholic and a Jesuit university. This makes it all the more disturbing to learn about Fordham’s decision to honor Justice Breyer.
I strongly urge the university to reconsider, and thereby teach those in need of learning what it means to be a Catholic university.
Sincerely,
Comment by Frank — 29 September 2008 @ 3:18 pm...
Frank –
Comment by Jason — 29 September 2008 @ 3:28 pmThat’s the kind of letter that gets results – brief, fact-packed, and well-written. Thank you for sending it. I’m sorry you’ve had no reply, but pray that it finds its mark.
What am I missing?
What I fear you are missing, Father, is what is most evidently an enthusiasm in favor of abortion among many on the Catholic left. At the very best, many of them, including at many universities, consider abortion to be a distraction unworthy of their attention; but to my mind this explanation does not fit the observed facts. One is left to conclude that these people actively support abortion.
I’m sure you would agree with me that abortion, and especially partial birth abortion, falls into the category of things which, as Lincoln said of slavery, “if this isn’t wrong, then nothing is.”
Comment by Paul, Just This Guy, You Know? — 29 September 2008 @ 3:33 pmI now tell people, “Looking back, I wish I’d gone to a Catholic school. But I went to Loyola (Maryland) instead.” I’d venture to say that most Jesuit universities are CINO, and I’ve even seen it offered that the real power in the Jesuit order lies in the college and university presidents, not the rectors or the Superior General.
That’s what you’re missing.
Comment by Cygnus — 29 September 2008 @ 3:43 pmWhat is wrong with our Catholic Universities. If they do not want to abide by the teachings of the Catholic Church remove the Catholic from the name of their instituation. Afterall if tihs is the way these learning institutions conduct and represent themselves their Catholicity is in name only.
Comment by Kazimer — 29 September 2008 @ 4:01 pmFather:
Fordham University ceased being a “Catholic” university back in the 70s when they traded their identity as such to become a ‘private university in the catholic tradition’ that contracted with the Jesuits of Fordham, Inc. so that they could legally (under the rules at the time) accept state aid to education from NY State.
Now they bill themselves as the “Jesuit University of NY”. Nothing Catholic there.
I’m writing this as I gaze at my degree, from the “Curatores Universitatis Fordhamensis”, which I earned in 1978. At least they had the intellectual honesty to not call themselves specifically Catholic.
They also get $0 a year from me, and that will continue as long as the idiocy which destroyed the great Catholic tradition that gave us 3 princes of the church as alumni continues.
Sad.
(Fordham College Class of 1978, btw.)
Comment by bryan — 29 September 2008 @ 6:55 pmWhat’s worse?
a) to give the Stein Prize to a pro-Roe government official
b) to give Holy Communion to a pro-Roe government official
Where is the beam and where is the mote?
Comment by David Kastel — 29 September 2008 @ 7:09 pmYes, lets not consider any Jesuit to be Catholic burn ‘em all at the stake while we are at it. People love to trash the Jesuits because of a few bad apples. If we were to trash everyone with the same vigor that people love to trash the Jesuits we would be called racist or sexist. Trashing an entire religious order because you don’t like a few or calling them ‘not catholic’ is like labeling all priests as child molesters because a few molested children.
Stick to specifics not generalized statements. Maybe Fordham is wrong in honoring this person, I don’t know, what I do know is we don’t have all the facts and may never. If you are that up in arms about the situation write the president of Fordham again, write the provincial Rev. David S. Ciancimino, SJ New York Provice of the Society of Jesus 39 East 83rd Street New York, N.Y. 10028, write the president of the Jesuit Conference of the United States, Rev. Tom Smolich, SJ 1016 16th St. NW Suite 400, Washington DC 20036.
Try and stick to specific Jesuits doing specific things, not smearing an entire religious order or deciding they aren’t Catholic because you said so.
Comment by Kat — 29 September 2008 @ 7:23 pmI think the school’s just thrilled that it got a Supreme Court Justice to agree to accept the prize. It just happened to be Breyer. Wouldn’t be suprised if they’d offered it to others who turned them down. [Interesting point.]
Comment by Jason Petty — 29 September 2008 @ 8:35 pmYou’re right Kat. You obviously attended a Jesuit High, Jesuit college, and know very well that the entire order is orthodox, faithful, and in line with contemporary Catholic thinking.
By their fruits you will know them. I appreciate the education I received at their hands, even though I reject most of their divergent views and institutionalized dissent. That there are some good ones is not at issue. At issue is that their order is far to the left, and, for the most part, as someone who spent 8 years exposed to them, they truly are, as an order, Catholic In Name Only.
Comment by bryan — 29 September 2008 @ 8:38 pmLike several who have posted I attended a Jesuit University (Loyola Los Angeles) in the 60’s. I received an excellent education. It was the Catholic part that was missing. I too donate zero, zip, nada to them and instead donate to truely Catholic institutions of higher education like Wyoming Catholic.
Comment by Jerry — 29 September 2008 @ 10:01 pm