Tuesday May 25, 2010
California Catholic College Hosted Pro-Abort Commencement Speaker
By Patrick B. Craine
MORAGA, California, May 25, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – St. Mary’s College of California is under fire after hosting a commencement speaker this past Sunday who has been a high-profile proponent of same-sex “marriage” and abortion.
Jack O’Connell, California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, delivered the address at the college’s graduate commencement ceremony on Sunday.
O’Connell was a strong opponent of Proposition 8, which amended California’s constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. During the lead-up to the November 2008 vote, he appeared in TV ads calling on voters to reject the measure. “Prop 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids,” he said. “Our schools aren’t required to teach anything about marriage.”
O’Connell took up his current position in 2002, and will finish his second term this year. Before that he served in the State Assembly as a Democrat from 1982 to 1994, and as a state senator from 1994 to 2002.
In 2005, O’Connell joined California Attorney General Bill Lockyer in filing a lawsuit that sought to overturn a federal law that provided protection for health care workers who did not want to participate in abortions.
Critics have said that hosting O’Connell at the college would appear to be in violation of the U.S. Bishops’ June 2004 statement, ‘Catholics in Political Life’, which stated: “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.”
St. Mary’s College, founded in 1863 by the Christian Brothers, is based in the Oakland diocese, and so is accountable to Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone.
“A Catholic college, in selecting a commencement speaker, is holding someone up as a model for students, and it’s in a special way an honor to the individual,” said Patrick J. Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a U.S. watchdog group for Catholic higher education.
“Why would St. Mary’s deliberately select this particular individual for the special honor as commencement speaker?” he asked.
If a Catholic college is going to look for a speaker with prestige “they ought to be judging that prestige through a Catholic lens,” Reilly told LifeSiteNews. “So if they are looking for prestigious speakers, then those individuals ought to be of special note and ought to be admirable according to Catholic standards.” He pointed out, however, that a speaker need not be a Catholic. “It could very well even be a leader of a different religion if that individual is not seen as a public opponent of the Church,” he said.
The Cardinal Newman Society identified nine U.S. Catholic colleges who hosted commencement speakers this spring “whose public positions and actions are clearly at odds with fundamental Catholic teachings.” That number was down from 2009, when they listed eleven objectionable speakers. That number included the infamous commencement at Notre Dame, where President Barack Obama gave the address and received an honorary doctorate.
LifeSiteNews.com did not hear back from St. Mary’s College by press time.