{"id":115,"date":"2008-05-13T10:53:53","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T10:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/end-of-the-catholic-commenceme.html"},"modified":"2008-05-13T10:53:53","modified_gmt":"2008-05-13T10:53:53","slug":"end-of-the-catholic-commenceme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/end-of-the-catholic-commenceme.html","title":{"rendered":"End of the Catholic “commencement wars”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Paulson had an in-depth article <\/a>in yesterday’s Globe about the apparent victory of Catholic bishops and alums and advocacy groups who have been pushing Catholic universities to bar Catholic commencement speakers with questionable public views, usually on the flashpoint issues of abortion or stem cell research or gay marriage. This cause is the raison d’etre<\/em> of the pugnacious Cardinal Newman Society and its president, Patrick Reilly, and Paulson cites Reilly’s figures. But he also cites a number of bishops and university officials who hail the trend:<\/p>\n

“I think that Catholic administrators at Catholic colleges are much more attentive to the selection process than they may have been in the past, and there is a growing awareness that these types of invitations are related to Catholic identity and mission,” said Bishop Robert J. McManus of Worcester, who is chairman of the education committee for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. “I call it truth in advertising,” McManus said. “Why would you honor a person, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, that has publicly contradicted the positions of the church?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The tension still seems there, as the presidents of Notre Dame and CUA acknowledge. But one effect seems to be that more bishops are getting invited to speak. On Sunday, the Aberdeen News of South Dakota reported<\/a> that a state senator, Nancy Turbak Berry, was disinvited from giving the commencement address last Friday, a day before the event. This was due to her views on abortion rights, she said. She was replaced by the bishop, Paul Swain, and no mention was made of the switch.
\nSo what will be the effect on politics and the church? Will grads get to hear better speakers? Will dissed Catholic pols wear the martyr’s mantle? And was there any real benefit to having Catholic pols give commencement addresses anyway?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Paulson had an in-depth article in yesterday’s Globe about the apparent victory of Catholic bishops and alums and advocacy groups who have been pushing Catholic universities to bar Catholic commencement speakers with questionable public views, usually on the flashpoint issues of abortion or stem cell research or gay marriage. This cause is the raison…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEnd of the Catholic "commencement wars"? - Benedictions: The Pope in America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/end-of-the-catholic-commenceme.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"End of the Catholic "commencement wars"? - Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michael Paulson had an in-depth article in yesterday’s Globe about the apparent victory of Catholic bishops and alums and advocacy groups who have been pushing Catholic universities to bar Catholic commencement speakers with questionable public views, usually on the flashpoint issues of abortion or stem cell research or gay marriage. This cause is the raison…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/end-of-the-catholic-commenceme.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-13T10:53:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"End of the Catholic \"commencement wars\"? - Benedictions: The Pope in America","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/end-of-the-catholic-commenceme.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"End of the Catholic \"commencement wars\"? - Benedictions: The Pope in America","og_description":"Michael Paulson had an in-depth article in yesterday’s Globe about the apparent victory of Catholic bishops and alums and advocacy groups who have been pushing Catholic universities to bar Catholic commencement speakers with questionable public views, usually on the flashpoint issues of abortion or stem cell research or gay marriage. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}