{"id":439,"date":"2009-04-24T09:05:38","date_gmt":"2009-04-24T09:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/another-catholic-commencement.html"},"modified":"2009-04-24T09:05:38","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T09:05:38","slug":"another-catholic-commencement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/04\/another-catholic-commencement.html","title":{"rendered":"Another Catholic commencement, another bishop boycott"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Hughes.jpg\"<\/span>This time it is Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans who has said he will boycott graduation at Xavier University because they are giving an honorary degree to Donna Brazile, the veteran Democratic political strategist and Catholic and New Orleans native who supports abortion rights. Brazile is also African-American, and Xavier is of course the preeminent historically black Catholic university in the United States. <\/p>\n

The Times-Picayune has the story<\/a>, including the RSVP letter<\/a> from Hughes to Xavier President Norman Francis. In the letter, Hughes recognizes Brazile’s work on behalf of the poor, and African-Americans in particular, but said her stands are not in keeping with Catholic teaching. “She has also relativized the importance of the fundamental life issues on national television suggesting that there are more important things for the American people to discuss than abortion.” <\/p>\n

\n\"Donna<\/span>Brazile responded in an email to the newspaper: <\/p>\n

\n

“As life long devoted Catholic, I am sorry the archbishop will boycott this celebration of the class of 2009,” Brazile said by email. “I will remain faithful to the Catholic Church and my Christian faith which keeps me grounded.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hughes will also miss meeting Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, who will receive an honorary degree. In fact, three years ago Hughes was in attendance when Xavier awarded an honorary degree to another African-American, a fellow known as Barack Obama. Francis said Obama apparently “flew under the radar” of the archdiocese; he was off most folks screens back then. Francis told the Times-Picayune that Hughes’ decision regarding Brazile still “surprised me a little.” <\/p>\n

“I make the best decisions possible. I think we’ve been as Christian and Catholic as we can be,” he said. Francis makes the selection of speakers off a list of preferences prepared by student leaders.<\/p>\n

Hughes is color-blind in his policies, as in 2005 he boycotted Loyola’s commencement when they honored the Landrieu family, one of Louisiana’s leading political clans, because some of the pols in the family support abortion rights. <\/p>\n

Still, I wonder if the hierarchy realizes the collective damage that this application of principle–and the blistering rhetoric against Obama et al–is doing to the church’s standing in the black community. The Notre Dame uproar combined with the boycott of Brazile and Xavier–it’s worth thinking for a moment at least how this registers in the minds of African-Americans, and whether they will want to listen to Archbishop Hughes in the future. <\/p>\n

Hat tip: CWNews<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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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\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}