The 'spin machine':
Pope and Catholic universities

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

Benedict XVI had barely left the Catholic University of America on April 17 when the Catholic higher education establishment's spin machine shifted into high gear.

One university president said that what most impressed him about the papal address to Catholic educators was what it was not: a dressing-down. Still another president cooed that she felt "affirmed." An administrator at yet another institution said that, as the pope hadn't cited Ex Corde Ecclesia, John Paul II's concerns about Catholic identity were clearly old hat.

One got the distinct impression from the spin that a lot of people thought they'd dodged a bullet - and were grateful they weren't going home to face irate alums and dubious donors. The "Benedict loves what we're doing" blah-blah has continued ever since.

Excerpts to ponder

The facts, to put it gently, suggest something rather more complicated. Consider these excerpts from the Holy Father's address:

"A university's or school's Catholic identity . . . is a question of conviction - do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear? Are we ready to commit our entire self - intellect and will, mind and heart - to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals?" [What percentage of this year's Catholic college and university graduates could honestly answer those questions with a convinced "Yes?" What percentage would even understand the first question?]

"While we have sought diligently to engage the intellect of our young, perhaps we have neglected the will. Subsequently we observe, with distress, the notion of freedom being distorted. Freedom is not an opting out. Freedom is an opting in - a participation in Being itself. Hence authentic freedom can never be obtained by turning away from God." [Might these sentences be printed, framed, and posted in co-ed dormitories on Catholic campuses?]

"We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good . . . an assumption that every experience is of equal worth and a reluctance to admit imperfection and mistakes. And particularly disturbing is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of 'risk,' bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love." [How many freshman orientation programs and student life offices on Catholic campuses would have to examine consciences here?]

" . . . I wish to affirm the great value of academic freedom . . . Yet . . . any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church's [teaching mission] and not somehow . . . independent of it." [Will the theologians at prestige Catholic universities who affirm Humanae Vitae's teaching on the morally appropriate means of regulating fertility, the Catechism's teaching on the disordered character of homosexual acts, and the teaching of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis on the inadmissability of women to Holy Orders please raise their hands?]

A simple test

The spin machine notwithstanding, Benedict XVI put serious challenges before the nation's leading Catholic educators. To resolve any doubts that the pope has a different idea of what befits a Catholic college or university than a lot of the Catholic higher education establishment, however, I propose a simple test.

Whether or not to produce Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues - a "play" that mocks the settled teaching of the Catholic Church - has become a tedious annual ritual on many Catholic campuses. Prominent among them is Notre Dame: to the public mind, the flagship among U.S. Catholic institutions of higher education. There, the university's president, Fr. John Jenkins, CSC, has allowed Ensler's "play" on campus, acquiescing to the demands of some Notre Dame faculty while rejecting the counsel of other distinguished faculty members and the arguments of the local bishop.

In the patristic period, disputes within and among local churches were submitted to the Bishop of Rome for adjudication. So here's my proposal and my test-case: let Father Jenkins send Pope Benedict XVI a copy of Ensler's "play," asking the pope whether he considers this material appropriate for production or useful for discussion on a Catholic campus.

The answer, I predict, will not please the spin machine.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Heroes and legends: why we remember

	Guest column  Mark Lazaroski

On Monday, May 26, we mark the 140th anniversary of the first official observation of the holiday we now call Memorial Day, as established by General John A. Logan's "General Order No. 11" of the Grand Army of the Republic dated 5 May, 1868. This order reads in part: "The 30th day of May 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers and otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land."

Logan's order in fact ratified a practice that was already widespread, both in the North and the South, in the years immediately following the Civil War.

The world has traditionally reflected on Memorial Day as a remembrance and recognition for our fallen servicemen and women. Wreaths are laid at cemeteries for the lost and unidentified, parades march down city streets with spectators paying homage to our military. Flags line these streets representative of the many battles fought including the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and now Iraq.

Those who served in all these wars did so out of a sense of honor, duty, and dedication to the principles and freedom by which we live by today.

We should hold to the true meaning of this day. Memorial Day is a time to reflect on the sacrifices of America's military veterans throughout history. On this day we honor the memory of those who have died while in the military service of the United States of America.

It is also fitting that we remember all those who have died for the cause of our freedom, no matter the origin of their country; for we are all one family on this earth that God created for us all.

The meaning and remembrance we, as Catholic cemeterians, embrace are the faces of the people, most with tears, all with hope, that regularly visit our cemeteries. Our military brothers and sisters that are buried in our cemeteries are the heroes and the legends that made the United States the great country that it is.

There have been many heroes through the ages, both celebrated as well as the unknown, who have sacrificed their lives for the sake of a better world. Their combined efforts have given us what we have today: freedom.

This Memorial Day remember that America is the melting pot formed by the countless sacrifices made by all that have come and gone before us. We must go forward; building upon the legacy they left behind, drawing from the courage they exhibited, to bring to fruition a country of freedom and peace for which they helped labor. May we be faithful to the legacy we have been given, so that this freedom may prevail.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes observed in his Memorial Day address of 1884, "In the great democracy of self-devotion private and general stand side by side." Holmes went on to say, ". . . grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death - of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will."

Memorial Day becomes all the more important, for this day allows us all to give meaning to the sacrifices that were made and for us to acknowledge those sacrifices and to validate them.

On this Memorial Day . . . let us remember . . . they died for us.

Mark Lazaroski is the director of Catholic Cemeteries, Diocese of Syracuse, New York, and the president of the National Catholic Cemetery Conference.