Just How Seriously Does Marquette Take Its “Catholic Mission?”

Marquette’s administration insisted that the College Republicans’ campaign to raise money for the Adopt A Sniper program was inconsistent with the institution’s “Catholic Mission.”

So just how seriously does Marquette in fact take its “Mission?” It seems to depend on the ideological coloration of the program or organization involved.

Pro-Homosexuality

Consider, for example, the “Pastoral Care” section of Marquette’s web site. It asks “Are you Gay? Lesbian? Bisexual? Questioning?” It then provides a long series of links to left-leaning “Gay Rights” organizations. Some of these are the same organizations that have been persecuting the Boy Scouts for having the exact position on homosexuality that the Catholic Church does!

Then there is the Gay/Straight Alliance, a recognized student organization at Marquette. The group has never made a secret of the fact that it just flatly opposes Church teaching on homosexuality.

The Law School could hardly pass up an opportunity to jump on the politically correct bandwagon, so there is the “Lesbian, Gay, and Other Advocates Legal Society at Marquette University Law School.”

Pro-Abortion

The Association of English Graduate Students lists Planned Parenthood on its list of Milwaukee Area Health Resources. They rather demurely fail to mention that the organization does abortions, although that’s hardly something anybody would be ignorant of. They do indeed list “birthcontrol” [sic] as something that can be gotten there.

Then we have the web site at Raynor Library which, in giving students guidance in using resources on the World Wide Web opines:

Planned Parenthood is an excellent resource for information on women’s health and global reproduction issues. . . . The Planned Parenthood Web site offers valuable links to press releases, fact sheets, articles, etc.

Needless to say, the “information” provided by the site is often flatly at odds with Catholic teaching on sexuality, birth control and abortion.

Now one can certainly argue that it’s appropriate for students at any university to know about the Planned Parenthood web site. Unfortunately, the blurb on the Raynor web page appears to go beyond giving information to supplying an endorsement. Just how likely is it that any official Marquette web page will ever endorse the “Adopt A Sniper” program?

And if Marquette is going to take such a “broad-minded” view of these sorts of issues, just why is it that they are so narrow-minded about supporting snipers? Why is “pro-gay” OK, and pro-abortion OK, but “pro-sniper” has to be shut up?

The only possible answer is: what the Marquette Administration – or at least the administrators who have to deal with these issues – really care about is political correctness. They will wiggle and squirm and find a reason to tolerate politically correct ideas, no matter how contrary to Church teaching. But when confronted with politically incorrect ideas, they will find an excuse to shut them up, no matter how strained or implausible.

[An article on Townhall.com by Mike Adams brought some of these issues to my attention.]