Quick! Hide the Evidence!

Yesterday, I posted an article about how Marquette, which used the excuse of Marquette’s Catholic “Mission” to shut down the College Republicans’ “Adopt A Sniper” table in the Union, is pretty casual in its committment to the Catholic “Mission” in other areas.

One of the examples I used was a web page hosted at the Raynor Library that contained not only a mention of the Planned Parenthood web site, but an apparent endorsement of it. What the Raynor Library site said was:

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.

I checked back today, and (lo and behold!) that text had been changed. What it now says is:

The American Cancer Society is an excellent resource for information on women's health. . . . The American Cancer Society Web site offers valuable links to press releases, fact sheets, articles, etc.

My oh my! It appears that the text has been sanitized to avoid mention of Planned Parenthood.

It is, these days, impossible to conceal evidence of what a site once said. In the first place, Google maintains a cache of web pages. When Google last crawled the site (on January 8th) the text mentioning Planned Parenthood was there. Indeed, Archive.org shows that it has been there at least since November 8, 2002.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that somebody at Marquette either saw my blog entry, or saw the article I used as a source, and decided that it better be changed.

If Marquette wants to take a “broad-minded” and “tolerant” attitude toward organizations like Planned Parenthood, which does things clearly at odds with Catholic teaching, why can’t it tolerate the Adopt A Sniper organization, which, although it may rub the sensibilities of the politically correct crowd the wrong way, is entirely consistent with Catholic Just War Theory?

[Update: Check an entry posted on February 14 for more information in this incident.]