Comments on Whom Should a Catholic law school honor?TypePad2010-02-01T20:19:02ZRick Garnetthttps://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/tag:typepad.com,2003:https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/02/whom-should-a-catholic-law-school-honor/comments/atom.xml/Matt Bowman commented on 'Whom Should a Catholic law school honor?'tag:typepad.com,2003:6a00d834515a9a69e20120a848d8e0970b2010-02-02T15:20:54Z2010-02-02T15:20:54ZMatt BowmanThis article starts a helpful discussion. Part of the context, it must be noted, is that Catholic University faculty have...<p>This article starts a helpful discussion. Part of the context, it must be noted, is that Catholic University faculty have tracked their secular counterparts in being disproportionately wrong and indifferent on abortion, instead of being disproportionately where the Catholic faith should have put them. This analysis doesn't start at ground zero. So I think the Cardinal Newman Society deserves more understanding. </p>
<p>Ultimately, I think the problem is that Catholics are tempted to view support for legal abortion as not so bad. No one would perjoratively call it a "single issue" standard to exclude racists from university honors. Efforts to soften standards for Catholic endorsements almost always coincide with rationalizations to support people who support legal abortion. Even calling abortion in the US from 1973-2010 a "single issue" suggests an inappropriate lenience towards the problem. 50 million murders and counting. People, not you, have taken the single issue label you use and said that opposition to honoring Obama was based on a single issue. Calling abortion a single issue compartmentalizes even the polictical realities of how pervasive the evil is. In his encyclical On Social Concern, Pope John Paul II speaks of "structures of sin," which is an understated way to describe massive, entrenched social evils. Describing it as a "single issue" is a denigration. It seems to me that even if publicly pro-abortion people were excluded, Church-minded universities could do just fine highlighting people who have served Gospel values on other issues. Arguably, the failure to intentionally honor social justice servants who *aren't* pro-abortion is what has contributed to the acceptability of people like Prejean being soft on a procedure that Pope John Paul II says we need to call murder. We need to measure the situation not just by what scandal Catholic Universities are causing by continuing to honor these people, but what good they could have done yet didn't do by failing to honor people who aren't supporting the massive entrenched social evil of our day. The opportunity cost of honoring these people is significant.</p>