♦ A student-run, university-funded lecture series at Georgetown University invited Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, to speak on campus. University officials took the Pontius Pilate approach, arguing that the invitation was a matter of student autonomy and free speech. Washington Archbishop Donald Cardinal Wuerl rebuked the university: “It is neither authentically Catholic nor within the Catholic tradition for a university to provide a special platform to those voices that promote or support” actions clearly condemned by the Church. “Students, faculty, and the community at large are all impoverished, not enriched, when the institution’s Catholic identity is diluted or called into question by seemingly approving of ideas that are contrary to moral truth.”
♦ An archdiocesan news release was particularly pointed in its criticism of the student group that invited Richards. “One would prefer to see some recognition by this student group of the lives and ministry, focus and values of people like Blessed Oscar Romero, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and Pope Francis in place of that group’s seemingly constant preoccupation with sexual activity, contraception and abortion.” But that’s the point, isn’t it. Georgetown is a rich, elite school—and the sexual revolution is a top-down, elite project, which is why it preoccupies students at elite universities and not at your local community college.
