From the ND Newswire:
After a five-month review process, University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., has accepted recommendations from the Office of Student Affairs to expand and enhance the support of and services for students who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning (GLBTQ), including the creation of a University recognized student organization.
The recommendations are part of a comprehensive pastoral plan that includes an array of initiatives grounded in the Catholic mission of the University.
Despite the high sounding rhetoric, we can be virtually guaranteed that the moral teaching of the Church will have very little to do with the new multifaceted GLBTQ program at Notre Dame. Father Jenkins made some revealing comments as reported by The Observer:
“Jenkins said the organization’s roots in Church teaching had a broad practical impact, but these roots are not meant to serve as a basis for limitations the University could theoretically impose on the group. ‘It’s a rich teaching about the role of sexuality, about intimacy, about human relations, about responsibilities to the community, about relationships to the Church,’ Jenkins said. ‘To put this in a ‘Well you can do this, you can’t do that,’ is to distort the issue.'”
By all means, Father, don’t “distort the issue” by teaching Catholic morals! That would be… medieval, or something.
The Holy Cross Congregation, to which Father Jenkins, C.S.C. belongs, was founded by Blessed Basil Moreau and included Saint André Bessette as one of its members. They have halos now. Father Jenkins, instead, is earning himself a millstone.
