The League Director will be in Naples, FL Saturday to deliver the commencement address at Ave Maria University, and receive an honorary doctoral degree. This is my second honorary degree but my first commencement address. And I can’t think of a school I’d rather get the honor from than Ave Maria.
On the Other Side, for Once
I have to confess that I’ve been on the other side of the commencement address business most of my career, having protested numerous commencements because of pro-aborts giving the talks. For instance, I protested Sen. Birch Bahy’s address at St. Joseph College in Rensselaer, IN in 1977, and got kicked out.
I marched in cap and gown against Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan at Notre Dame, Justice William Brennan at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, Harry Blackman in Maryland, Gov. Jim Thompson at my daughter’s graduation from St. Ignatius College Prep, as well as Geraldine Ferraro, Michael Dukakis, Chief Justice Warren Burger, Harry Blackmun, and various others through the years.
But it should be easy to talk to the students at Ave Maria with their solid backgrounds in the teachings of the Catholic Church, who know what a university education is supposed to be for, besides helping you get a good job. I’m looking forward to the weekend.
Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., president of the Ave Maria, is an old friend who came to my rescue 20 years ago when I needed a quick set of page-plates for my book, “Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion.” His crew at Ignatius Press worked round the clock to get the plates to the printer on time. A brilliant scholar himself, he is close to Pope Benedict whom he meets with frequently. While in Naples I will see Chicago area pro-lifers Kathleen Sullivan and Jim Finnegan.
Richards Gaga over Sex Ed Program
Sun-Times columnist Cindy Richards, who is always wrong, is still wrong. She says Wednesday that it is refreshing to see a school system that wants to give school children rotten information. Cindy is gaga that the Chicago Public Schools are going to give little kids the “medically accurate information” they need to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, so they can become rutting hogs just like their older siblings.
A new policy of comprehensive sex education will dodge the abstinence-only curriculum that encourages them not to have sex while still little more than children, and will tell them how to be sexually active without getting diseases or pregnant.
Cindy is “refreshed”— her word—that this program is being implemented. Of course, if Cindy had done her homework she would know that all sexually active people, other than those with a single committed partner as in marriage, get STDs and pregnant almost as regularly as those without all this “medically accurate information.”
The Centers for Disease Control points out that nearly 58 percent of women having abortions are on medically accurate contraceptives when they get pregnant, and anyone with a brain stem knows that venereal disease is rampant among contraception users.
But silly Cindy buys the big lie lock, stock and barrel, and though kids are going to be messed up for life with this medically accurate information—with only lip service being paid to remaining chaste until marriage—Cindy is happy. Even though the kids will suffer messed up lives, scrambled relationships, self-loathing, disease and heartbreak, Cindy is happy. Isn’t that refreshing? Doesn’t it set your heart at ease?
Probably we shouldn’t write Cindy. It would only confuse her. She would just try to defend the indefensible, and that would be tedious. She has already expressed her dream and published it for all the world to read and be led with her into the darkness.
But do pray for Cindy, and those she is misleading, and for all of those who are trying to put out the fire of youthful promiscuity— with gasoline. As we often muse: “When will they ever learn?” Perhaps never.
