The following is a Catholic Action League of Massachusetts press statement…
Fordham University in the Bronx is one of America’s leading Jesuit institutions of higher learning.
In what must be a first for the Catholic Church in the United States, Fordham President Tania Tetlow is the daughter of a former Jesuit priest.
A supporter of same sex marriage, the ordination of women and the LGBT agenda, Tetlow has characterized the traditional understanding of gender as “fundamentalist.”
She is a friend and ally of homosexualist priest James Martin.
Now, Tetlow has expressed, publicly, her rejection of perennial Catholic teaching on the impermissibility of artificial birth control.
Earlier this month, in response to a student government proposal to allow the distribution of contraceptives on campus, Tetlow stated:
“I will tell you that, like the vast majority of American Catholics, I disagree with the Church on its policy on contraception, but it is the Church’s policy and, as a Catholic institution, we don’t violate that.”
On April 28th, reporter Matt Lamb of LifeSiteNew contacted the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, seeking a comment.
League Executive Director C. J. Doyle issued the following statement:
“Jesuit higher education in America is in an advanced state of apostasy and has been for decades.
This is reflected in every aspect of university life: the choices of commencement speakers and honorary degree recipients; the public figures who are given platforms; the persons invited to serve on boards of trustees; the persons hired as administrators and faculty members; the student groups which are recognized and funded and afforded access to university facilities; the provisions for student health services; the links to institutions which offer students internships; and the ubiquitous LGBTQ advocasy.
Fordham is no different. It is a corrupt, secularized, post-Christian institution.
Its statement of Fordham Values never mentions Jesus Christ or the Catholic Faith, while its Mission Statement ignores Christian formation in favor of “the living tradition of Catholicism.”
Its list of commencement speakers include such pro-abortion public figures as Senator Chuck Schumer; Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo; Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III; Irish Presidents Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese; and broadcaster Chris Matthews.
This year’s commencement speaker will be former NBC Today Show host Hoda Kotb, long known for her support for homesexual causes.
Fordham hosts two undergraduate same sex organizations, the Pride Alliance and the Rainbow Alliance.
It also sponsors a plethora of other groups and events, including The LGBTQ and Ally Network of Support.
Fordham’s formal prohibition of contraceptive distribution on campus is fraught with loopholes.
President Tania Tetlow’s candid remarks are emblematic of a pervasive university culture of systemic institutional rejection of Catholic teaching.
Tetlow made her remarks confident that there would no consequences for her public dissent from Catholic morality—no repercussions from the Board of Trustees, no rebuke from the parent religious sponsor—the Eastern Province of the Society of Jesus—no walkaways by major donors, and no protests by students, faculty or alumni.
It would have been unusual, surprising and controversial had the President of a Jesuit university publicly defended Humanae Vitae or spoken out about the right to life.
That would have provoked protests.
Tania Tetlow has, obviously, a lucid appreciation of her position in the mainstream of American Jesuit culture.
Institutions like Fordham were built by and for Catholics. They are now controlled by assimilated, culturally conforming, modernist progressives, or who, in another time, would have been called heretics.
Faithful Catholics have been dispossessed. What has happened to American Catholic higher education since the Land O’ Lakes Statement has been, arguably, the greatest dispossession of Catholic property and institutions since Henry VIII seized 900 religious houses in England and another 200 in Ireland.
Institutions like Fordham need to be reclaimed for the Faith and for the Catholic community.”
C. J. Doyle is an alumnus of Jesuit administered Boston College. Doyle was a freshman in 1972 when BC separated from the New England Province of the Society of Jesus to become a secular, non-profit Massachusetts corporation, the Trustees of Boston College, Incorporated.
C. J. Doyle’s remarks were included in a story published today, April 29th, in LifeSiteNews.
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