Franciscan University blasphemy accusation

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I haven’t read it. But people who I trust are outraged. There are plenty other great works out there that I haven’t read. There is no need to find the latest most popular blasphemy, except in academia.
 
Yes. It’s not as if this professor didn’t know exactly what he was doing. And the university president’s justification rings hollow.
 
Follow this weak excuse to its logical conclusion(s):
“The professor selected The Kingdom for use in one elective class with five upperclassmen as a tool to contrast how Catholics and non-Catholics approach faith in literature.”
 
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I have no desire to read “The Kingdom”. The academic exercise involved here seemed to me a) voluntary, because it was an upper class elective, and b) probably on the same order as when your average young person posts a thread on CAF saying, “Hey I just saw this video on Youtube and it blasphemes Mary and Jesus,. How do I respond?”

It’s a reasonable thing to want to teach upperclass students, who are legal adults, not impressionable high school kids. But Steubenville like I said is perceived as an environment where students won’t be exposed to questionable material. If people don’t like that, then they can attend elsewhere, or not send their kids there, or not donate money, etc. If you want a nominally Catholic college with all sorts of “academic freedom”, there are dozens of those, such as Georgetown, Boston College, Notre Dame etc.

Steubenville can’t position itself in the market as the center of all things conservative Catholic and then let its professors teach blasphemous books, even if the object was to teach the students how best to answer or respond to them.
 
Ah. Well they could get the same exposure by hearing the less blasphemous ‘Mary Did You Know’ which they may have encountered at Christmas.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Steubenville can’t position itself in the market as the center of all things conservative Catholic and then let its professors teach blasphemous books, even if the object was to teach the students how best to answer or respond to them.
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I agree with this. And I don’t buy the validity of the alleged objective in using this book. Not for a minute.
 
This is from the article you provided a link to:
”I am also appalled that these outlets continue to spread libel about my editor Rebecca Bratten Weiss regarding her work with the New Pro-Life Movement.”
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This is another thing that bothered me about those articles from Church Militant and Lifesite.
 
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There’s no denying that Stephen Lewis consciously chose to employ a gravely blasphemous book in his teaching, and in doing so exposed his students and his employer to serious scandal.

Should the curricula at an orthodox Roman Catholic university reflect the Kingdom of Heaven or the sewer of a pagan, depraved culture? Can’t have it both ways.
 
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If it’s actual libel, I would think Rebecca could find a lawyer to take her case quite quickly.

I get a little bothered when some adjunct acts like she has an entitlement to teach at a particular university. It’s not like a tenure situation; adjuncts come and go all the time.
 
Except all education is indoctrination. The state K-12 school systems are full of indoctrination. State Universities indoctrinate students to certain lines of thinking. I always liked Bishop Barron’s word on fire videos, and in one he makes the point that there is a false proposition in current western society that “secular” = “neutral”. That is false. Secular is its own ideology. There is no such thing as a neutral education. Some are just more mainstream than others.

Regarding Steubenville, I understand the outrage if the blasphemous material was taught as a valid way of thinking. I don’t have a problem with it if it was used as a basic for argument. In the same way that one can read “The God Delusion” or something similar to understand atheist arguments. But I would expect Steubenville to adhere to orthodoxy in all of their approaches.

I also don’t believe they have hired some radical professor, but to cause the uproar his intent must have been badly misunderstood by the students, parents, and faculty.
 
Would it be okay to show porn to Roman Catholics in film classes, as long as the intent is good?
 
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Surely you can see the difference in watching pornography and reading books by atheists or poor theologians to better understand how to counter their arguments. One does not need to watch pornography to understand what pornography is. One does need to read books to know what they say. Are you suggesting that no Catholic should ever read books that have errors in them, for any reason? Is it wrong to read a tract from Peter Sanger supporting infanticide to better understand his argument? Is it wrong to read Mere Christianity since it was written by an Anglican?
 
Blasphemy is really bad. I think we tend not to appreciate that because we live in such a blasphemous age.

One does not need to encounter specific blasphemy to know what blasphemy is. It is a popular idea that people need to be exposed to things because if they aren’t then they will somehow be susceptible to them. But I see no evidence of that. In fact living in an age where exposure is widely practiced it seems to lead people astray.
 
The excerpts I’ve read from Carrère’s book are not merely atheism or poor theology. They are so obscenely blasphemous, particularly against the Blessed Virgin, that I’m not going to repeat or even try to paraphrase them here. They are the kinds of things Satan would say. Inexusable.
 
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exnihilo said:
people need to be exposed to things because if they aren’t then they will somehow be susceptible to them
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Exactly. The kind of inverted logic the devil used on Eve. “Did God really say…”
 
Like I said, it depends on the intent. If the intent is to teach students how to counter specific arguments, ok. If the intent is to merely “broaden horizons”, not ok. IMO. This was a 5 person class, must have been pretty specific. Regardless, the admin looked at it and pulled it. I trust people like Scott Hahn to know what is and is not appropriate. He said it wasn’t, so I am good with that. I was just making a general statement on when it is good to be insular and when it is good to not be insular. The original post I quoted was arguing that “conservatives” want a sheltered education. I disagree. There is a difference in sheltered vs prudent.
 
I was raised mostly on a Fundamentalist Protestant K-12 curriculum. In the curriculum, especially in literature classes, we read stuff that didn’t conform to the Fundamentalist worldview of the curriculum. Sure, we analyzed such works from that Fundamentalist worldview, but we weren’t kept in a bubble. I don’t exactly remember when we started reading such works, but we certainly were doing so by high school. Despite that, my experience still caused me to make a point to avoid Christian schools. Even if I wasn’t put in a bubble, I didn’t want to be in an echo chamber. I went to college to learn, not be brainwashed.

But honestly, I do have to chuckle, because I never thought I’d look back on my schooling and think, “You know, those Fundamentalists weren’t totally unreasonable.”
 
I appreciate the counter-position here and maybe it is correct. Still, I don’t need to listen to music that is blasphemous to know what that is, see a movie that is blasphemous to know what that is nor do I need to read a book that has such. Perhaps, students should receive some sort of instruction on this.
 
I wouldn’t say porn but I took a sex class in college and they showed people having sex on film. It was appropriate for the class.
 
I think reading atheist works is certainly appropriate for a college education- especially around literature or religion classes.

I can’t see why student would read directly vile content though. It’s over the top and not necessary for teaching the subject.

Now if there were some kind of “anti-Catholic” class I could see it but m not sure why they would have one.
 
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