Of This And That
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Our readers will read this email from Katie McMenamin, the director of external relations for Young America’s Foundation, too late for them to participate in the group’s “Standing Up for Faith and Freedom (When Your Catholic Campus Does Not)” program that was held on November 6 and 7 in Washington, D.C.
But the organization is one that college-age Catholics may want to contact for more information. McMenamin describes Young America’s Foundation as “a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting conservative ideas to high school and college students and giving them the resources they need to promote these ideas on their campuses and in their communities.”
The YAF’s goal, in McMenamin’s words, is to “help conservative students at Catholic schools by providing the conservative response to the left’s agenda on ‘social justice’ and traditional values, offering guidance on how to discuss these important topics in a politically correct environment, and helping students learn how to better advance the right to life on campus and inspire activism on other conservative issues.” There is additional information about YAF on the organization’s website yaf.org. It is worth a look.
Moving on to another topic: The question of whether Catholic colleges and universities are the best place for Catholic young people. It is a topic that has come up several times in the past in First Teachers. Some argue that modernist and left-wing views are now so embedded in the curriculum at these schools that attending them will do more harm to a young person’s faith than studying at a nonsectarian or public university. Archbishop Sheen took this position several years before his passing.
The other view is that Catholic universities are worth it; that they will likely have at least a few solidly orthodox professors remaining in their theology and philosophy departments, and that Catholic students with a little effort should be able to seek out their courses — something they would not be able to do at a nonsectarian college. There is also the Catholic atmosphere that endures at Catholic colleges — the Catholic student body, the access to the liturgy, as well as the chapels, statues, and stained glass that provide a constant reminder to the student body of their Catholic heritage.
I have long subscribed to this latter view, but am having second thoughts after reading the Cardinal Newman Society’s online report by Justin Petrisek on October 21. Petrisek writes:
“Catholic bishops in the U.S. have encouraged all Catholics to celebrate Respect Life Month in October, but Georgetown University and other Catholic colleges are instead celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) lifestyles and identities all month long, showing what one Georgetown pro-life leader called ‘a complete disregard not only for Catholic doctrine on this campus but also for the human rights issue of abortion’.”
Georgetown’s Right to Life Society President Michael Khan, in an interview with the Cardinal Newman Society, said, “We celebrate LGBT History Month and so-called ‘OUTober’ [in October] with a variety of events, panels and speakers…but for [recognizing] Respect Life Month [we have] absolutely nothing. No events. No emails. Nothing.”
At least a Catholic student who witnessed events of this sort at a private or public university would not get the impression that promoting the homosexual agenda is in line with Catholic doctrine.
A final topic: the October 8 edition of this column in which we published a warning from one of our readers about the left-wing political and cultural bias that they are likely to encounter in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
T.H. of South Dakota, a retired professor, writes to point out that biases of this sort are nothing new and that academic elites historically have never been reluctant to promote scientific “evidence” to curry favor with those with wealth and power.
He calls our attention to the section in the 1902 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the “Negro,” published at the height of British Imperialism.
T.H. writes, “Under the heading Negro, identified as people living in ‘all Africa south of the Sahara, India south of the Indo-Gangetic plains, Malaysia, and the greater part of Australasia,’ are 14 identifying characteristics:
“ ‘(1) The abnormal length of the arm which in the erect position sometimes reaches the knee-pan; (2) prognathism, or projection of the jaws; (3) weight of the brain, as indicating cranial capacity 35 ounces (highest gorilla 20, average European 45); (4) full black eye, with black iris and yellowish sclerotic coat, a very marked feature; (5) short flat snub nose deeply depressed at the base or frontal suture, broad at extremity, with dilated nostrils and concave ridge; (6) thick protruding lips plainly showing the inner red surface; (7) very large zygomatic arches — high and prominent cheekbones; (8) exceedingly thick cranium enabling the Negro to butt with the head and resist blows which would inevitably break any ordinary European’s skull; (9) correspondingly weak lower limbs terminating in a broad flat foot with low instep, divergent and somewhat prehensile great toe and heel projecting backward; (10) complexion deep brown or blackish…; (11) short, black hair, eccentrically elliptical or almost flat in section, and distinctly wooly, not merely frizzy…; (12) thick epidermis cool, soft, and velvety to the touch, mostly hairless, and emitting a peculiar rancid odour, compared by Pruner Bey to that of the buck goat; (13) frame of medium height, thrown somewhat out of the perpendicular by the shape of the pelvis, the spine, and backward projection of the head, and the whole anatomical structure; (14) the cranial sutures which close much earlier in the Negro than in other races. To this premature ossification of the skull, preventing all further development of the brain, many pathologists have attributed the inherent mental inferiority of blacks, an inferiority which is even more marked than physical differences’.”
Professor T.H. asks us to “note that (1) through (5), (7) through (10), and (13) invite us to compare black people to gorillas, while (11) and (12) compare them to sheep and goats. Elaborating on (14) is this: ‘Nearly all observers admit [!] that the Negro child is on the whole quite as intelligent as those of other human varieties, but that on arriving at puberty all further progress seems to be arrested’.”
What inferences should we draw about the “scientific consensus” of the issues of our time? Well, it makes one wonder about how the “experts” have changed their minds on global warming and the nature and causes of homosexuality. Also on a host of less important topics such as the effects on our health of eggs, coffee, red wine and whether we should use margarine or butter. Is it just me who has the impression that we are told something different about a “healthy diet” every other year or so?
I guess “Caveat emptor” applies to those who sell scholarly opinions as much as those who sell trinkets at flea markets.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.
