Fr. Paul Scalia On The "Untruth" At The College Of The Holy Cross

In amazing Catholic statement made by a Catholic priest and a

Holy Cross graduate. Fr. Scalia debunks with clear sound reasoning the "Holy Cross" two step dance with pro-abortion NARAL and Planned Parenthood. This could be the "tipping point" at Holy Cross and other Catholic colleges that vie for the championship of "Academic Freedom" at the cost of Christian liberty. First a brief bio on Fr. Scalia, then his written statement in full. Hat tip to the Curt Jestor

.

The biography of REV. PAUL SCALIA
Fr. Scalia is one of nine children born to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his wife, Maureen, parishioners of St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls. He attended Langley High School in McLean and graduated in 1992 from the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, Mass. He applied to the Arlington Diocese and was accepted to Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD. After completing one year of theological studies at the Mount, Fr. Scalia was sent to Rome to study at the North American College. He was ordained a deacon Oct. 5, 1995, in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and was ordained a priest for the Arlington Diocese in 1996. His assignments have included St. James, Falls Church, St. Patrick’s, Fredericksburg and he is currently a Parochial Vicar at St. Rita’s parish. Link (here)

.

Fr. Paul Scalia's statement on the "Junk Theology" of Holy Cross and its accepting money from Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America

A Response to Professor David O’Brien

Despite its profound errors and certain academic haughtiness, Professor David
O’Brien’s response to Bishop McManus still provides a valuable service. It not only
crystallizes what intellectual problems exist at Holy Cross, but also reveals how deeply
entrenched they are. Specifically, he presents well the College’s agnostic approach to
education. For him, Holy Cross plays the role of Socrates – urging students to question,
ask, and search. He gives us the image of intrepid, indefatigable investigators and neverrelenting
pursuers of…well, not the truth but questions. It is a quest for questions:

The Holy Cross community places at the center of its mission serious engagement
with "fundamental human questions" of meaning and mutual obligation. We seek
to build an intellectual and educational community centered on "fundamental
religious and philosophical questions." Toward that end, the College offers courses in theology, including Catholic theology, religious studies, and what is now called Catholic Studies, courses engaging Catholic ideas in many disciplines. We developed a
nationally recognized first year program centered on the vocational question "how then shall we live?" As we write, the community, the entire diverse faculty, is preparing to launch a wider first year program centered on fundamental questions: they call the program Montserrat, recalling the spiritual transformation experienced by Jesuit founder St Ignatius Loyola.

Funny, it would seem wiser to build a community on answers rather than
questions. You cannot build a community on questions anymore than you can build a
house on a questionable foundation. Imagine your contractor telling you that he has
some questions about the foundation he just set for your new home. Then, deigning to
instruct you, he adds, “But the important thing is that we’re asking the questions.” So,
taking O’Brien as a fair representative of the administration, it is clear that the college’s
willingness to let the Church’s enemies use its facilities is not a lapse of judgment or an
oversight: it is part of official policy to ask questions – but not provide answers.
Professor O’Brien boasts about the “Montserrat” program. It is worth pointing
out that St. Ignatius’s experience at Montserrat would have been markedly different had
he contented himself with only questions and never actually settled on answers. It was a
Catholic, not an agnostic Ignatius that lay down his arms at the feet of the Black
Madonna and took up the beggar’s cloak. He gave his life to her because he had found
the Truth, not questions.
Leaving aside the College’s presumed Catholic identity, from a purely academic
angle it should be clear how wrong-headed this is. There is no final end, no telos – at
least not articulated – for studies at Holy Cross. It is all about questions. Are answers
ever provided? Do students graduate with a firmer grasp of the truth, or just a keen
ability to ask questions? Academics cannot exist without a confidence in the truth. A
commitment to only asking questions produces only cynics. It is the investigation of the
truth that produces liberally educated people and scholars.
Further, the Socratic method worked for Socrates because he lacked the benefit of
revealed truth and a magisterium to clarify the natural law. Presuming that Holy Cross is
a Catholic school, it cannot act as if the answers do not exist. Certainly, it can provoke
the questions, as any good teacher should. But it must also provide the answers. The
reason for this is more than merely academic. Souls are at stake. It is morally
irresponsible and simply uncharitable to boast about the questioning and remain silent
about the answers. Perhaps on Mt. St. James they do not have to deal with the
consequences of never-ending questions. But we parish priests – living amid what
Professor O’Brien calls “all those modern realities that form the web of daily existence of
lay Catholics” – we are left to tend to the spiritual carnage of unanswered questions.
For O’Brien the Holy Cross zeal for questions is behind the hosting of NARAL
and Planned Parenthood speakers:

Hospitality to strangers is a powerful Christian tradition, and that hospitality is never conditioned by the ideas of behavior of the stranger. In an academic setting hospitality requires a willingness to listen to and perhaps learn from, not just instruct, the stranger. This statement cannot be taken seriously. After all, the stranger in question pays to use the College’s facilities. Some hospitality, that. Further, we are not talking about simply welcoming a stranger to lunch. The issue at hand is whether we should provide that stranger (a paying stranger) a forum to announce death-dealing views. Nor can we say that this stranger is entirely unknown. We know what this stranger will say, we know the stranger’s billion-dollar industry, and we know what this stranger does to the unborn. The fraudulence of the “hospitality” rhetoric is easily revealed when we consider inviting other strangers. Would O’Brien give the same approval to a conference featuring speakers from the Neo Nazis or Aryan Nation or North American Man/Boy Love Association? If so, we should have a clear declaration of that. Heck, according to O’Brien it should be celebrated

.
In the end, the quest for questions is just a shell game. We know that if the issue
were global warming or racism then the College would advance more answers than
questions. If Holy Cross had a strong statement against abortion and contraception, then
perhaps the rhetoric would be slightly more believable. But as it is, the proposed
dialogue and the supposedly earnest consideration of questions are hard to believe
precisely because Holy Cross has virtually no voice against these evils. Can we have an
unequivocal statement from Professor O’Brien, or from the administration, that
contraception and abortion are always and at all times wrong? To up the ante a bit, let us
require that the statement cannot use such provisional phrases as “Catholics believe that”
or “the Church teaches that” or “in our tradition.” These always keep the speaker at least
one degree removed from the teaching. It has to be the administration or Professor
O’Brien stating that truth in their own names. And if they cannot state that truth, then
they should not bother us with their rhetoric about dialogue. As it is, displaying no clear
adherence to Church’s teaching, no confidence in the truth, they bring nothing to the
dialogue with the people of NARAL and Planned Parenthood. They have no real
questions to ask except perhaps, “Will that be cash or credit?”
Rev. Paul Scalia Link (here)
Class of 1992