SLU Speaker Neblett, "Thank God For Abortion"

Saint Louis University is highlighting Black History Month with a keynote address by pro-abortion journalist and MSNBC TV host Touré Neblett this evening, Feb. 7, at 7 p.m. in the Carlo Auditorium of Tegeler Hall. Neblett will speak on “How Racism Functions Today and Ways to Deal with it to Get Success.”

“Without question, one of Saint Louis University’s greatest strengths is our diversity,” said University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J. “Here at SLU, people of diverse beliefs, diverse backgrounds and diverse faiths come together to learn, to live and to lead.” On January 25, 2013, Neblett, described on the MSNBC program The Cycle, how he and his girlfriend had an abortion, saying that the “choice saved my life.” He further went on to thank God for abortion. “I cannot imagine arguing against a woman’s right to control her own body, and thus her life,” said Neblett. Prior to the election, Neblett tweeted: “Girls, get your abortions NOW in case the Republicans win.”

Link (here) to The Cardinal Newman Society to watch Neblett video

The Jesuit Back Story Of The Exorcist

Fr. William Bowdern, S.J.

The 1949 case of Roland Doe, in St. Louis, involved Jesuits at Saint Louis University but also required the approval of the Archdiocese of St. Louis at that time, Joseph Ritter. The exorcism performed on the 13-year-old boy in St. Louis, a child referred to as "Robbie" in most accounts, happened primarily in three locations: at the boy's relative's home in North St. Louis County, at the rectory behind the College Church on the campus, and at a now-demolished wing of the old Alexian Brothers Hospital in South St. Louis. Both the rectory behind the college church and the psychiatric ward at Alexian Brothers are no longer standing. Even so, SLU students throughout the years insist there are mysterious locked rooms on campus at DuBourg Hall and Verhagen Hall that were used to free the boy from the grip of Satan. "It's just not true," says David Waide, SLU archivist.

One location where some of the exorcism happened is still standing. The home of the boy's relatives in north St. Louis County. Thursday morning on Today in St. Louis, you will hear from the next door neighbors of that home. One of those neighbors, who sleeps with Holy Water near her bed, has a connection to the story that dates all the way back to 1949.

Read a priest's day-by-day diary of the SLU exorcism.
SLU expert talks about exorcism on campus
What became of the boy in the exorcism?
Link (here) to read the full story

Some Jesuit Universities "Expanding The Circle"

From March 3 through 6, an Expanding the Circle conference was held at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Expanding the Circle is an initiative of the California Institute of Integral Studies, and its stated purpose is “Creating an inclusive environment in higher education for LGBT/Q students and studies.” Catholic universities were well represented.

Fr. Donal Godfrey, S.J.

Titles of some of the workshops at the conference indicated the bias common to post-modern social science, that reality is a human construction: “Reimagining S@xual Desire and Spiritual Longing in Sacred Texts”; “Does G-d Really Hate Me: Reconstructing and Reinterpreting Challenging Religious Texts”; “(Re)vamping the Que@riculum: Issues in the Teaching of Language and S@xuality”; “Imagining Qu@er Selves: LGBTQ Literature, Libraries, and the Coming Out Process”; and the near-parodic “Fostering Multivariate Inclusion: Multiple Marginalized Identities and the Interplay of Sexuality.” Others, while more crudely titled, were quite clear: “That’s SO G@y: Queering the Curriculum in High Schools through Community Collaboration”; “Ripe for the Picking: Queer-Themed FIGs (First-Year Interest Groups)”, and “Building a Successful LGBTQ Program at Catholic Institutions.” The following Catholic schools participated: College of the Holy Cross, DePaul University, Dominican University, Georgetown University, Loyola Marymount University, Marian University, Marquette University, Santa Clara University, St. Anselm College, St. Edward’s University, St. Joseph’s University, St. Louis University, and the University of San Francisco. 

Link (here) to read the full article at California Catholic Daily

Saint Louis University Jesuits Developers Of New Luxury Hotel

Local design and development firm, the Lawrence Group, led by President and CEO Steve Smith, worked on the project and is part owner of the property with SLU. SLU awarded Chairman and CEO Michael Mullenix's St. Louis-based Equis Hospitality Management a five-year contract to run the hotel. Hotel Ignacio is located inside a 1910 building at 3411 Olive St. that had sat vacant for years. Renovations to transform the structure into a hotel began last May. Hotel Ignacio's guest rooms reflect four distinct themes — architecture, fine art, performing arts and music — that showcase the hotel's location in the heart of St. Louis' arts district.

Café Pintxos,

Read more: A look inside the new Hotel Ignacio at SLU | St. Louis Business Journal

Josh Groban Sings A St. Louis Jesuit Song

Listen to Be Not Afraid, sung by Josh Groban

Josh Groban

Be Not Afraid was written by Bob Dufford, one of the St. Louis Jesuits. The St. Louis Jesuits, a group of Catholic musicians who popularized a contemporary style of church music through their compositions and recordings in the 1970s and 1980s. The group, originally made up of Jesuit seminarians at St. Louis University, used acoustic guitars and pop-style melodies and rhythms to set biblical and other religious texts to music sung in English

Link (here) to Let Us Sing!

Former Jesuit, Now Art Director

Micheal Rush

Michael Rush, the newly minted founding director of Michigan State University’s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, did just that at Brandeis University’s Rose Museum, where he was director from 2005 until 2009. Turning scary into fun is a specialty for Rush, and he’s about to do it on a grand scale. By spring of 2012, when the Broad Museum is finished, 

the former Jesuit priest, theater experimenter and fervid modern art ambassador will have one of the world’s most intriguing spaces in which to run amok. “It’s the biggest opportunity in contemporary art in the United States right now,” Rush said. “The next year of my life is going to be amazing. The last few days have been amazing.” 

After a whirlwind rush of meetings and greetings at MSU last week, Rush declared that there’s simply no precedent in the United States for the Broad Museum — a new space for contemporary art, on a college campus, in a stunning polygon of stainless steel plates designed by ultramodern architect Zaha Hadid.

Link (here) to read the full article

Homily By Fr. Brian Van Hove, S.J. On Helping Others With Compassion

Link (here) to watch the homily by Fr. Brian Van Hove, S.J. at Gloria TV

The Collection of Western Jesuit Missions

The Collection of Western Jesuit Missions is on permanent loan from the Jesuits of the Missouri Province to the Saint Louis University Museum of art. The collection is displayed throughout the entirety of the third floor of the museum, housed in a mansion that originally belonged to the Woolworth stores corporation. The Collection of the Western Jesuit Missions is indicative of the spirit of the times surrounding the Jesuit seminary just north of St. Louis between 1823-1971. Priceless liturgical items include pre-French Revolution era silver and Baroque-era devotional art brought to the United States by famous missionary Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet, S.J..

Link (here)

Postcard of the Saint Louis Club, now the Saint Louis University of Art (here)

SLU Boots The Monologues! Maybe

Responding to Saint Louis University’s ban on the vile play The Vagina Monologues, a student club will no longer present the play even off campus, The University News reports. Una, a group described as “the feminine voice on campus” at Saint Louis University (SLU), a Jesuit Catholic institution of higher education, is reportedly creating a new production entitled The SLU Monologues.

A student leader of Una told the campus newspaper that The SLU Monologues will present stories collected from SLU students and staff on campus “in the spirit of The Vagina Monologues.” The V-Monologues is a controversial play that, among other vulgarities, describes the lesbian seduction of a teenage victim as her “salvation” that “raised her into a kind of heaven.

Saint Louis University is among Catholic institutions that once hosted productions of the play but have since decided to ban it from campus. The report also notes that The SLU Monologues has yet to be approved for campus performances. "Vagina Monologues [is a] good show for its purpose. But it's not the end-all, be-all to end violence against women," a student leader of Una said, according to The University News. Source: The University News

Link (here) to the Cardinal Newman Society

Blogger Note: we shall see what unfolds.

yorubella said...

This is actually incorrect. The Vagina Monologues have been performed by SLU students for the past 10 years, and this is not changing. The SLU Monologues are a new production that the feminist group is doing in ADDITION to the Vagina Monologues to raise money. They are all part of the same campaign to end violence against women.

This Buds For You! St. Louis University

Saint Louis University has announced a $3 million gift from the Anheuser-Busch Foundation -- the largest donation to date for a $35 million expansion of SLU's School of Law and the largest-ever individual gift to SLU from A-B in its corporate history.

"There is no better St. Louis corporate citizen than Anheuser-Busch," said University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J. "This very generous gift demonstrates that its support for local institutions remains unmatched."

The gift, which fits into Anheuser-Busch's priority to support educational institutions in communities where it does business, was announced officially during the law school's hooding ceremony at Chaifetz Arena.

The thousands in attendance were the first to see what the future holds for the SLU law community, as the University unveiled never-before-seen renderings of the Anheuser-Busch Student Commons, the new front door for the school and a major feature of the expansion, which will be funded by the gift.

"The Saint Louis University School of Law continues to grow in reputation," said Dean Jeffrey Lewis, J.D. "This major gift will help make the expansion of our law school a reality, and we are proud that a company so important to the St. Louis community is partnering with us on this exciting project."

Link (here)

Tolerant, Fair-minded, Inclusive: Or Is It Intolerant, Close-minded And Exclusive

Catholic University Students Join Protest against True Marriage
By Kathleen Gilbert

ST. LOUIS, Missouri, December 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - When protesters took to the streets in a nationwide rally against California's true marriage amendment,

Proposition 8, students from Saint Louis University (SLU), a Jesuit-run school, joined about 1,400 others gathered on the steps of the St. Louis courthouse. Emma Obata, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she joined the protest "because I support gay marriage, and I don't think hate should be encoded into law," reports the school's online newspaper.

Several dozen SLU students bolstered the crammed crowd of protesters waving signs and cheering homosexualist speakers. "I want to speak out. I think that this proposition goes against what the United States is about," said Thomas Bloom, a sophomore in the college of Arts and Sciences. He objected to Proposition 8 as a case of "the majority of people taking away the rights of a minority."

College Republicans president Amy Kaufman attended the rally, and despite holding a sign reading, "You can't legislate love, Republican against Prop. 8," she told the newspaper that she could not understand why the definition of marriage mattered at all. "There are bigger problems in the world. This is absurd that people are fighting so hard over the definition of a word," said Kaufman.

The nationwide anti-marriage effort sparked protests in cities large and small nationwide and was organized by a group known as JoinTheImpact. After the rally, the organization celebrated on their website that "we brought the world’s attention to the outrage that is Proposition 8.” "We brought the conversation of equality into the living rooms of America and around the world! Today, we took a gigantic step into the next Civil Rights Movement."

Like many other U.S. Catholic campuses, SLU hosts an open homosexual student group known as the Rainbow Alliance. In a section entitled, "Our Catholic Jesuit Heritage," the Rainbow Alliance web page lists other Catholic schools "bonded together by a common heritage, vision, and purpose," which also recognize homosexual pride groups.

(http://www.slu.edu/organizations/rainbow/slu_jesuit.html) A recent survey by The Cardinal Newman Society’s (CNS) Center for the Study of Catholic Higher Education found that students’ support for Catholic teaching on issues such as same-sex "marriage" actually declined over four years at U.S. Catholic institutions.

A later survey found that 65% of current and recent students of Catholic universities between the ages of 18 and 29 agreed that "the law should permit marriage between two people of the same sex," with only 35% disagreeing.

(To see the CNS report, go to: http://www.catholichighered.org/Portals/3/docs/SICHE%20Octob...) "The evidence shows that catholic colleges and universities are not providing guidance to students on a very key moral issue of same-sex marriage, and this is the result," Patrick Reilly, president of the Newman Society, told LifeSiteNews.com. "If students at Catholic colleges can't be relied upon to defend the sanctity of marriage, then politically the issue may be lost."

Link (here)

An old post card of St. Louis University