Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Among the theological sophisticates these days, a new type of theological politics is starting to gain favor. It’s known, in Britain and Canada at least, as “Red Toryism,” supposedly combining the best virtues of the European conservative tradition with a  concern for the social dimensions of human political and economic culture, a concern that presumably short-circuits the socialist critique of the conservative tradition

The primary exponent of this new theological politics in Britain is Phillip Blond, who was widely considered by pundits before the most recent elections in Britain to be David Cameron’s political guru. Cameron heads the new “conservative” coalition government in Britain. Blond himself is generally associated with the so-called radical orthodoxy of John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock which, as David has argued on this blog, is in fact quite radically unorthodox.  The radically (un)orthodox are basically as libertine as it comes in matters sexual, no less than the Corinthians to whom Paul preached conversion.

Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that the new “conservative coalition” in Britain is pushing an internationalist eugenics program that rivals anything that we saw in the 20th century, or among the immediate predecessors to the Cameron government in Britain.

The Anglophone world has been a great source of evil in the world in this regard, for well over a century now. One can hardly imagine anything coming out of this world, operating from within its own nominalist premises, that might shift the balance in a more virtuous direction. The British Empire is not dead, unfortunately. They still have far too much money to work with. One can hardly speak with any more assurance of the American Empire.

I have not yet had the chance to speak to Ken since the U of I made their offer and I have not heard whether he has accepted it or will accept it.  However, it seems obvious to me that even if Ken does teach in the fall, there is no way that he can stay there for very long on a paltry $20k a year.  Even if he does choose to accept the resolution, without tenure and without an agreement with the Newman Center, Ken will have no recourse if they simply discontinue his classes without providing him a reason.  In any case,  it is nearly certain that someone other than Ken will be teaching classes on Catholicism at the U of I in the near future, or as the UI associate chancellor for public affairs called it, “the theory of Catholicism.”

The head of the Religion Department, Robert McKim, made it clear on a number of occasions in the year I was there, that he did not like the arrangement between the U of I and the Newman Center.  His preference was that we use the money the Newman Center was paying the faculty toward a Catholic Chair.  He and other professors mentioned the type of person they thought should have such a chair.  First among the qualifications was someone who was capable of criticizing his faith (is it any wonder why many of my students could not distinguish between critical thinking skills and criticizing things they did not like?).

As if to demonstrate what they meant by who should be teaching Catholicism at the U of I, the department invited two “Catholic” scholars in two consecutive years to give their annual “Thulin Lecture on Religion and Contemporary Culture.”  Can you guess who their preferred type of Catholic scholars might be?  In 2007 they invited Charlie Curran and in 2008 they brought in Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza.  Certainly here they have scholars who have no compunction about criticizing the faith, but I would argue that neither do they have the capacity to critically explain the Catholic faith from an inside perspective.  With “Catholic” scholars such  as these, you may as well have a Buddhist or Muslim teaching Catholicism…in fact, the latter might even be more even handed.

Whether it will be a Catholic chair, one of the existing professors of Christianity (both of whom have exhibited animus toward authentic Catholic thought in a variety of ways), or a new hire there is little doubt in my mind that after Ken Howell those who teach these classes will no longer be engaging the students with authentic Catholic thought.  As an example, one of the existing professors of Christianity was assigned to “mentor” me in establishing a syllabus I was developing for a class on Catholic morality.  He advised me that since there was no continuity between the early Church Fathers and Scripture, that I should remove the Scriptural background from my syllabus.  You see, in the department of religion, those teaching about Christianity have to hold to Harnackian orthodoxy (i.e. the Hellenization of Christianity).  He also advised that I remove all discussion of Church documents from my syllabus because no one really cares about what the Church teaches anyway.  Of course, I indicated to him that to follow his recommendations would give a distorted view of Catholic morality.  I said that Harnack’s theory was simply that, a theory about which we disagreed.  I also told him that the Magisterium was one of the unique things about Catholicism; that whether you followed it or not, everyone teaching about Catholicism has to take it as a point of reference.  Of course, one can see more clearly now why I was deemed ill suited to teach in their department.

It seems that the U of I did not waste this crisis.  They took it as an opportunity to abrogate an almost century long agreement so that they now have the ability to choose a professor who thinks as they do; that is, one who may not be qualified to teach authentic Catholic thought but at least will not be given to call into question secular orthodoxy.

A  local Champaign reporter who has been interviewing me about the aforementioned affair told me earlier today about the U of I’s offer to Ken Howell.  Apparently they have rehired him to teach one class per semester for $10, 000 per semester but he has to cut all ties with the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center.  He asked me for my thoughts on the matter.  Here is what I told him:

On the one hand, this is positive news.  The commission of the faculty senate has put the lie to the claims by LAS that teaching about the Catholic faith in a class about Catholicism is hate speech.  Nevertheless, the good fruit is laced with poison.

The offer seems to be exactly what I was afraid of.  The prohibition against Dr. Howell’s association with the Newman Center is another violation of his academic freedom and it is likewise a violation of his freedom of religion.  How many other adjuncts or part time faculty are prevented from working for an organization associated with their faith as a condition of employment?

The U of I appears to be making an economically untenable offer with the intent of voiding a 90+ year relationship with the Newman Center.  I suspect that they are banking on the fact that since Dr. Howell cannot work for the Newman Center, which paid him a full professor’s salary, he will not be able to afford to take the position.  The U of I is offering him perhaps a little more than a quarter of his Newman Center salary.

Even if Dr. Howell does manage to figure out how to make such a situation work, at the very least this stipulation seems to corroborate my experience that all too many at the U of I have a prejudice against faith. To suppose that being paid by a religious institution somehow disqualifies a professor from academic rigor and fair-mindedness is bigotry of the first order.  The fact that seminaries all across the country, whose faculty are paid by religious bodies, are also accredited by such associations as that which accredits the U of I (North Central Association of Colleges and Schools) indicates that funding from a religious source provides no warrant for suspicion.  Indeed, Catholic Chairs at major universities usually involve funding from Catholic donors and consultation with the local bishop about faculty appointments.  I do hope that this offensive stipulation is challenged.

See here and here for my previous posts on this matter.

A few days ago, a reporter from the News-Gazette, the local Champaign paper asked me some questions.  They probably will not be used since the issue may now be settling down but for the record, here is how I responded:

Paul,

I apologize for the delay in responding but our summer session is wrapping up and a host of other issues makes this a very busy time for me so I was only able to grab a minute here and there to jot down some responses to your questions:

“what reason the religious department gave you for not rehiring you as an adjunct“

Technically, I was not an adjunct but I was on visiting professor status.  I explain this more fully in my blog post here (http://cosmos-liturgy-sex.com/2010/07/14/they-finally-won-background-on-ken-howells-firing/ ).  In that post I also explain the events surrounding the Program for the Study of Religion’s (as it was then called) decision, but in sum: I was informed about 2/3s of the way into the fall semester (2006) that I would not be granted an adjunct appointment for the following year.  Dr. Robert McKim, the director of the Program for the Study of Religion, called me into his office to tell me that evaluations of my classes by two faculty members from the Program had indicated that I was not suited to teach with them.  He would not share with me any specifics of the evaluations but he said in general the problem resolved around the fact that I had appeared “too much like I believed what I was teaching.”  I am not sure what other disciplines for which this is a problem, but for Dr. McKim and at least a voting majority of the faculty for the Religious Studies Department, belief when it comes to teaching about the Catholic Church seems to be a problem.

“Do you think your case is similar to Dr. Howell’s?”

Yes I do.  Dr. Howell’s case is much clearer of course.  He has taught at the U of I for almost a decade and at least since 2005, I believe, every semester he has been ranked by his students as an outstanding professor.  Many of these times, he was the only one in the religion department to receive such recognition.  Thus, he has a long and stellar record as an outstanding teacher with the department.  In his case, he was also told the explicit content which the University decision makers found objectionable.  This happened to be an articulation of the Catholic Church’s use of the classical natural law tradition to show its conformance with Church teaching in the context of same sex attraction.  The content of the class had been approved by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as is the case with all approved classes.  The inability to teach what the Catholic Church teaches and why she does so when it is the explicitly approved topic of the class, simply because it does not comport with current dominant ideology about same sex attraction is unmistakably an infringement on the purpose of a university and the academic freedom that lies at the heart of a university’s mission. To do so in this case was called “hate speech” in a complaint. It seems to me that in this context, the phrase “hate speech” is being used as an ad hominem attack to censor discussion that calls into question an accepted popular dogma, in this case the belief by many in academia about what we might call the “secular sacredness” attached to same sex attraction. In my case, it was the very fact that I “appeared to believe” what the Church taught that was enough to disqualify me to teach.  The similarity in both cases is that academic freedom seemed not to apply to Christians teaching about the content of their religion merely because they also accepted that content as true.  It is important to note that no claim was made against either of us that we expected the students to believe, pressured them to believe, graded students based upon belief, or that we did not maintain academic standards.  I “seemed to believe” what I taught and Dr. Howell’s belief, which violated U of I’s (or at least LAS’s) “standards of inclusivity,” both were the reasons for our departure.

“Does the UI have a problem with Catholics expressing themselves?”

We will have to wait to see the results of the Faculty Senate Committee’s investigation to see if such a charge can fairly be made against the university as a whole, but this clearly seems to be the case within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Department of Religion.

“Do you have the right as a professor to express your personal opinions?”

I think that a professor has a duty to allow students to know where he is coming from.  In journalism this is often referred to as “full disclosure” I believe.  If students are to critically assess what is being presented, they should have the opportunity not simply to evaluate the arguments, they should also have access to information about the professor’s personal position in order to more clearly contextualize the arguments. Perhaps it may be the case that other relevant data may have been intentionally or inadvertently left out due to the professor’s position.  A student has a right, in fact a duty, to fully evaluate and so make up his/her own mind about an issue in a fully informed manner.  There are very few disciplines in which the professor’s personal views are deemed inappropriate to classroom discussion.  This includes some of the most controversial topics of our time.  That is of course, unless the views depart for accepted “orthodoxy.”  Academic Freedom standards in the academy actually protect the right of a professor to discuss relevant controversial topics.  The American Association of University Professors cites a Supreme Court decision in this regard on the matter of academic freedom:  “As the Supreme Court said in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967), ‘Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom’” (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/1940statement.htm ).  Unfortunately, the “orthodoxy” demanded by LAS and the Department of Religion squelches rational dialog about the very content of which the class is supposed to be about.

“…have you kept any documents from the time in question?”

I have some documents.  One that may be of interest is attached.  It is a copy of the e-mail notifying Dr. Howell the Program’s refusal to allow me to teach.  It is very vague and it was never explained to me what exactly was meant by the reasons given.  As a result, I was never given a chance to respond to the charge that I was “not well equipped” and that point never came up as a separate issue in the discussion I had with Dr. McKim about their decision and so I am left to assume this is also a reference to the “offending” manner in which I taught.  Furthermore, the topics of the classes which Program faculty evaluated were theological and philosophical matters associated with the First and Second Vatican Councils, topics about which I am well suited to teach and about which I was evaluated in my graduate studies.  Thus, I would be very surprised if the two faculty members evaluating me would have been qualified to critique my expertise in these areas.  Nevertheless, the e-mail’s reference to “the way in which they need to be taught at a secular university” was clearly citing Dr. McKim’s explanation to me that I taught too much as though I believed what I was teaching.

Here is the last episode of our 8 part TV and radio series.  To sum it up, perhaps we can say that to have a good death one needs to practice dying now.  You can download the video here.

My last post on this topic provided my thoughts about it.  However, I thought that a little background as to how this came about might be of interest to some. I think it helpful to go back to the beginning of the association between the Institute of Catholic Thought (ICT), of which Ken Howell was the director, and the University of Illinois in terms of credit classes.

The ICT had its predecessor in a cooperative arrangement between the Spaulding Guild (the original instantiation of what is now St. John’s Catholic Newman Center, the parent organization of the ICT) and the University of Illinois.  The director of the Spaulding Guild, Fr. John A. O’Brien, joined with nine other campus ministry organizations to petition the University to accept for credit in the university, some courses the student centers would teach in their respective institutions.

On December 9^th 1919 the faculty Senate and the Board of Trustees approved an arrangement with these centers.  This allowed the Guild to teach Catholic courses for university credit under the supervision of a university appointed committee.  The stipulations for this arrangement required that the Guild follow certain guidelines.  These included that it incorporate, submit their proposed courses to the university for approval, provide instructors with a Ph.D. or equivalent education, provide their own facilities, and limit enrollment in the courses to students of sophomore standing or higher.

In the 1970s, controversy erupted over the credit course system that had been created by these campus ministers in 1919.  The controversy began developing in the late 1950s.  At that time, credit course enrollment had been integrated into the university’s registration process and the committee which had supervised the courses had been abolished (though their supervision was transferred to another body). These changes angered a small but powerful group of faculty members from the philosophy and sociology departments.  These faculty were members of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and through the AAUP began making formal assaults on the credit course system, pressing for its discontinuance.

The ministers of the campus ministries, organized through the Religious Worker’s Association (RWA), fought the attack throughout the 1960s.  As the decade wore on, however, the heads of several foundations backed down, fearing that unless they compromised, they would have no voice in future decisions.  By the late 1960s, Fr. Duncan (the director [1943-1997] of what was now the Newman Foundation), was waging an increasingly lonely battle to keep the credit-course system intact, arguing that theology, which was the heart of religion, should be taught as an academic subject only by those trained in it. To the surprise of many, on May 17, 1972, the Trustees voted six to two to keep the credit courses (the above two paragraphs are from an unpublished history assembled by a friend of mine).

In 2000 the issue erupted again in which the Program for the Study of Religion again tried to eliminate the courses being offered in the Newman Foundation.  By this time, the Foundation, thanks to Msgr. Duncan’s influence , was the only remaining campus ministry center to be teaching these credit courses.  The director of the Foundation was now Msgr. Stuart Swetland who continued the battle with the same vigor.

The compromise he was to reach now included the discontinuation of teaching the courses as theology courses in the Newman Foundatoin.  The arrangement was modified in 2001 with the Program for the Study of Religion within the Liberal Arts School, subsuming these courses into its program and appointing two Newman Foundation professors as adjuncts within the Program.  These faculty would not receive any compensation from the University.  The courses were now taught as religious studies courses.  They were taught from an interior perspective, but they did not presume or expect faith on the part of the students.  These course turned out to be some of the most popular courses offered by the Program for the Study of Religion.  All of the classes offered by Msgr. Swetland and Ken Howell were regularly full and the instructors were ranked as excellent by their students almost every semester.

When Msgr. Swetland was reassigned in the spring of 2006, the battle erupted again.  The plan was for me to replace Msgr. Swetland in his classes.  Ken Howell notified the Program of this desired change.  The director was Robert McKim (the same person who “fired” Ken Howell earlier this year).  He was of course quite cool to the idea.  This stage of the controversy began with an invitation from the Program for me to meet with the faculty so “we could get to know one another.”

The meeting turned out to be something of an inquisition for which I was unprepared.  Three days after hearing that I would be taking Msgr. Swetland’s courses over, I was asked to cite the books I would use, layout on the fly a syllabus for these courses and answer specific questions about the topics posed by each of the faculty members.  Perhaps I should have expected this, but of course I was unprepared as I had not taught the courses before.

The faculty deemed me not competent to teach and declined to allow me to replace Msgr.  Swetland.  This was at the end of the academic year in the spring of 2006.  Over the summer Ken pushed Robert McKim on the issue.  McKim agreed that it was probably an unfair evaluation and that things likely would have gone differently if I had been given a chance to prepare for the meeting.  Much to the chagrin of the faculty, McKim relented and gave me a one year visiting appointment.  I have to admit that McKim did recognize he would take a lot of heat for this but decided to do the right thing.  Generally, I think McKim tried to be fair, even if his heart is with those who wanted to see us gone…or else his penchant for getting along weighed in our favor.  Nevertheless, he was always quite candid about his distaste for the current arrangement and his desire for a Catholic Chair whom the department would select (given they took to inviting “Charlie” Curran and Elizabeth Fiorenza as their guest lecturers one can see whom they would want to be the Catholic Chair).

However, during the fall semester of 2006 I was informed that the faculty had decided to begin a program to evaluate their adjuncts just in time for my inaugural semester.  I do not know if any others ever were evaluated, but McKim admitted that this was something new.  I had two faculty members sit in on two of my classes.  One of these members, one of them very hostile about Christian beliefs.

Of the two classes evaluated, one was on Vatican I and the Church’s response to Liberalism.  The other was on the background leading up to the calling of the Second Vatican Council.  While I think I was fair, I clearly laid these issues out from an interior Catholic perspective trying to explain the Catholic worldview and how this led to the events we were studying.  A few days later, I was called in to Robert McKim’s office.  He informed me that the “star chamber” had decided that I was not appropriate to teach within the Program.  He said that he could not share with me their deliberations and that the decision was final.  He did indicate to me that in general, the feeling was that I came across too much as though I believed what I was teaching.  McKim is one (perhaps the only one in what is now a Department) who thinks that students should not know what the professor thinks about what he teaches, presuming that this is the only way to be “objective.”

With my departure, this left finding a way to eliminate Ken Howell as the final step in a battle that had begun nearly 60 years prior, that is to eliminate people of faith from teaching subjects having to do with their faith.  To be fair, there are others who practice their faith who teach about their faith.  Conspicuously missing are those of the Judeo-Christian traditions.

It seems to me that this prejudice against people of faith is predicated upon a secular presupposition that there is an inherent conflict between faith and reason.  This premise is likely a vestige of the presumption that any kind of faith demands fideism which has permeated much of the Protestant religious experience in the United States.  While this fideism has its most obvious manifestation in Fundamentalism, it has its roots in the Reformed and Lutheran schools who adopted Ockham’s Voluntarist Nominalism.  Nevertheless, this premise is simply a rationalization as I see it.  My experience was that there seems  to be almost a fear of engagement with Catholic thought among many of these academics.  The U of I Department of Religion (it transitioned from a Program to a Department in 2007 or 2008) represents a gamut of responses to Catholic thought: from hostile ad hominem attacks, to snobbish dismissal, to fearful avoidance of any discussion.  This is not all of the faculty, but it describes at least the vocal leaders.

Ken’s firing was made easy by the 2001 arrangement.  Adjuncts have no rights and I suspect that this was foreseen.  Even though the arrangment was supposed to continue into the indefinite future, an almost century old agreement, the stipulations of the agreement made it only a matter of time before the desires of the hostile faculty members would prevail.  In some ways, it is amazing that they did not find a reason to get rid of Ken earlier.   I suspect that because he always had full classes, no complaints, and was rated excellent by his students for at least 10 consecutive semesters, and they were not paying for his services they found it very difficult to justify.

It is easy to see that they needed something like this sensitive, politically correct scheme to complete their nearly 6 decade-long effort to expunge people of particular faith perspectives from the classroom.  One even wonders if this might have been a set up.  Based upon Ken’s description of the events and an evaluation of the two documents upon which the U of I seems to have made its decision (Ken’s e-mail to his students and the anonymous complaint by an ostensible friend of one of Ken’s students), it seems that the “star chamber” decision was simply a calculation that they could get away with it this time.  I suspect they thought no one would be able to defend Ken’s e-mail because they have never seriously engaged with Catholic thought.  For the time being any way, they seem to have won…

The antiphon for the first Psalm from this morning’s morning prayer reminds me of one of the great challenges of the spiritual life…at least mine any way.  The antiphon reads:

When will I come to the end of my pilgrimage and enter the presence of God?

About a year ago a very good friend of mine made a comment similar to this as we were talking one evening.  Unfortunately, as I am wont to do, I responded with my thoughts on the matter rather than listening to her.  Here are some of those thoughts for what they are worth.

I lived for the first three decades of my life in a veritable spiritual coma until God, in in His great mercy, sent His Holy Spirit to administer a holy 2×4 upside my hard Irish noggin.  Slowly but surely as I came to understand of God’s great love and His plan for us, I found myself yearning for a quick end to the journey in order to experience what eye has not seen.  That is, I did until my spiritual life began to progress and I came to realize how unprepared I was.

A couple of years ago, this was made quite clear to me.  One evening, my wife noticed that my right pupil was dilated more than my left.  I mentioned this to my doctor who showed great concern.  He immediately scheduled me for a battery of exams and referred me to several specialists.  As I was to learn that there were quite a few possible causes for this; most of them very serious to fatal.

Over the next couple of months I had ample opportunity to contemplate this question.  The experience was a most sobering one.  The very real possibility that this question might be answered: “very shortly,” brought what I knew previously in a more dispassionate way home to me in a much more personal way.

I realized that my moral courage was quite lacking. I realized that my trust in God left much to be desired.  I came to understand how very large the gap was between where I was and where I needed to be.  This made an imminent  particular judgment not a joyful prospect.  Eventually, I received a benign diagnosis.  Perhaps this is why I have not made all that much progress since then.

Nevertheless, at times the insanity of life can still cause me to ask this question.  But now I recognize much more clearly that my yearning needs to correspond better to my personal holiness.  Thus, during these times I pray for the holiness needed to be ready to pray this antiphon.

Here is the 7th segment of our 8 part series on Theology of the Body…

To download, click here.

It is ironic.  In academia today there exists the prevailing notion that universities are bastions of freedom to pursue truth…though paradoxically, all too many in the academy no longer accept the notion of truth.  In reality, truth has been replaced by freedom as an end in itself. And there is almost nothing off limits in this pursuit of academic freedom: pornography, blasphemy, bigotry against select religions, except for authentic academic freedom.  In any case, the self-appointed guardians of “freedom as an end” will so often look down their noses at people of faith who are “encumbered” by dogmatic thinking and so are unable “to think for themselves.”

In truth, man is a dogmatic animal.  He is made to pursue the truth (i.e. dogmas) and cannot abide with falsity nor with those who are unwilling to see the truth.  As it turns out, even in the most secular of institutions dogmas of faith will trump academic freedom. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one such institution.

As a matter of full disclosure, I must say that I experienced the University of Illinois’ squelching of  academic freedom myself a few years ago.  I was a visiting professor for an academic year at this institution.  The Religious Studies department was not happy with my teaching there, but through an almost century old agreement with the Newman Center, they initially were compelled to allow me.  Because of this, they decided that  they should start sitting in on classes of their adjuncts/visiting professors.  Two faculty members sat in on my class on US Catholic History.  Some days after my class visit I was called in to the department head’s office to be told that I would not be allowed to continue the following academic year.   It seems that I had committed a very grave sin against the new orthodoxy.  My sin?  I appeared as though I believed what I was teaching.  I was not accused of proselytizing, being unfair to students, or expecting them to believe what I taught.  Nevertheless, since my subject matter did not conform to secularist orthodoxy, it was deemed that there was too great a danger in exposing students to rank heresy without an “orthodox” professor there to refute it for them.

Thus, I was not surprised a couple of weeks ago when my former colleague who has been teaching there since 2000, called to tell me that after 10 years his appointment at the university was not being renewed.  Kenneth Howell was a very popular teacher.  He had been ranked excellent by his students every semester for years (at least since I got there in 2005).  His classes were always full.  Even his students who disagreed with him, respected his ability to clearly and dispassionately explain to them what the Catholic Church teaches.  However, now he too has been found to be so grave a sinner against secularist orthodoxy that he too must be purged from the ranks of the orthodox.  Indeed, his sin was much more grave than my own.  Here is Ken’s explanation sent to his friends:

“Dear Friend:

I write this short narrative to explain why I am no longer teaching at the University of Illinois and am not employed by the Diocese of Peoria as of 30 June 2010. First, a little background.

I came to Champaign-Urbana in August of 1998 to be employed by the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center as a teacher in the courses of the Catholic faith that were then taught through the Center. For seven years I enjoyed a working relationship with Monsignor Stuart W. Swetland, the Director of the Center, who taught alongside me in that program. In 2000, Monsignor Swetland negotiated an agreement with the Department of Religion in which he and I would be adjunct professors in the department and would teach courses on Catholicism. We simultaneously established the Institute of Catholic Thought of which I became the Director and Senior Fellow. The purpose of the Institute was to promote the intellectual heritage of the western world in which Catholicism played such an integral role.

Since the Fall of 2001, I have been regularly teaching two courses in the Department of Religion. Since Monsignor Swetland’s departure in May of 2006, I have taught the equivalent of a full-time professor every semester, sometimes even more. This past semester (Spring 2010) something occurred which changed an otherwise idyllic academic life. One of the courses I have taught since 2001 has been “Introduction to Catholicism.” I think that it is fair to say that many students at the University of Illinois have benefited greatly from this and other teaching I have done. Every semester in that “Introduction” class, I gave two lectures dealing with Catholic Moral positions. One was an explanation of Natural Moral Law as affirmed by the Church. The second was designed as an application of Natural Law Theory to a disputed issue in our society. Most of those semesters, my chosen topic was the moral status of homosexual acts. I would happy to explain more fully the Catholic Church’s position on this matter but, for the sake of brevity, I can summarize it as follows. A homosexual orientation is not morally wrong just as no moral guilt can be assigned to any inclination that a person has. However, based on natural moral law, the Church believes that homosexual acts are contrary to human nature and therefore morally wrong. This is what I taught in my class.

This past semester was unusual. In previous years, I had students who might have disagreed with the Church’s position but they did so respectfully and without incident. This semester (Spring 2010) I noticed the most vociferous reaction that I have ever had. It seemed out of proportion to all that I had known thus far. To help students understand better how this issue might be decided within competing moral systems, I sent them an email contrasting utilitarianism (in the populist sense) and natural moral law. If we take utilitarianism to be a kind of cost-benefit analysis, I tried to show them that under utilitarianism, homosexual acts would not be considered immoral whereas under natural moral law they would. This is because natural moral law, unlike utilitarianism, judges morality on the basis of the acts themselves.

After the semester was over, I was called into the office of Robert McKim, the chairman of the Department of Religion, who was in possession of this email. I was told that someone (I presume one of my students) sent this email to the Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Concerns at the University. It was apparently sent to administrators in the University of Illinois and then forwarded on to Professor McKim. I was told that I would no longer be able to teach in the Department of Religion.

Professor McKim and I discussed the contents of the email and he was quite insistent that my days of teaching in the department were over. I offered that it would be more just to ask me not to address the subject of homosexuality in my class. In fact, the other class I regularly taught (Modern Catholic Thought) never dealt with that subject at all. I also avered that to dismiss me for teaching the Catholic position in a class on Catholicism was a violation of academic freedom and my first amendment rights of free speech. This made no difference. After that conversation and a couple of emails, Professor McKim insisted that this decision to dismiss me stood firm.

I then consulted with our Diocesan lawyer, Mrs. Patricia Gibson, to see if the St. John’s Newman Center could sue the university for breach of contract. Mrs. Gibson, kind in spirit and articulate as regards the law, told me that unfortunately the university had made very careful provisions to protect itself and so would not be liable in a law suit. I am still consulting with other lawyers about possible legal action on the grounds of the first amendment.

Then Monsignor Gregory Ketcham, the current Director of the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center and my superior, informed me that the Center would not be able to continue employing me since there was no longer any teaching for me to do. I then reiterated what I had mentioned to him the day before. I suggested that we work together to have courses on Catholicism taught at the Newman Center that could be accredited by a Catholic university and that could be transferred into the University of Illinois for credit. In this way, the students whom we had been called to serve could continue to be instructed in the Catholic Faith. I told him in fact that I had once had conversations with professors in Catholic universities who were willing to make such arrangements. Monsignor Ketcham said that he had no interest in such a plan.

Thus, after more than sixty years, students at the University of Illinois will have no classes on Catholicism available to them. If the Department of Religion continues to offer the courses I taught, I have no idea how accurately Catholicism will be represented. I know this subject well enough to say it can be easily distorted. I have tried in this document to portray in a straightforward manner what happened. I also am preparing another document giving my own interpretation of all these events.

I look back at the twelve years I have spent in this position with memories of wonderful times with my students and friends with whom I have labored. It has been a time of great growth and joy. I thank God from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know what the future holds but I do know Him who holds it. He is faithful and can be trusted.

Sincerely,

Kenneth J. Howell “

A dispassionate presentation of the Catholic Church’s position on natural law apparently cannot be tolerated by the magisterium of the new orthodoxy.  After all, the dogma that same sex attraction disorder is a preferred orientation is a revealed truth that cannot be rationally defended; thus, it must simply be accepted.  Those who will not accept it cannot be tolerated in polite society.  It is ironic that this is exactly what these same thinkers claim about the Catholic faith and why they are so suspicious of any believer who would attempt to teach about the Catholic faith in a public (or secular as they would say) institution.

If you want to keep up with this, or if you would like to weigh in with the U of I administration, you can go to a Facebook page started by Ken’s former students.