University of Dallas Alum in High Dudgeon Over Potentially Teaching Sodomy to Undergrads

Okay, confusing headline. Let’s break this down.

Patrick Fagan writes over on The Catholic Thing that he’s got five kids who went through the University of Dallas. But now he’s poised to condemn the university. It all depends on how UD board votes tonight on a curriculum matter. Fagan writes:

The UD theology department gives undergraduates the real goods – the full faith and orthodoxy. Yet UD is poised to offer a new undergraduate major in pastoral theology next fall to be taught by the School of Ministry, not the current theology department. Unlike theology and the rest of UD’s departments, this school is not well known and has had a rather separated existence, but is now about to become part of the UD mainstream.

And why, pray tell, might it be a bad thing if the School of Ministry becomes part of the mainstream? You know the answer already. Gay sex.

Take, for instance, Professor Jerome Walsh, who is currently teaching an Old Testament course to School of Ministry graduate students. Walsh’s interests in the Old Testament include publication of a lengthy analysis of Leviticus in which he claims that Israel’s holy law only ever meant to condemn the completed act of sodomy and that “other forms of male-male sexual encounter, encompassing the whole range of physical expressions of affection that do not entail penetration, are not envisaged in these laws” (see p. 209, warning: graphic content). Will this be taught to undergraduates?

[Insert Brokeback joke. Cue brimstone.]