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.]
9 comments
Everyone has heard of Sodomy but has anyone heard of Gomorrahy?
@Sheesh – See your doctor ASAP. Rocephin or Levaquin should take care of your gomorrahy. And don’t be ashamed, it’s the 21st century!
I always known Leviticus to be a misunderstood guide of what’s clean, i.e., hygienic, and what’s not. So what the School of Ministry is teaching makes sense unless you’re a rabid homophobic freak.
So, i’m not gay then…dodge a close one!
Tim another great opening for a slew of homophobic rants that will swear up and down they are not homophobic.
Wink, Wink…
Of course, no mention will be made of the cover up of child sexual abuse by the Vatican but let us make damn sure we quote Leviticus here as we only hear that one every other day of our life.
Plenty of lawfully wedded heterosexual couples eat shellfish.
There is no difference between eating shellfish and having gay sex. This is why I always take my own bottle of poppers to seafood restaurants.
It is the act of a true ideologue when one can take an ancient text, that has been consistently interpreted to mean that sodomy and homosexuality are sinful, into something that justifies homosexuality.
Yet more evidence of the bizarre inversion of the modern world that can’t see evil for evil and good for good.
Truly a diabolical disorientation if there ever was one.
An “article” clearly meant to provoke. However, Mr. Fagan’s article, which you could have provided a link to, is not about being unhappy that UD’s School of Ministry has a faculty member that has published such a work that interprets the book of Leviticus in this light— and that the School of Ministry somehow endorses gay sex and is now being integrated into the mainstream of the university. Rather, Mr. Fagan lists many examples of faculty member in the School of Ministry who have publicly dissented from Church teaching, or used the publications of people who have dissented from Church teaching, to make a point. The point is, that before the Board of Trustees votes on creating a new major for undergraduates, these things should be investigated. Why? Because UD is homophobic? Phooey. No, because UD claims to be a school that upholds Church teaching—– which, of course, is why many people choose to attend it.
That’s it. Perhaps if Mr. Rogers had attended UD, he would be more careful and accurate in his sophistry, um, I mean, rhetoric.