Georgetown Honors Advocate of Partial Birth Abortion

Is it any wonder Catholics are confused?

U.S. Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois
U.S. Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois (photo: Official U.S. Senate photo by Jeff McEvoy)

Okay. So what exactly do you have to do to NOT get honored by a Catholic college?

Well, to be fair, I might be taking liberties with the term “Catholic college” because I'm referring to Georgetown, which might just be the least Catholic of all Catholic colleges.

To be clear, not only did Senator Dick Durbin vote to expand research to more embryonic stem cell lines, vote against making it a crime to harm an unborn child during a crime, vote against banning the grisly procedure known as partial birth abortions, but he even voted against banning human cloning. Those are pretty good reasons right there for a Catholic college to refuse to honor such a man, right? But it gets even worse.

Following the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act which prohibited abortion at 20 weeks, Durbin’s bishop, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki, banned Durbin from receiving Holy Communion in his diocese. But that didn’t stop Georgetown University President John DeGioia from presenting him with the Timothy S. Healy, S.J. Award for devoting “his life to the core Jesuit value of service to others.”

You seriously can't make this stuff up.

In response, Durbin said “Father Pedro Arrupe challenged all alumni of Jesuit schools to engage in the struggle for justice on behalf of the most vulnerable in our society. I have tried to meet that challenge during my time in office." One must assume that the "most vulnerable in our society" does not include the unborn.

Canon 915 of the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law states that those “who obstinately persist in mani­fest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” But I guess it doesn't mention being honored by a Catholic college.

We wonder why so many Catholics vote for pro-death politicians. We wonder why so many Catholics seem confused about basic teachings like the sacredness of life. You know what confuses me? Why so many Catholic parents spend years raising their children in the faith only to spend $50,000 plus a year for their children to be turned against them and their faith. That confuses me.