‘Every Orientation’ Okay

THE JOURNAL NEWS, Oct. 11 — After opposing an overtly homosexual student group, New York Medical College, which is affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York, has decided to sanction “People of Every Orientation Protecting Liberty and Equality in Medicine.”

The newspaper noted that the group, “while more inclusive,” will focus on the “special health-care needs” of “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patients.”

The newspaper reported that the American Medical Association (AMA) became aware of the school's opposition to an overt homosexual organization in June, “voting to back gay medical students’ right to organize, apparently with New York Medical College in mind.”

The AMA also called on medical-school accreditation agencies to require curriculums to cover “gay health issues.”

Brownback Difference

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 14 — In a feature on Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and his ascendancy as a potential Republican candidate for president who is the most obviously pro-life and religious, the newspaper recounted a recent visit by the senator to St. Anselm College in New Hampshire.

“I am giving you a bit of a different message here today,” he told students at the Benedictine college. “A big core of it,” he said, is about the role of “faith in politics.”

A Catholic convert, Brownback said his hero was William Wilberforce, the 19th-centruy British crusader for whom slavery was the great moral issue of his day. He said abortion was “the defining issue of the difference between the political parties today.”

Saving Christmas

CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE, Oct. 6 — A “Save Christmas” campaign to protest a tendency of many campuses to “ban anything relating to Christmas,” is one of a number of initiatives of the Campus Leadership Program.

The program has also invited student groups to declare National Sovereignty Day to coincide with this month's United Nations Day and to commemorate Veterans’ Day in November with candlelight vigils and by visiting veterans’ hospitals.

The program is a division of the Leadership Institute, a non-profit educational organization to help prepare tradition-minded students to buck political correctness and to be leaders and activists in public policy.

Rosary and Faith

WNDU, Oct. 11 — A crowd “packed” Our Lady's Grotto on the campus of Notre Dame University in Indiana one recent October evening to pray the Rosary with actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ.

Caviezel said his visit was inspired by the story of Irish football coach Charlie Weis granting a 10-year-old boy his dying wish of calling the first play of a game played earlier this season.

In a talk on the need for the young to commit to faith and reject the pervasiveness of sin in the world, Caviezel said Weis’ decision was an “act of faith,” and urged the students to take similar risks.

Flag a Fixture

THE PROGRESSIVE, Oct. 17 — English teacher Stephen Kobasa was fired from Kolbe Cathedral High School in Bridgeport, Conn., for defying a Diocese of Bridgeport policy that the school day begin with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, reported the magazine dedicated to “peace and social justice.”

Kobasa, a member of the Catholic Worker movement, said he believes the flag has no place in a Catholic classroom since the Church “can only function with its prophetic voice by standing outside the state.”

In a statement on its website, the diocese says it has “long believed that the American flag is an important fixture in Catholic school classrooms.”