Faithful Catholicism a Firing Offense; Godophobia in Higher Education

In recent years, and especially as of late it has become more prevalent for certain people in our society to defend a Muslim’s right to free speech, and religious freedom while the exact opposite can be said for traditional Christianity. Traditional Christians are told or taught to conform to our ever-changing society which promotes homosexuality, women priests, abortion, contraception and be “tolerant” while there is no tolerance of our traditional religious beliefs. I guess “tolerance” is only a one way street. All religions should be respected for their beliefs. Our constitution guarantees “freedom of religion.” If you looked at our society one might think that our country applied the philosophy of freedom from religion instead freedom of religion in our society today. There have been way too many instances where people stir up trouble and make the claim that the word God or prayer offends them. If that is the case while at the same time they are fine with pornography and sexual implicit scenes and other moral decay of the family being prevalent on both TV and in movies it is because they are either intolerant Godophobes or they must have some mental defect that makes them incapable of comprehending the love of God. Our Founders recognized that both God and religious freedom was important for America and made that one of the underpinnings of America’s foundation. This foundation is very important for America, and for America to be “America” we must continue to defend religious freedom today and not some selective distorted quasi-religious freedom.

There has been an incident at the University of Illinois where a professor was teaching a Catholicism 101 course and someone was offended because the professor explained the tenets of Catholicism which includes having the belief that homosexual acts are a sin. The Catholic professor was fired for teaching one of the beliefs of the Catholic Church - the belief that homosexual acts are sinful. The student accused the professor of hate speech because he thought that the professor should be tolerant of what nonbelievers perceive to be moral behavior when his faith teaches him that homosexuality is immoral. This situation is ludicrous when it was his choice whether to take this particular class or not.

If you took a class called Hindu 101 would expect them to say they like beef and believed it was okay to eat beef just to conform to society when their belief is the exact opposite and that the cow is sacred? If a Christian attended a class called Jewish Faith 101 would you expect the professor to teach about the New Testament when they don’t believe in a New Covenant or that Jesus is the Son of God? Would a Christian student expect Scientology 101 to teach that Christ is Our Creator?

CatholicVoteAction.org has posted both the AP article and the email address of the public affairs office of the University of Illinois on his site. I am in full agreement with his call for people to swamp the university with emails. The fact that both the university and the on-campus Catholic center fired Dr. Howell for being a faithful Catholic is unjust. No person should be discriminated upon for their beliefs. In fact this course is all about the beliefs of the Catholic Church so this whole situation doesn’t make sense. Here is the email that caused Dr. Howell to be fired.

Here is a description of events by Dr. Howell :

Factual Description

Thomas states: “As Catholics, we can’t allow this injustice to stand. If a university can have valid grounds for firing a professor as upstanding a this one for an opinion so universally held by the Church, other universities will be able to gradually push out faithful Catholic teachers from their institutions once they decide the positions taken by the Church and being defended by such-and-such a teacher are inconvenient or offensive.”

I am in full agreement with Thomas’s statement. The University of Illinois is penalizing and persecuting Dr. Howell for his being a faithful Catholic. Secular society is praising dissenting Catholics while persecuting and marginalizing faithful Catholics. This is wrong! We have become a nation in which it is only acceptable to have one set of “religious beliefs” that conforms to those secular societal beliefs of moral relativism, where there is an anything goes policy. These people do not believe in moral absolutes. We have become a nation that no longer respects one’s religious beliefs. This is exactly what the Founders feared. We must fight back against this injustice. When being faithful to one’s own faith, one’s own moral principles is considered to be hate speech then this country has veered way off course to the Left and entered into being an anti-religious State that is diametrically opposite to our Founders core beliefs as to citizens right to religious freedom. We must keep on fighting the good fight to retain and restore our religious rights and restore many of the rights that the immoral secular Left have stolen from us. We must stop the Godophobia!