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Published: September 27, 2007

Distinguished record?

University president who brought feminist theologians and pro-abortion commencement speakers to Catholic university in LA gets accolade from Cardinal Mahony

Cardinal Roger Mahony has honored Jesuit Fr. Robert Lawton, president of Loyola Marymount University of Los Angeles, as one of the recipients of the 2008 Cardinal’s Award, according to a story in the Sept. 21 edition of the Tidings, the weekly newspaper of the Los Angeles archdiocese.

Since 1999, Lawton has had “the vision to integrate the university into all aspects of community life of Los Angeles,” said the Tidings’ article.

Under Lawton, the archdiocese and the university have enjoyed amicable relations. With the archdiocese’s Hindu-Catholic Dialogue, the university offered an April 2005 symposium featuring “ecofeminist” Rosemary Radford Ruether, who proposes calling God “Gaia,” the Roman Mother Earth goddess. In 2004 the university offered a symposium at which speaker Fr. Michael Crosby called celibacy “a system of power, of patriarchy.”

In 2002, the archdiocese’s office of religious education teamed with the university to sponsor a talk by Michael Morwood, whose book, Tomorrow’s Catholic, Melbourne, Australia Archbishop George Pell has condemned as containing serious errors. At his Los Angeles talk, Morwood argued that the Church’s understanding of God "suffers from the limitations of an outmoded cosmology."

Loyola Marymount has also become one of the training centers for the archdiocese’s lay parish leaders, who serve in the capacity of pastors.

In June 2006, Florida state circuit court Judge George Greer, who ordered feeding tubes removed from Terry Schiavo, spoke at a conference on media law at the Loyola Law School. “Based on the intense scrutiny and media coverage generated by the Schiavo case,” said a Loyola press release, “Judge Greer will bring a unique perspective to the journalists in attendance.”

Greer’s address was not the first connection Loyola Marymount has had with the Schiavo case. In 2004, Loyola Marymount bioethics professor James Walter signed on to the amicus curiae brief arguing that Michael Schiavo should be allowed to deprive his wife -- in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years -- of food and hydration.

The Lawton-led university has also repeatedly hosted pro-abortion speakers at commencement ceremonies. The 2006 commencement featured Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; in 2005, it was California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. In 2000, pro-abortion Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd addressed graduates of Loyola Law School.

As far as entertainment goes, in 2004 the university participated in the V-Day College Campaign, complete with a performance of the Vagina Monologues.

Among the policy changes under the Lawton administration, the university began in 2004 to grant insurance coverage for its employees’ “registered domestic partners.” The previous year, Lawton mused that such an offering “may not be appropriate” at a Catholic university, but that it would, nevertheless, “follow state law in the matter,” according to minutes of a university meeting. Three years earlier, the university announced it would offer “enhanced contraceptive coverage” to its employees -- again, it was claimed, in response to a new state law, but at the very time Catholic Charities was fighting that law in court.

More recently, the university invited as visiting professor Wole Soyinka, a critic of the Christian faith. “Through his words and actions, Mr. Soyinka has transformed the world and embodies our university’s mission,” Lawton said in a university press release.

Cardinal Mahony named Lawton and four others as recipients of the 2008 Cardinal’s Award on Sept. 12. According to the Tidings, the awards are given to “members of the Los Angeles Catholic community who have extensive and distinguished records of service.” The Cardinal’s Award Dinner is scheduled at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza on Feb. 9, 2008.

© California Catholic Daily 2007. All Rights Reserved.