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Published: February 8, 2010
Pointing the media in the wrong direction?
USF provides legal ‘experts’ on same-sex ‘marriage,’ partial birth abortion
On Oct. 28, 2009, California Catholic Daily reported that the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco’s Public Interest Law Foundation would honor California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno for his dissent in the Proposition 8 decision. The article also noted that every single PILF honoree since the event’s inception had been a supporter of same-sex ‘marriage,’ including Therese Stewart and Shannon Minter, whom USF honored in 2008 for winning the later-overturned 2008 “Marriages” case.
 USF Law School’s support for same-sex ‘marriage’ continues unabated. On Feb. 26, the USF Law Review will sponsor a symposium called “The Future of Same Sex Marriage.” Panel members have yet to be announced, but it is reasonable to expect they will include USF Professor Julie Nice, who is listed as the “Faculty Expert” for issues pertaining to “Sexual Orientation and the Law” on the school’s “For the Media” page. That makes Professor Nice the school’s go-to-person when the media wants an opinion on same-sex ‘marriage.’
A good example of Professor Nice’s views was given in an interview on March 5, 2009 with KCBS radio, where she said the question before the California Supreme court, then hearing the Proposition 8 case, was a conflict between the “constitutional principles in the document or the current whim of the voters.” Professor Nice also gave an interview to KFOG radio’s Beat of the Bay “Gay & Lesbian Issues” show on February 28, 2009. At that time, she celebrated the “much greater civility” surrounding the discussion of the issue, which would probably be news to people such as 96-year-old Lorenzo Hoopes, who is currently being hounded off his volunteer position of 20 years at the Oakland City Theater Board because of his support for Proposition 8.
 In addition to Nice, USF Professor Maya Manian is listed as a “Faculty Expert” to the media on the subjects of abortion, family law, constitutional law, and gender discrimination. Before becoming an associate professor at USF, Manian practiced “civil rights legislation” at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. The very first sentence on the Center for Reproductive Rights’ homepage is: “Our Issues reflect what a woman needs to direct her own life and make healthy decisions: Legal, safe, and affordable Contraception and Abortion.”
Despite being an activist attorney for a pro-abortion organization, not only was Professor Manian hired by USF, she is recommended as an “expert” by the law school. Since her arrival, Professor Manian has authored a number of papers on Gonzales v. Carhart, the 2007 Supreme Court decision that overturned rulings by lower courts that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was unconstitutional. Manian argued against the ban on the grounds that it is a threat “to women’s health and reproductive freedom.”
Manian also publicly opposed Proposition 4, the November 2008 initiative that would have required family notification before a minor could undergo an abortion. The measure was narrowly defeated after massive spending against it by Planned Parenthood.
Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 5:05 AM By Elaine
Considering universities like USF, it's a shame you can't homeschool college degrees.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 7:00 AM By 1abqdad
It makes me SICK that BOTH the USCCB and the Vatican are failing at their obligation to protect the church's virtue! They are directly called to ensure that ANY organization that claims association with the church follows ALL church teachings! How many souls are being lost? We are now reaping the weakness and inability/reluctance of church leadership to act. JESUS WEEPS at the inaction of church leadership!!!
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 9:15 AM By Paxchristi3
Looks like the church is overdue in launching the 11th Crusades to take back the Catholic universities and clear out the smoke of Satan. It's a shame that these two women would trample religious freedoms and the rights of the unborn to not be slaughtered, including the victims of a modern-day black genocide, in their vile and bigoted attacks against the pro-life, pro-family and pro-religion traditionalists.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 9:16 AM By Barbara
What about Dr. Ray Dennehy, professor of philosophy at USF? Will the real expert on abortion and same-sex marriage please stand up! An expert means nothing if his/her expertise lacks divine truth and defends untruths Once again, shame on USF!
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 9:27 AM By Abeca Christian
This scandal provokes the faithful to act.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 9:57 AM By John
I agree with Paxchristi3 when he said "Looks like the church is overdue in launching the 11th Crusades to take back the Catholic universities and clear out the smoke of Satan". Every day we get one slap on the face. How many slaps before we take action?
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 10:20 AM By arejay
Why aren't the Catholic institutions under the authority of the Bishop?
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 10:26 AM By Canisius
Can there be any doubt that the agents of Darkness are winning, how long Oh Lord, how long???
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 10:31 AM By pete
The Holy Father with a stroke of the pen or a phone call to the Jesuit General Superior can order the latter to sanitize USF. It is obvious that the Provincial will not do anything.
I wonder if the Holy Father realizes what is actually going on.
Lay strategy would be to effectively protest to the Holy See, to get this done. Recourse to the Congregations for Religious life, Education, Religious life and Doctrine are in order. Sending news items as the above are essential.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 10:41 AM By Ski Ven
Is it possible to keep track of all of the scandals that liberals cause?
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 11:10 AM By Canisius
Abeca C: agreed we must act, but how. Personally I think only the Holy See should basically break up the authority of the American Bishops. Even more its time to suppress the Jesuits as they breed dissent as a matter of vocation, and it is not unprecedented to suppress them. Its happened in the past.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 11:12 AM By Wintoon
A lesbian and a radical feminist representing an allegedly Catholic University on the topic of marriage and family? USF is a great candidate to become a state university. Time to show them the door.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 11:15 AM By OneoftheSheep
"The smoke of Satan has entered the church."
And...sheep do not like smoke especially when it comes to obscure the truths of our faith.
USF, clean up your act and stop provoking God with your apostasy.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 12:13 PM By Abeca Christian
Canisius these scandals provoke me to act through more prayer. Sometimes even writing letters of concern. I don't live near by but I wish that there would be a group of faithful to picket their school and warn faithful parents about this schools reputation. Maybe the problem is the not school, it is the liberal people running the school and attending there, I notice when there are more devout faithfuls attending any school, this sort of stuff usually does not last or not happen. Ski Ven, no it is not possible, but scandals provoke something in us all. Even as to push others to lose faith in this church but I guess, the best response to this situation is maybe write letters to the Pope and prayer? I wonder what our Pope would do and does he really receive our concerns regarding these scandals??
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 12:49 PM By WOODY GUIDRY
I'M SICK AND TIRED OF beng sick and tired and unable to do anything about it, THEREFORE, I have taken the cure- which cure is to remind myself that there is PLENTY (enougjh) being done about it-it's just not an overnight healing. Some of the plenty in the area of religion is a Holy Father who somehow has managed to find and promote a Bishop in St. Louis-who knows PLENTY about the clergy problems in our country. Another PLENTY has been the emergence from the straight jacket of ONE PARTY CONTROL in politics in our country. Another PLENTY is the kind of information from our free (well, almost free) press, especially press like the one we see at California Catholic Daily. Yet another refreshing plenty is swizzling in the tea parties' actiivities to remind us of the availablity of freedom of speech. THAT'S APLENTY! I know there's more, but these are enough for me to stop being sick and tired. It is a bonus to read all the comments from PERSEVERING TRADITIONAL CATHOLICS. I think we're all recovering.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 12:49 PM By Anne T.
A well-known and popular Catholic priest who is loyal to the Magesterium has said that some people can be educated into imbecility. The above article is proof. I can just see some of the "educators" sitting around trying to figure out how to convince the uneducated masses that sodomous, homosexual and lesbian behaviors fit in with Natural Law, and how, although life does begin at conception, one is not killing a human being in an abortion. Their imbecility boggles the mind. Even a child can figure out the truth as Jean Staker Garton, the Lutheran author of the book "Who Broke the Baby?", found out. Her sons, aged four and six, accidently saw a picture of an abortion she had on a table, and one or both of them asked her, "Who broke the baby." As I Corinthians 1: 27 - 29 says: "God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise; he singled out the weak of this world to shame the strong. He chose the world's lowborn and despised, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who were something." (NAB version).
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 12:56 PM By Anne T.
A correction: in my last post I should have written: the supposed uneducated masses since the masses to whom I referred are truly the educated ones.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 1:19 PM By Tom in San Jose
Just to echo the sentiments of others, it's amazing how this situation with our "Catholic" universities can persist for so long without strong intervention from the Vatican, not to mention local ordinaries like Archbishop Niederauer. There is a duty to protect the faith and the faithful that is being persistently ignored. Public scandal requires public remedy, and at the end of everything, there will be an accounting.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 1:46 PM By Ski Ven
Anne T., I see similar things in some of the pompous, arrogant, and intellectually elitist blogs on this website.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 2:55 PM By JonJ
As long as USF grants academic freedom with tenure to professors, you can't enforce conformity to Catholic doctrine in even a catholic university. If you don't grant tenure, you won't attract top professors. I doubt the Jesuit order, or even the theology faculty at USF, agree with these law professors' ethical views. Academic freedom and conformity to catholic doctrine are pretty antiethical concepts. I'm not sure that tension will ever be resolved.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 3:09 PM By Anne T.
Amen! Brother Ski Ven. Amen!
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 3:25 PM By Kenneth M. Fisher
WOODY, Another "PLENTY" would be to join CRCOA, Inc. as we prayerfully demonstrate in front of the Mother House of dissent, Los Angeles Religious Education Congress on Mar. 20th from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Congress is from March 18th to the 21st, and we will supply any one who wants to demonstrate on the other days with all the materials they will need. Some of us always demonstrate on the closing Sunday. You can contact CRCOA, Inc. or me through the Anaheim, CA phone book. God bless, yours in Their Hearts, Kenneth M. Fisher
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 6:35 PM By JLS
Do not cast your pearls before swine. Like a dog returning to its vomit. These are the parents who pay for the swill and drivel at the University of Silly Fantasy. Jesus warns, that anyone who harms one of His little ones would be better off with a millstone tied around his neck and dropped into the sea. Jesus said this after some of His disciples tried to keep kids from coming closer to listen.
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 8:43 PM By The Truth Hurts
Dear CCD Editor, In 1997, Pope John Paul II decided that the Internet could use a patron saint to guide Catholics in its proper use. He chose St. Isadore of Seville(560-636), Doctor of the Church, and the Last of the Latin Fathers. His twenty- book opus (called Etymologia, after the subject title of one of the books), made him an easy choice. The word "etymology" was Isadore's own coinage. It means "the study of origins". Today, the term is limited to the history, or origin, of words. Interestingly enough three other words that owe their invention to saints: "utopia" and "integrity" to Saint Thomas Moore and "soliloquy" to St. Augustine. In the year 600, Isadore succeeded his brother, St. Leander, as Bishop of Seville. During this time he devoted himself to every good cause.. His primary achievements were reformation of the clergy, fostering monastic life, educating the faithful after two centuries of barbaric rule under the Goths and extirpating heresies. As bishop, Isadore held many councils in Seville, that not only combated religious errors and clerical disorders, but also helped establish norms for social justice and representative government under the newly converted Visigoth rulers. The school that he established in Seville was one of the best in all Christendom. Studies included Greek and Hebrew(knowledge of which languages had been lost in the West---except in Ireland), the liberal arts, philosophy (it was he who first introduced Aristotle to the West), law and medicine, history, and, of course every branch of theology. Presiding over the historical and national fourth council of Toledo in 433 (all of Spain's Bishops attended) canonical legislation was passed under the old bishop's influence requiring every bishop to establish seminaries in their cathedral cities; these were to be modeled after the school in Seville. Isadore died three years later on the fourth of April at the age of seventy-six. His death day is his feast day. (cont.)
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Posted Monday, February 08, 2010 9:51 PM By The Truth Hurts
CCD Editor, cont. In addition to more than ten books on theology and commentaries on many books of both Old and New testament, the holy bishop wrote a book on science, covering astronomy, geography, and physics, at the request of the Visigoth King Sisebut. For a time, thanks to Isadore, the Hispano-Gothic Kingdom was a united, peaceful and flourishing one. Who would have thought, at the time, that eighty years after the saints death the Iberian Peninsula would be conquered by the Moors with their strange new religion? In the year 688, the fifteenth Council of Toledo paid tribute to St. Isadore with these words: "The extraordinary doctor, the latest ornament of the Catholic Church, the most learned man of the latter ages, always to be named with reverence, Isadore." Prayer to St. Isadore before logging on to the Internet. "Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thy image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful. especially in the divine person of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of St. Isadore, bishop and doctor, during our journeys through the INTERNET we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to thee with charity and patience all souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. CCD Editor , You have done such a fine job in gathering a family of Catholics from all over who love the faith. How many in this far reaching family would be willing in CCD solidarity to offer just one rosary each Friday for the intercession of St. Isadore to help all of our Catholic Schools and Universities return to their true Catholic origin? How uniting to simply add to any Friday post that one rosary was offered for this very special intention. Surely solidarity in prayer can help point things in the right direction. Thank you for helping us to remain faithful and informed. I value all of your hard work!
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Posted Wednesday, February 10, 2010 7:33 AM By 1abqdad
JonJ - I must respectfully disagree that one can not attract "top" professors without tenure! It is also true that tenure CAN come with exceptions. The problem is that the academic world has become lazy and corrupt as administrators promote increasingly liberal fanatics into positions of power. We now have all kinds of worthless majors whose ONLY prospect for jobs is...you guessed it...teaching!!! What a waste! We need to scale back the number of majors and STOP paying professors to teach worthless subjects! I know that this is NOT PC, but it is truth! Universities used to teach REAL subjects and advance REAL intellectual thought as opposed to the psychobabble now prevalent at most schools!
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Posted Wednesday, February 10, 2010 11:20 AM By Ski Ven
I am glad I am not "educated".
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Posted Wednesday, February 10, 2010 1:16 PM By JLS
Ski Ven, my third year of Univ of Calif which was a deepening relationship with partying out, one freshman told me that he was sick of college. This guy was bright enough for admission to the university, and he told me that he could make better money as a big rig mechanic and not have to kill himself with the party scene. I understood what he was telling me. Sometimes you have those gut feelings by which you know something is right ... that was one of those moments. It took me years at least to learn how to go with my gut.
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Posted Wednesday, February 10, 2010 1:51 PM By Ski Ven
Big rig mechanic--that's not an easy job. I know someone who quit because he couldn't see himself continuing to do that when he gets older. It didn't help when they didn't pay him too well, either. Maybe they don't pay them as well as they used to. Regardless, I respect people who are up to the challenge of doing difficult work.
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Posted Wednesday, February 10, 2010 2:26 PM By JLS
Nuther thing 'bout college and actual education: About six years into my undergraduate studies I, with full beard, was hitchhiking out of town one fine afternoon, when a new MB open top coupe pulled over to give me a lift. The driver was none other than a tenured professor of English (formal writing), who had threatened to drop a paper grade from D- to F is I didn't shape up fast instead of complaining. You won't believe this but his name was Harsh, and his 400 page doctoral dissertation was on the gerund. His advice to me, "If you really want to write well with some individual, artistic perspective, then get away from the university; they'll corrupt you if you don't". He was telling me that the place to find the truth was not in a university. Another professor who had tried to get me as his graduate student smirked at me one day, saying, "You can't be serious about searching for the truth".
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Posted Thursday, February 11, 2010 10:47 AM By Anne T.
1Abqdad, if a student is accepted into a state university, they can quite often go to a smaller or junior college during their freshman and sophomore years to take classes that can be actually applied toward their degree, thus avoiding most or all of the radical or usless classes that one would have to take at a university during one's freshman and sophomore years. Otherwise, it is my understanding that young men and women are often required to take classes which are useless toward their degree.
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Posted Friday, February 12, 2010 1:03 AM By J.NormanSayles
We should all know by now that any thing can be expected to come from inSANe FRANCISCO,CA ! Considering the general decline in the Society of Jesus in recent years, San Francisco is as good a place as any for it to go over the edge. Frisco is a bone yard filled with the skeletons of once-living souls. Add that of the Jebs. A Prodigal Son
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Posted Friday, February 12, 2010 1:05 AM By J.NormanSayles
We should all know by now that any thing can be expected to come from inSANe FRANCISCO,CA ! Considering the general decline in the Society of Jesus in recent years, San Francisco is as good a place as any for it to go over the edge. Frisco is a bone yard filled with the skeletons of once-living souls. Add that of the Jebs. A Prodigal Son
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Posted Friday, February 12, 2010 9:03 AM By Anne T.
I meant to add that they could tranfer those credits over to a university afterward.
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Posted Friday, February 12, 2010 5:29 PM By JonJ
1abqdad, I chose another path, but had I become a universtiy biology researcher, I wouldn't have chosen to teach at a school with restrictions on tenure. In my undergraduate field, there is a long history of religion refusing to accept darwinian analysis and evolutionary theory. What if you were an astronomy researcher in the 16th century? Would you have accepted Church based restrictions on teaching the nature of the solar system? There is a long track record of religious leaders misinterpreting religious truth and applying it to the physical universe in unsound and inaccurate ways. I doubt many top researchers would accept such restrictions.
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Posted Friday, February 12, 2010 7:26 PM By JLS
These two photos do not look like gargoyles, but they do look like trolls.
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Posted Monday, February 15, 2010 11:19 PM By Abeca Christian
JLS LOL gotta love your good sense of humor. LOL
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Posted Tuesday, February 16, 2010 6:21 AM By JLS
JonJ, you're not making an elementary error are you, in implying that since the Church leaders sometimes turn a cold shoulder to material science then Darwinian analysis is therefore true?
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Posted Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:59 PM By Abeca Christian
JonJ you are here for a reason, take it as a sign. Why else would a non-Catholic person come on here? Now really, you are here for a reason, I hope you can see the error of your ways and see clarity. I often wonder how some people that are not Catholic end up on this website? Perhaps it is to find truth within these posts, perhaps they have a "cause" to carry out, to protest something? To seek out? Catholic or not in person they may be. Some posts are heretical, most are not....but the truth still shines through. Perhaps some will see the truth. Glasses? Anyone have glasses for JonJ?
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