America Magazine, the flagship publication of the Society of Jesus in the United States, joins atheists and liberal elites in celebrating NFL star kicker Harrison Butker’s conservative Catholic-themed graduation ceremony at Benedictine College. He gave a passionate speech.
Zach Davis, Deputy Editor America, I have written It said Butker’s speech sounded like the result of an “overarching ideology,” which explains why “gender roles, COVID-19 policy, liturgical preferences and abortion should all fall under the coherent theme of a commencement speech.”
Davis argued that Butker’s ideology goes beyond legitimate conservative/liberal differences and falls into the kind of backward-looking sectarianism “that Pope Francis has repeatedly warned about throughout his papacy.”
In this era of church life, there is a trend “not to go up or down, but to go backwards,” Davis wrote, quoting Pope Francis. “This backwardness makes us sectarian. It closes you off, blocks your vision.”
Full text: https://t.co/fbke5IMLHk
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Davis joined the Associated Press in using his article to criticize Benedict College itself, a small, conservative liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas.
“Benedict College was recently featured in an Associated Press report with the headline ‘A Step Forward: Catholic Church in America Sees Major Change to Old Ways,'” Davis noted.
Among the Benedictine churches, “Catholic contraception teachings may slip into Plato’s classes, and no one would be surprised if they volunteered to attend 3 a.m. prayers,” Davis quoted from the Associated Press. “Pornography, premarital sex and sunbathing in swimsuits are forbidden.”
Perhaps this is why Butker’s speech was not well received outside the “Benedictine bubble,” Davis argued.
As Catholic League President Bill Donahue ObservedWhile people like Whoopi Goldberg and Bill Maher defend Harrison Butker, America criticize him. ”
America But the magazine was not the only religious media outlet to criticize Butker’s speech.
“He doesn’t become a monster just because he expresses what he believes.” https://t.co/SONa1dcYy9
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Tyler Huckabee, writing for the progressive Religion News Service, struck a similar tone, calling Butker an “aggressive Christian” and saying the underlying theme of his commencement speech was “we have to take back culture for cool, tough guys like me.”
“This type of Christian needs the whole woman to feel called by God and completely fulfilled in raising children,” Huckabee writes. “That way a man can get a cool, cool job and not feel like he’s forcing his wife into a life of unfulfilling labor at home.”
Butker said “it has to be true” that his wife loves being a wife and mother more than anything in the world, because if that’s not true, and if the wife has “professional dreams and ambitions that she’s putting aside” for her husband’s football career — “then he’s really stupid,” Huckabee argued.
Mr. Huckabee suggested that Mr. Butker was “raised with strange ideas about gender and culture wars” and was “blaming feminism and overworked women” for our culture’s problems.
As Bill Donahue concludes in his essay on the subject, liberal Catholics seem to have more in common with “Catholic haters” than their conservative counterparts.
