Worcester, Mass., Apr 11, 2022 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
Students, staff, and alumni at the College of the Holy Cross are petitioning the administration to disinvite Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester from attending this year’s graduation ceremony because they say his request of a local Catholic school to cease flying gay pride and Black Lives Matter flags are “antithetical to the ideals, values, and mission” of the college.
A spokesman for the Diocese of Worcester, Ray Delisle, told CNA that Bishop McManus communicated to the school’s president, Vincent Rougeau, that he would not be attending commencement this year.
Delisle did not respond to CNA’s inquiry whether the bishop’s decision to not attend was in response to the petition. McManus turned down invitations to attend commencement at Holy Cross in both 2018 and 2019 according to the Telegram & Gazette. McManus didn’t attend in 2020 or 2021 either.
Delisle told CNA that McManus was not open to interviews on the matter because after communicating to Rougeau that he wouldn’t be attending, McManus “wanted to leave it at that.”
The petition says, “In contrast to our values, the Bishop has insisted that Nativity School remove Black Lives Matter and Pride flags from their campus or face the consequence of losing the school’s Catholic identity. Unfortunately, the Bishop’s statements demonstrate ignorant and bigoted sentiments which fail to align with the long-held values that guide our community.”
The petition continues: “As a community that welcomes members of every gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, we find it inappropriate to have Bishop McManus present at this year’s graduation ceremony for the Class of 2022 and thus request that he be disinvited from attendance.”
When asked if the college agrees with the student-led petition to disinvite McManus from graduation, Holy Cross said: “Bishop McManus has communicated to President Rougeau that he will not be attending commencement. More importantly, the president wants to emphasize that the Nativity School and its students remain central to this story.”
“Our two institutions’ histories are enduringly linked, and we are both proud to serve the people, city and diocese of Worcester. As Jesuit, Catholic institutions, we also share similar values – a founding commitment to the needs and dignity of the less fortunate; and a belief in the worth of each person made in the image and likeness of God.
“Our work embracing racial healing and seeking justice for the marginalized in our communities is centered on these values – which themselves are at the heart of the Gospel.”
Executive Director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, C.J. Doyle, told CNA that the petition “opens a whole new dimension in the concept of chutzpah.”
“Persons holding leadership positions in a Catholic institution — while openly opposing Catholic beliefs — actually believe themselves entitled to publicly rebuke the local bishop for affirming what Catholics have always believed,” he said. “The audacity is astonishing.”
“This petition makes clear that large numbers of those who work, teach or study at Holy Cross are post-Christian, bourgeois cultural conformists, subservient to elite secular opinion, who believe that Catholicism must be marginalized in a nominally Catholic institution. In other words, they are obstinate heretics,” he added.
Nativity School of Worcester, a Jesuit-run middle school with 61 boys in attendance, has been flying gay pride and Black Lives Matter flags underneath the American flag for over a year.
When McManus, the local ordinary, learned about them in March, he asked the school to stop flying them, which they refused.
Delisle told CNA last week that Nativity could lose its Catholic designation if it ignores the bishop’s call to cease flying the flags.
In an April 3 statement, McManus expressed concerns that the flags could lead to confusion about the Catholic Church’s teaching on civil authority and gay marriage.
While noting that “symbols can mean different things to different people,” McManus said that “as the Bishop of this diocese, I must teach that it is imperative that a Catholic School use imagery and symbols which are reflective of that school’s values and principles so as to be clear with young people who are being spiritually and morally formed for the future.”
“While our role in a school is not to convert those who are not Catholic, nor is it our role to deny our Catholic identity,” he added.
“While the Catholic Church joins with our nation in teaching that all lives are equal before God and the law and that all lives demand our respect regardless of race, gender or ethnicity, the flag with the emblem Black Lives Matter has at times been co-opted by some factions which also instill broad-brush distrust of police and those entrusted with enforcing our laws.
“We do not teach that in our schools,” McManus said.
“And, while we teach that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God, gay pride flags are often used to stand in contrast to consistent Catholic teaching that sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman,” the bishop continued.
“Is the school committing itself to ideologies which are contrary to Catholic teaching? If so, is it still a Catholic school?”
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Holy Cross College should rebrand itself as the the woke and gender-theory Collage of the Holy Polyhedron of Whorechester, and exhibit itself as neither a Catholic nor an educational institution.
Jesuits continue to rake in the big bucks to support their well known and very comfortable ‘lifestyle’. Yup.
Well it is one thing to “welcome members of” alternative “sexual orientation” and quite another to celebrate homosexuality, which is what is betokened by electing to display that particular flag. Likewise it is one thing to show respect for Black people, which population has not always been accorded the respect they deserve, and quite another to celebrate a particular organization that is dishonest, fallaciously predicated, racist and violent. I’m so glad I did not send my children to Holy Cross – or any other Catholic University – which had been among my top choices when they were looking. They would have emerged stupider and less Catholic than they were when they went in.
CINO – Holy Cross, BC, Notre Dame, Gonzaga – the list goes on and on.
And on
Youdidn’taskmebut – No we’re not related, although I would be proud to say we are.
Bishop McManus’s request is “antithetical to the ideals, values and mission” of Holy Cross College?
Do these folks have any but the most superficial understanding of the “ideals, values and mission” represented by the BLM and Gay Pride flags?
Great job, students! Like all denominations, there is a radical fringe that needs to be excised because it never actually espouses the views or morality of the denomination, but for some reason never is. You have radical Jews destroying Israel, a few radical Muslims creating a global fear of Muslims, and Opus Dei-type Catholics harming our country rather than being bridges to reconciliation. I am so disappointed in them, but not in you!
Keep fighting for the true values of Jesus, which we see too little of these days.
The bishop is quoted as saying “gay pride flags are often used to stand in contrast to consistent Catholic teaching that SACRAMENTAL MARRIAGE is between a man and a woman.[emphasis added]
The bishop is fully mistaken or disingenuous. No gay rights group ever said they want the government to give them SACRAMENTAL marriage. And since the catechism teaches that G&L persons are to be treated with respect, compassion, acceptance and sensitivity, and that all signs of discrimination must be avoided, it seems that a school flying the rainbow flag is closer to written doctrine than the bishop’s actions.
2358 [Homosexuals] must be ACCEPTED with RESPECT, COMPASSION, and SENSITIVITY. EVERY SIGN of UNJUST DISCRIMINATION in their regard SHOULD BE AVOIDED.
The use of the modifier “unjust” in “unjust discrimination” implies that there can sometimes be legitimate, i.e. “just”, discrimination, such as that based on those openly living lifestyles centered around or including the act of sodomy, which remains a profoundly evil mis-use of the human body. Otherwise the Catechism could have just said “every sign of discrimination…should be avoided”. They didn’t, instead adding the modifier “unjust”. Words have purposes, and including the word “unjust” in that sentence has import that many would like to overlook.
Well the young airheads apparently lack a sufficient sense of irony, or minimal human decency, to recognize the crimes against humanity, particularly towards the unborn promoted, by the degenerate ideologies of Black Lives Matter and the entire Gay movement, so it is quite appropriate that a bishop not disgrace his office by attending the disgraceful event of granting degrees to these profound fools aiding and abetting crimes against humanity as their first actions in applying their “education” in the real world.