Many of us see it for what it is--- evidence of moral decay within the church.
We recognize it, because we've seen it many times before. A good example of this, we've all witnessed with various educational institutions. Almost all of them were originally founded on solid Christian principles. Harvard, named after a Christian minister, and Yale -founded by a clergyman, were Puritan. Princeton was Prebyterian. It's Latin motto still proclaims- “Dei sub numine viget,” -Under God, she flourishes. At that's only going back two, or three hundred years, where it was churches who started religious schools for theological study.
Looking beyond our own borders- schools like Cambridge is some 500 years older, and was also established by Christian leaders. St Andrew's- Scotland's oldest university, began as a theological seminary. But these places are no longer recognizable. The drift away from the principles and values they were founded upon began first as an effort to stop being so exclusionary, then- to become more inclusive, then to become less discriminating, then to be more accepting--- ultimately, the end result is, they've all become much "less" than they once were. None of them are better. "Progressive" has made them progressively worse.
Similarly, Catholic Universities have followed an identical path, albeit at a slower pace in some instances, but a closer analogy might be that while the afore-mentioned schools have trod down a slippery slope, Catholic schools have jumped right off a cliff. Schools once established by Dominican Friars, like Providence, or by Jesuit Priests, like Georgetown-- are no longer distinct or different than secular institutions. They've adopted the same soup-of-the-day curriculum as those secular counterparts, hosting departments of gender studies, black studies, ethnic studies, and gay and lesbian studies, social justice, equity and even-- if you can believe it-- something called Reproductive Justice, which is semantics for abortion. You might remember Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who became a celebrity in promoting Obama's Affordable Care Act and it's contraceptive mandate, was president of Georgetown’s chapter of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. This is a Catholic institution, training future attorneys. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
So no. Sorry Mr Pope. I'm not going to let you play theological twister and allow semantic differences to dictate the meaning you wish to impose. I'll call BS when I see BS. I've seen this movie before.
