“Catholic chaplain resigns over email responding to Floyd killing” (the Tech):
Rev. Daniel Moloney, MIT’s Catholic chaplain, resigned June 9, according to a statement by the Archdiocese of Boston. The Archdiocese asked the chaplain to resign after Moloney sent an email to the Tech Catholic Community (TCC) in response to the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests.
Moloney wrote in the email that while Floyd should not have been killed by a police officer, Floyd’s killing was not necessarily “an act of racism.” Moloney added that “people have claimed that racism” is a “major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.” He wrote that the police officer had “acted wrongly” and that “it is right that he has been arrested and will be prosecuted.”
Moloney also wrote that Floyd “had not lived a virtuous life,” stating that Floyd had committed sins, “but we do not kill such people” and instead “root for sinners to change their lives and convert to the Gospel.”
Suzy Nelson, vice president and dean for student life, wrote in an email to student and faculty leaders June 12 that MIT senior leaders and the Bias Response Team had received reports about Moloney’s email. Nelson wrote that Moloney’s message “contradicted the Institute’s values” and “was deeply disturbing.”
According to Nelson’s email, all MIT chaplains sign the Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life’s “Relationship with Affiliated Organizations and Representatives” agreement, which states that chaplains should demonstrate “respect for the dignity and worth of all people and a sensitivity to the beliefs and cultural commitments of others” and that “actions or statements that diminish the value of individuals or groups of people are prohibited.” Nelson wrote that Moloney’s email did not “live up to these expectations.”
We still have the First Amendment, sort of (not the right for healthy young people to assemble, for example). Is it fair to say that, from a functional perspective, we still have the First Amendment right to freedom of religion in the same sense as subjects of the Roman Empire? Conquered people could keep their religion and continue to worship their gods so long as they also respected and worships the Roman gods. Maybe this is why almost every nominally Christian church in Massachusetts has a BLM banner and a rainbow flag.
Related:
- “Religious Tolerance and Persecution in the Roman Empire”
- Religious freedom in the Mongol empire (actual freedom!)
- AerialBoston (Tony took the above photo from one of our flight school’s helicopters)
This is pretty gross.
People should read what he actually said, verbatim
https://newbostonpost.com/2020/06/19/heres-what-the-m-i-t-catholic-chaplain-got-fired-over/
Commentary from the Catholic World Report:
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/06/20/crucify-him-the-will-of-the-mob-and-fr-daniel-moloney/
“Fr. Daniel Moloney is one of the finest priests I know and one of the most erudite. I have been honored to work with him in my capacity as Director of Book Publishing at the Augustine Institute because he is the author of Mercy: What Every Catholic Should Know, which is a fine and orthodox exposition of the virtue of mercy, without which justice is impossible. It was ironic, therefore, that Fr. Moloney was shown neither mercy nor justice when he was forced to resign from his position as Catholic chaplain at MIT for daring to suggest that we should keep our heads in the wake of the death of George Floyd, allowing reason and love to make sense of what really happened during his tragic arrest in Minneapolis.”
But read the rest. Moloney didn’t devalue or disparage anyone. He spoke as a chaplain who was attempting to place all the events in perspective, including those of the people he knew in Boston, both supportive of the protests and not. Of course, there is more than one perspective, and his is necessarily incomplete, but in no way did he disparage anyone.
” It is in the uttering of the following words that he would have committed the greatest crime in the eyes of the ideological ethno-masochists:
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism. I don’t think we know that. Many people have claimed that racism is a major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.
It is this statement which incited the lynch-mob to descend on Fr. Moloney. In the eyes of the mob, such statements are not merely “deeply disturbing” and ”wrong”, they are deeply heretical.”
Comrades, when there’s a person, there’s a problem. When there’s no person, there’s no problem.
It is Catholic doctrine that Satan and the angels and devils are as real as you or I. Hegel certainly believed that spirits drove our material world. As a student of Hegel, Marx accepted unseen forces as the driving force behind society, and explained them through dialectic materialism.
Let us consider MIT as a bastion of capitalism. Let us consider MIT as anti-Christian.
Satan is alive and thriving in Cambridge. He was welcomed in through the front door.
Never resign make them fire you.
MIT same as all other colleges has no credibility left for anything. When wokeness comes first you can’t have learning or science or intellectualness whatever that was.
These schools are all going broke soon anyway so it doesn’t really matter.
The Archdiocese asked the chaplain to resign
The lesson here is that a Catholic priest doesn’t have freedom of religion. If, for example, a priest were to convert to Zoroastrianism and start preaching its tenets at Sunday mass, he would also be asked to resign. It shouldn’t be necessary to point this out, but that has nothing to do with the first amendment.
The priest was obligated to obey, but the consensus of Catholic opinion I have seen online is that the Archdiocese of Boston threw the priest under the bus, and nobody is going to forget it.
The article at Catholic World Report to which Alex linked is an outstanding analysis.
Thank you. The comments are well worth reading also, which is unusual in the world we currently find ourselves in. Particularly this link:
https://medium.com/@gavrilodavid/why-derek-chauvin-may-get-off-his-murder-charge-2e2ad8d0911
How many people in this country have even bothered to look through their anger and hatred and consider the fact that George Floyd condition was highly unusual and dangerous before he even tried to pass the counterfeit $20? He was seriously impaired and high on a cocktail of substances that could very well have resulted in him dropping dead all by itself. I haven’t seen anyone in a major news organization even make the attempt. It’s a profound abrogation of their ethics.
He who does not cry out the truth when he knows the truth becomes the accomplice of the liars and falsifiers.
The track is part of Steinbrenner Stadium, which was named after the grandfather of the current owner.
current owner of the New York Yankees, that is.
From https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/07/02/credit-to-the-man/ :
Credit to the Man
Elizabeth A. Mitchell
THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2020
We live in a “gotcha” culture. Before we act, we second guess how our actions will be perceived. In a climate in which a misstep can end a career, or incite irreversible violence, we weigh our words, and self-edit our thoughts. We weigh the cost of failure and decide to act or to remain passive, often based on our chances of success or of approval. Approval by the dominant powers, it seems, is no longer the potential result, but a mandatory pre-condition, of our actions today.
And that’s the truth. The psychological effects are very important, and in fact I think they’re the most crucial. It’s a long way beyond ordinary cautiousness or care that people normally exhibit in their daily and professional lives. It’s supposed to make you *afraid of yourself*. The constant and pervasive dread that you’re doing something wrong, that you have already done something wrong, or that you harbor thoughts and ideas that are damaging and illicit. It’s shockingly easy to instill that fear in a lot of people, and once it’s there, it’s very difficult to get rid of.