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John Boehner, Commencement Speaker at Catholic U., Draws Fire From Catholic Academics

May 11, 2011, 2:39 pm

The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, John A. Boehner of Ohio, is scheduled to give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree at the Catholic University of America on Saturday. In advance of his speech, more than 75 Catholic academics have sent Mr. Boehner, who is Catholic, a strongly worded letter that says his record in Congress strays from one of the Roman Catholic Church’s core teachings, preferential treatment of the poor, according to the National Catholic Reporter. Welcoming a politician to speak and be honored at a Catholic college’s graduation can be fraught, as the University of Notre Dame learned when it invited President Obama in 2009.

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  • akprof

    Catholic or non-Catholic – I wouldn’t want to listen to him.

  • http://twitter.com/jvward John Ward

    This is understandably payback for the times that conservative Catholics have objected to pro-abortion speakers. However, it does not logically follow that big government programs run by a huge, inefficient, and costly social welfare establishment is the best way to serve the poor. Jesus asked each of us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted, etc. He didn’t command us to send our tax dollars to fund some permanent bureaucracy that would do this service for us. Professors at a Catholic university need to understand and acknowledge the difference between Church Doctrine and progressive policy preferences.

  • skocpol

    It is about time for the Catholic Church to pay attention to its broader teachings, and stop having celibate men devoting all their energies to encouraging procreation.

  • 22108469

    It should be fairly obvious to any alert individual that the apparent need for a social welfare bureaucracy is driven by the fact that “Christians” haven’t been following one of the prime teachings of Jesus: to take care of the poor, the sick, the elderly, etc. Parishes of old, in England, for example, tried and failed to care for the poor, who would then wander to the next parish, hoping the gentry there would be more generous. When the generosity wasn’t forthcoming, there came workhouses, transportation, and a welfare state.

  • 11142568

    I have been a committed and practising RC for all of my 72 years. I must confess the notion that Boehner is not committed to the “core teachings” does not much move me since by and large the reactionaries have captured my church. Mostly I blush when I hear those who supposedly represent the official party line of my church. I do think we have to get serious about reigning in the budgetary deficits (much caused by the Bush tax cuts to the rich and the necessary deficit spending to get out of a terrible recession – caused by reckless speculation by financial institutions that should have known better) but the ideas the Republicans have laid on the table are not the answer. We need to move more in the direction of the deficit commission that reported last summer and in the direction the “Gang of Six” is going to bring forward (they need to hurry up while there is still a possible window of opportunity). In short, I think Boehner’s positions are, in large part, despicable. But as a professor for 49 years, I don’t think the idea of not giving people honorary degrees because you hate their political views is a good one. We are citizens of a still excellent republic with universal suffrage. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, however abhorrent his views, is an honorable magistrate of the republic. It is good to honor people of such rank, and to listen politely to what they have to say. Boehner at least is helping to tame down the really crazy people in his party who are very scary. Peter H Baker Marymount Manhattan

  • jcisneros

    I must admit, it is lovely to see this guy squirm. But Peter Baker does have a point, he is somewhat moderating the crazies in his caucus. For that, it would be worth it to be bored to tears listening to him babble incessantly about whatever poses as a conservative agenda on that particular day.

    ~J

  • _perplexed_

    Teach me: What has Speaker Boehner done “to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted, etc”.

  • 11319762

    It would certainly be informative to see who else these self-selected 75 have objected to speaking on Catholic campuses or receiving degrees from them. Mr. Boehner is an alumnus of a fine Jesuit, Catholic university and has certainly been a success story.

    The Roman Catholic Church has NO core teachings regarding the spending of government bureaucracies that consume 87 cents of every dollar of social spending on administrative costs, such as those of the USA. But rather, the Church places obligations on individuals to care for their fellow women and men.

    One need only read Arthur Brooks’ “Who Really Cares” to see who is living up to that mandate. The Left is notoriously frugal when it comes to benefaction, while the Right is quite generous.

    Would Vice President Biden have been a better choice? He gave $4820 to charity on income of $330,000 last year, and receives housing in a mansion and all of his transportation costs covered. Does that meet “core teachings on the preferential treatment of the poor” better than Mr. Boehner?

  • fizmath

    I have not heard any priest encourage procreation in his homily/sermon at Mass. Have you heard them encourage this or are you just making this up?

  • 11245928

    Those who criticize Mr. Boehner should engage in self examination regarding their actions in regard to feeding the hungry, etc. We all should, and hopefully Mr. Boehner has done so as well.

  • willynilly

    Did you attend a Catholic elementary, or secondary school as well as a Catholic college? Well I did, and I can firmly attest that procreation was stressed and stressed and stressed over and over, not only by priests but by nuns as well. So there is your origin – and it is not made up. It was a real life experience.

  • happyprof

    Do the employees at DC tanning salons count as poor? If so, he’s been keeping them afloat for years.

    Oh wait, he swears that he doesn’t use artificial tanning. The orange glow is natural. :P

  • rickinchina09

    Despite most of the sanctimony registered in response to this newsbrief, it might be reasonably and fairly argued that perpetuation of the welfare state by liberals is ultimately the greatest disservice to the poor.

  • chandrak

    Whenever universities invite someone, always, some people have problems with that speaker. John A. Boehner is not liked by some. What difference does it make if 75 Catholic academics criticize the speaker. I don’t pay much attention.

  • panthernation

    Lots of stats and no cites. Interesting. Where do you get the 87 cents on the dollar figure? And, what does it include? I don’t think Medicare or Social Security spend 87 cents on the dollar for administration. Pardon my skepticism and lack of trust. I am just wondering if this number is like the data on Planned Parenthood abortion services.

    Those on the conservative side just seem to say things using numbers that are not intended to be facutal statements. Some of us (like me) have not yet caught on to this new way of public advocacy where numbers are invented out of thin air as a way to make a point.

  • panthernation

    And, it might be argued that the perpetuation of the welfare state by liberals is ultimately the greatest service to the poor. Just because something “might be argued” does not make it so. For instance, “it might be reasonablye and fairly argued” that Osama bin Laden is alive.
    In this case, sanctimony seems to be a two way street.

  • unemployedacademic

    Yes, panthernation, conservatives have long been making stuff up — “creating their own reality” I think Rove calls it. Social Security’s administrative expenses have never topped 3% of the program’s total expenditures and are now less than 1% (http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html). Medicare comes in only a bit higher. Conservatives give more to charities for things like slapping their names on snobbish art galleries. Their “charities” are generally the kind that help their social standing, while leftists tend to support the much more effective government programs to alleviate poverty.

  • jffoster

    What makes you think he’s squirming? Just because liberal professors don’t like his policies? Somehow, I doubt he’s squirming at all.

  • feudipandola

    If President Obama can invite Common to give a “poetry reading” praising cop killers at the White House, then I have no problem with John Boehner as the commencement speaker at Catholic University. This is, after all, America.

  • vistabear

    Is Boehner going to cry if he doesn’t get the honorary degree? Poor isn’t in his vocabulary so no help is in sight.

  • Socratease2

    I don’t know why 9 people have expressed a “like” to the above comment, you have said nothing to like or dislike. If “it might be reasonably and fairly argued” whatever nonsense you are proposing then give the reasonable argument. Do you actually have one? Are we supposed to guess?

  • panthernation

    One of the other big locations of conservative giving is churches. I belong to a church and give to it (despite being a “leftist”). However, the percentage of giving to churches that goes to paying the salaries of the church staff is pretty large. I don’t know if it is 87% or not, but when the reports on conservative giving come out, the category I always check is church or religious giving. Many churches see less than 10% of their budget go to mission work (defined broadly as service to non-church going people.)

  • panthernation

    Ummm…you may want to watch John Stewart’s riff on this one. It is pretty devastating. (Oh…maybe watching a little less of the GOP talking points without using critical thinking as well.)

  • feudipandola

    Ummm…panthernation, I only watch sports and CSPAN on TV. The next time I watch Jon Stewart will be the first time, and I voted for President Obama and hope to do so again. That doesn’t mean I support raising the doggerel of Common to the leve of “poetry” as Michelle Obama did last night. She breeched absurdity today when she defended Common’s artistry by obliquely comparing the works of Common to those of William Shakespeare. Maybe she was confused with Will I Am?

  • http://twitter.com/jvward John Ward

    _perplexed_, the very tone of your reply seems to indicate that you judge someone entirely by the public policy stances that they take, rather than any private acts that they might perform. Brushing up on 6 Matthew might do you some good, though I get the sense you would rather sit in the back of the room and throw spitballs than really debate the issue of what our public obligations are versus our private ones.

    I have a feeling that you are one of those progressives who really belives that paying a 27% rate on income taxes rather than a 25% rate somehow counts as fulfilling your obligation to the less fortunate. Better yet, we can get the rich to up thier contribution from 36% to 39%, and we can leave our tax rate where it currently stands. That way we don’t have to be bothered with it at all. It’s a shame that modern progressivism seems to have devolved to this.

  • mush9902

    Well it’s just that you should watch the clip (or look up the lyrics for yourself) to illustrate that the sections quoted about “cop killing” are found later in the lyrics to be examples of what you should not do. It seems like that should matter.
    Also, it would seem a little ridiculous to be complaining about beauracracy (and the abuse of authority) in reference to government, when comparing it to the Catholic Church. 

  • feudipandola

    Just a quick follow.  The woman praised by Common is still wanted by the FBI. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/dt/joanne-deborah-chesimard

    One of Common’s “poems” gives moral support for Wesley Cook, AKA, Mumia Abu Jamal.  The President and First Lady invite whomever they want to the People’s House.As a young man, I was appalled when Reagan invited Frank Sinatra and I am Italian American.  But c’mon man.  Sinatra could, at least, sing and entertain. I don’t think he did any songs praising convicted cop killers that night.  I think there was a PR screw up at the White House but it wasn’t enough of a big deal to piss off Michelle Obama by asking her to cancel Common’s invite.   

  • feudipandola

    Well, Mr. Boehner did indeed cry.  In buckets!  Bawling like a baby!  It was sort of refreshing to see.  He’s such an emotional guy.  You don’t often see that level of emotion in any public figure. 

  • jpwilkin

    Thanks for the coverage of this important issue.  Our institutions are enthusiastic about this initiative to provide lawful access to digitized copies of in-copyright works held in print by our institutions.  The headline (“… to publish orphan books online”) unfortunately implies something different from what HathiTrust partners are doing.  While “publishing” books generally implies selling works or making a work generally available, the books in question were all published and purchased by the partner libraries many years ago.  Each use will be made by an authenticated user of a partner institution that purchased a given work and added that work to its collection.  Both the nature of the use and the means by which we make the works available are important attributes of this careful effort.  Making fair uses of books in our collections?  Most certainly.  Publishing them?  Absolutely not.
    John Wilkin, Executive Director, HathiTrust

  • d_fevens

    Thank you for the clarification John, for a minute there I thought we could add these universities  to the previous Wired Campus article
    New Site Brazenly Trades Pirated E-Textbooks
    .   Oh, wait a minute, these universities obtained their digital copies from Google as payment for supplying it with the copyrighted works that they are making commercial use of. I guess it is like students who use pirated copies of their textbooks, they didn’t do the copying, so they are doing nothing wrong, right?

    Douglas Fevens
    The University of Wisconsin, Google, & Me

  • mbelvadi

    Congress needs to take legislative action to resolve the orphan works problem.  Then everyone can stop arguing about what is legal and illegal.

  • nsteiger

    I would imagine that the key difficulty might be how “copyright holders cannot be found to ask for permission” is defined.

  • Guest

    Expecting the majority of men and women in this present Congress to Legislate equitably with liberty and justice for all is the same as expecting the fox in the henhouse not to kill and eat the chickens. Today’s ambitious politician is more of a political animal than a human being.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Randall-Frank/589059031 Randall Frank

    To compare this effort to Pirated E-Textbooks is ludicrous.  With pirated E-Textbooks one is competing with an actively sold and marketed product and is depriving a known copyright holder of income that they would otherwise receive.  Almost by definition orphaned works are out of print where there is no way where one could purchase the product even if one wanted to.  Copyright (and patents) have always had their constitutional origins in a balance between the interests of society and the rights holder.  This seems to be a totally reasonable solution where after due diligence the rights holder can’t even be identified and where any harm done can be easily rectified if the rights holder does eventually come forward.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JVFS5TTSIGR4CM2W43QTVKWDQI SilasMarner

    To hoard is worse than to steal.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/John-Finn/100001859196972 John Finn

    Interesting initiative.

  • walkerst

    Actually, the libraries must simply show that they have made a ‘good faith effort’ to locate copyright holders.  What a good faith effort is has been subject to question, and sometimes people have felt that a good faith effort was not made, but if the libraries can point to letters and records of inquiries or attempts to trace what happened to original publishers that might have held the copyright, they would probably be safe.  If copyright holders turn up, the libraries would have to take down the work or license it appropriately.

  • 22113683

    Actually, the definition of that situation is spelled out, although I can’t find it at the moment . The point is the need to make a good faith effort, first by consulting the records in the Copyright Office to find if there is a current owner of the right you want to use (presumeablyhere the right to copy); and then use every reasonable effort to find that owner.  Anything published in the US before 1923 is in the Public Domain. For works published from 1923-1963, if the copyright was not renewed the work passed into public domain (and only about 5% of copyrigts were renewed). For everything published after 1964, renewal was automatic.  If you can document the efforts you’ve nade, then if the owner comes along and asserts her rights, you’ll be an “innocent infringer,” although you’ll have to buy a license or take down the book.

    No, I’m not an attorney and I do not give legal advice.  But I teach this stuff in Music Business classes.

  • jschneider11

    Perhaps this will move us all closer to a resolution of the orphan works problem while also making important scholarship accessible.  

  • http://twitter.com/ajitmahadevan Ajit Mahadevan

    While we reflect upon the “power of one” – Steve Job’s immense contribution to the world of innovation and making a successful company on the back of it let us not forget that he did it only because of the “power of many”. Let’s not overestimate the impact of one – certainly to education. I had written some thoughts on the power of many a few months ago when he had announced he was stepping down… here goes. http://ajitmahadevan.blogspot.com/2011/01/power-of-many.html

  • rwejd

    Pundits should not lose sight of the fact that Steve Jobs, along with thousands of some of the best developers and marketers on earth have created a CULTURE at Apple. Education, creative agency work (film, audio, desktop publishing, etc.), convenience, ease-of-use, first-rate hardware, etc. are embedded in Apple’s DNA. It’s fun to speculate, and certainly some things will change with Mr. Jobs stepping down from the helm, but Apple will continue to grow – and grow successfully – because of the very specific culture of end-used value that has been part of Apple’s DNA, since the beginning.

    There was a time when Mr. Jobs was not with the company, and it went astray under leadership that was not able to forge a culture. Apple, at that time, was still in its formative years, groping for a sustainable identity. When Steve Jobs returned, he set about specifically crafting a corporate culture that could sustain itself. This may be perhaps his largest accomplishment.

    Much to its competitor’s chagrin, we have only seen the beginning of what Apple is capable of; it’s a world-changing company, on a par with the greatest in that particular class, worldwide.

  • translog

    An innovator like Steve Jobs spurs the incubation of ideas on the campus. I do implement the GREEN Campus ideas that flow across the learning community. iFUN (Intelligent Friends in the University Network) is dedicated to growing GREEN professionals in the new curriculum on Sustainability at all levels. Educators have lost a role model for the development of new insights in a teachnology bound world. We wish that Apple sucessor Tim Cook will sustain this interllectual effervescence on technolgy application with conviction and commitment.

  • dank48

    “Mr. Jobs has long sought the advice of higher-education officials and
    encouraged colleges to use the company’s technology in new ways for
    teaching and research.”

    It’s called knowing your market. Unless Apple has experienced widespread brain-death at the top, it will continue market research, because the most convenient way to move product is to produce what customers want.

    Apple has been successful by, among other strategies, not trying to sell things nobody wants. This is neither idealistic nor sinister. It’s the way entrepreneurial capitalism works, when it works.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1284706811 Patrick Dowling

    Let’s hope Tim Cook continues on Apple’s inclusive path.

  • wstumper

    Sort of like the TV news reporter who says “We called for a comment, but they were unavailable.”  Right.

  • librarydirector

    d_fevens,

    For several years now you’ve made your views concerning the misappropriation of YOUR scholarship known in this forum.  This news really doesn’t address your issue at all.  Your work was not orphaned, and I don’t care to characterize your problem with UW in this forum.  Orphaned works are fair game and they can aid the general cause of scholarship.  This is not about stealing copyrighted texts, this is about providing access to scholarship.

  • d_fevens

    My “issue” is that illicit copies of my work were produced by the University of Wisconsin/Google commercial partnership and distributed to the HathiTrust.  Just because they are going through their booty to sort high risk items from low does not change the manor in which they obtained those works.

  • hanhai99
  • richardtaborgreene

    tporges—you understand engineering, it is clear, and the subculture it is and that limit its practices.  Jobs had that rare exposure to artistic design (fonts) and never let that perspective go in the face of contempt for it among normal engineers.   He inserted BEAUTY in a world of mere FUNCTION.  Engineering departments, today, worldwide, are contemplating this but LACK faculty able to do this transition.  Perhaps Steve can fund an initial program or two somewhere that puts engineers through the every two weeks every course design competitions publicly graded by profs in front of all class members—that places like Fabrika, St. Martins, Parsons, RISD do as matter of course.  

  • http://twitter.com/LauraLeeAuthor Laura Lee

    I do not see any benefit to society or to authors in keeping orphaned works out of circulation.  The purpose of copyright law is to provide a temporary monopoly as an incentive to the creator to be supported in the act of creating.  In other words, we have copyright so that theoretically authors and the publishers who make books available can do so without starving.  Keeping orphaned works from being distributed benefits neither creators nor society.  And as there is no one who is seeing enough of an economic benefit to keep these works current and for sale, it hardly undercuts anyone’s financial interest.