Philadelphia, Pa., Mar 22, 2017 / 03:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A bridge featuring crosses on the property of Villanova, a Catholic university in a Philadelphia suburb, will be built despite complaints from some local taxpayers.
After an hour long debate, the Board of Commissioners of the township of Radnor voted 6-0 last month to approve the controversial pedestrian bridge that will connect Villanova University's main campus with an expansion of the campus.
The crux of the debate was the two, 4-foot 7-inch crosses planned for the top of the bridge, which will be visible to travelers on Route 30 underneath. Some local taxpayers complained that the school was crossing the line of separation of church and state by placing the crosses over a public road.
“I think they are overstepping their sense of ecumenism to shove these crosses in our faces," Sara Pilling, a longtime resident and opponent of the crosses, told The Inquirer Daily News before the meeting.
Others argued that taxpayer dollars should not fund a bridge that will feature displays of religion.
Villanova officials argued that the school was within its rights to place crosses on the bridge, which will be owned by the university and on university property.
“On every building on campus, there’s a cross,” Fr. Peter Donohue, university president, told the Inquirer.
“I understand people’s sensitivities, but it’s just something we’ve always done. It’s just part of who we are. We are a faith-based institution.”
Some locals believe that a compromise would be to turn the crosses so they face the pedestrians, or to incorporate them into the design of the bridge in a more subtle way.
“While we recognize the importance of Villanova to our community and the notoriety it brings to Radnor, are there less ostentatious ways to reflect a Catholic institution?” said Roberta Winters, president of the League of Women Voters of Radnor, in an interview with The Inquirer.
Commissioner Luke Clark told local media that the bridge has been in the works for a long time, and is a way to keep safe the hundreds of students who cross that road every day.
“The design looks great. The crosses are going to go up there. Is it right or wrong? I don’t know. But at the end of the day it is on their property. They are a religious institution and the law for the most part is in their favor,” said Clark.
Even after the board unanimously voted to approve the bridge, some concerned locals contacted the non-profit Freedom From Religion Foundation. The foundation wrote a “strongly worded letter” to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), contending that they were unconstitutionally funding Christian symbols on the bridge and asked them to removed either the crosses or their funding.
The department told local media that its $3.7 million contribution to the project was for the portion of the span over the right of way it controls.
PennDOT said it could not control what the university did with its own property and with its own funds, which are providing for the crosses and most of the bridge.
After the township vote Villanova's assistant vice president of government relations and external affairs Chris Kovolski told The Inquirer: "We're pleased that the conversation tonight resulted in an outcome that allows the university to move forward."
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Albuquerque, N.M., Aug 23, 2019 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- Arizona’s Catholic bishops issued a statement Thursday in support of a change in policy that will offer a discounted college tuition rate to resident high school students who are undocumented immigrants.
“We are glad that these undocumented students, who were brought here through no fault of their own, will now have more opportunities to better their lives after they graduate from our high schools and eventually become productive members of our society,” said the statement, which was co-signed by the state’s four bishops.
The new policy, announced Aug. 22, sets the state college tuition rate for non-legal resident students at $16,000, which is $5,000 more than the in-state rate for legal Arizona residents. The tuition rate for out-of-state students is $30,000. Previously, undocumented students had to pay the out-of-state rate.
“Today’s action allows these students, as well as other Arizona high school graduates who have left the state, to join immigrant students who are in the DACA program and pay a much lower tuition rate that reflects the actual costs at our public universities,” the bishops said.
Several states offer in-state tuition to undocumented students who graduated from a high school in the state.
The announcement came on the same day that Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin, who chairs the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, issued a statement condemning a newly-published Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Homeland Security rule that concerns the care and custody of immigrant children.
That new rule allows for families, including minors, to be detained for longer than the previous 20-day limit allowed under the Flores settlement.
Vasquez said the rule is “unlawful and inhumane” and will harm “countless children.”
“This rule will have heartbreaking consequences for immigrant children – those whom Pope Francis has deemed ‘the most vulnerable group’ among migrants,” said Vásquez in the statement, which was published on the USCCB’s website.
“It is an attempt by the [Trump] Administration to circumvent existing obligations and undermine critical protections for these children. This rule will jeopardize the well-being and humane treatment of immigrant children in federal custody and will result in children suffering long-lasting consequences of being held for prolonged periods in family detention.”
The new rule will take effect 60 days after its publication.
“Wheel of Fortune” host Pat Sajak attends a taping of the show’s 35th anniversary season at Epcot Center at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in 2017. / Credit: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images
Boston, Mass., Sep 3, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Pat Sajak, the longtime host of the popular television game show “Wheel of Fortune,” will be retiring after this upcoming season.
After more than 40 years in that role, Sajak is like a member of the family for the show’s millions of fans.
A lesser-known fact about the Emmy winner is that he’s the chair of the board of trustees at Hillsdale College, a small Christian, classical liberal arts school in southern Michigan that is often branded as “conservative” and which one magazine has even described as being “at the heart of the culture wars.”
Founded by Freewill Baptist slavery abolitionists in 1844, Hillsdale defines itself as “nonsectarian Christian.” But Sajak’s many Catholic fans might be interested to know that Hillsdale has a thriving Catholic community of students and faculty — and has become something of a hub for converts to the Catholic faith.
An average of about 15 students from Hillsdale convert to Catholicism each year, Kelly Cole, a staff member from the local St. Anthony Catholic Church, which ministers to the students, told CNA.
Additionally, in recent years certain Catholic prelates have made visits to campus including Winona-Rochester Bishop Robert Barron, who gave the college’s graduation commencement address in May, and German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, who offered a lecture on campus in 2021.
Is Pat Sajak Catholic?
Sajak declined an interview with CNA. While his religious affiliation isn’t clear, a 1993 article from the Los Angeles Times reported that Sajak received an annulment from the Catholic Church. Sajak’s first marriage was with Sherril Sajak, but after they divorced, he married Lesly Brown, his current spouse of over 30 years, according to Hollywood Life.
People magazine reported that Sajak married Brown at a Catholic church in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1989. Outsider reported that this church was St. Mary’s.
A Chicago native, Sajak, who called himself an “unapologetic conservative” in a 2012 interview with the Hoover Institution, has Polish roots and described his upbringing as blue-collar. A Vietnam veteran, he served as a television weatherman before his time at “Wheel of Fortune.”
Since 2019, Sajak, who is 76 according to the History Channel, has been serving as chairman of the board for the school. But he’s been involved with the school long before he was the chair, serving as the vice chairman of the board of trustees beginning in 2003.
He said in his interview with the Hoover Institution that he came to Hillsdale as a result of his relationship with the school’s president, Larry Arnn, whom Sajak met when he served on the board of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.
In that interview, he praised the school for not taking government funding, something that Hillsdale prides itself on.
The school was included in the Princeton Review’s 2024 edition of the nation’s best colleges, earning a No. 3 ranking of “most conservative students,” a No. 2 ranking of “most religious students,” and a No. 2 ranking of having the “friendliest students.”
A Great Books curriculum
Why is Catholic life at Hillsdale so vibrant?
On Hillsdale’s website, the school prides itself on a core curriculum that “considers the spiritual and intellectual inheritance of the Western Tradition and provides a fuller perspective on the world and its workings.”
From the school’s longtime English professor David Whalen’s perspective, the college’s “traditional, Great Books-heavy curriculum” inevitably brings students into contact with many ideas that are influenced by the Catholic faith.
The Great Books curriculum consists of literature courses mandatory for every student.
Whalen, a Catholic who is also the school’s associate vice president for curriculum, said that the amount of Catholic conversions each year is a result of “grace” but “also the natural consequence of young people reading deeply in the Western intellectual and spiritual tradition and reflecting on their own beliefs.”
While the “great majority” of Hillsdale’s faculty and students are not Catholic, Whalen said that the atmosphere on campus is “highly collegial” and the Catholic community flourishes at the school.
“There are enough Catholic students, faculty, and staff to sustain a quite vibrant Catholic community and, at the same time, integrate with the campus as a whole,” he said. “This makes the college attractive to Catholic students, as does its traditional curriculum and strong academics.”
Being a minority on campus, Catholics would do well to brush up on their faith, Whalen said.
“This is a highly intelligent place, and people with different beliefs are going to be articulate and thoughtful about them. So, the Catholics here need to be so as well,” he said.
Taking Catholicism seriously
Cole, who converted to Catholicism the year she graduated from Hillsdale in 2002, said that she took Whalen’s literature course and it had a major impact on her conversion.
But it wasn’t just the literature classes that pushed her to convert, it was mainly the history courses, she said.
“And my history courses were taught by Protestants; it wasn’t Catholics that were teaching this or anything,” she noted.
Cole, 43, said that “trying to faithfully engage with history and the history of Christendom and talking about our Judeo-Christian heritage just led to me feeling like I needed to take Catholicism seriously.”
Earlier this year, the Diocese of Lansing posted a video highlighting the 2023 Easter Vigil at St. Anthony’s in which 24 people, 22 of them Hillsdale students, were received into the Catholic Church.
Today, Cole, her husband, Lee Cole — a professor at the college — and her seven children all reside in Hillsdale, where she serves on staff at the city’s St. Anthony Catholic Church, where she was received when she converted more than 20 years ago.
Defenders of the faith
Just as it did then, St. Anthony is the sole institution providing the sacraments to students on campus. But the church works hand in hand with the school’s “Catholic Society,” a student-led club that organizes social events and opportunities for students to receive the sacraments and brings speakers to campus.
Noah Hoonhout, a 2023 graduate who led the school’s Catholic student organization, said that the Catholic Society is “the most active” club on campus.
Among the recent speakers the society has sponsored are German Cardinal Gerhard Müller and American theologian George Weigel, both of whom drew large crowds, according to Hoonhout.
According to the Hillsdale Daily News, the school’s president called Weigel and Müller “ardent defenders of the immemorial teachings of the Christian faith and of the liberty of the human soul before God that Hillsdale College holds so dear” following their lectures in 2021.
Whalen told CNA that when Müller visited campus he was invited to say a few words at a dinner in his honor at the school’s president’s house.
Whalen said that Müller “gave an extemporaneous short talk that was both brilliant and beautiful. It was a great moment.”
The Catholic Society points students toward St. Anthony’s many ministries, one of which is specifically established for Hillsdale students called “The Grotto.”
The Grotto is a house located near campus where students can come and pray before the Blessed Sacrament.
Each week, the Grotto offers Mass, confession, eucharistic adoration, the recitation of the rosary, formation events, and social gatherings for the students, such as “convivium,” where dozens of students will gather for dinner at the house on Thursday nights and hear a talk on the Catholic faith from a professor at the school.
Hoonhout, 22, said that the Grotto is one of the “centers of Catholic culture” on campus.
What’s next?
In Sajak’s long tenure at “Wheel of Fortune,” he has earned several awards, including a Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2019, Guinness World Records deemed him to have “the longest career as a game show host for the same show,” which was 35 years and 198 days at the time, according to abc.com.
Although not much is known about what Sajak will do following retirement from “Wheel of Fortune,” Hillsdale has said that he will continue serving in his role as chairman of its board of trustees.
His role at the game show will be taken over by celebrity host Ryan Seacrest. Sajak’s longtime co-host, Vanna White, reportedly will remain with the show.
“Well, the time has come. I’ve decided that our 41st season, which begins in September, will be my last,” Sajak tweeted on June 12. “It’s been a wonderful ride, and I’ll have more to say in the coming months. Many thanks to you all.”
President Joe Biden at the White House on Aug. 28, 2023. / Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 28, 2023 / 15:15 pm (CNA).
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign launched a new pro-abortion ad in several swing states… […]
Leave a Reply