The Cardinal Newman Society has a list of this year's commencement speakers at Catholic colleges whose views are diametrically opposed to the views of the Church.
Some are particularly shocking:
College of Saint Rose (NY), May 10, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: New York Governor David Paterson. Paterson is an advocate for abortion rights; he received a 100 percent rating from NARAL and the 2004 “Margaret Sanger Award” from Family Planning Advocates of New York State. Paterson proposed a bill providing $1 billion in taxpayer funding for embryonic stem cell research, and he has endorsed cloning stem cells for research purposes.
Governor Paterson is, as far as I can tell, a thoroughgoing immoralist. He should be nowhere near a Catholic college.
In my home state, Regis College also has picked a real winner to address its graduates:
Regis College (MA), May 18, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: Massachusetts State Rep. Lida Harkins (D-Needham). Harkins has supported abortion rights, including public funding for abortions, and opposed a two-parent consent law for minors seeking abortions. She supports gay marriage and was a key leader in the defeat of a state constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
My own alma mater's graduate school is also on the list:
University of Notre Dame Graduate School (IN), May 17, commencement speaker & honorary degree recipient: Marye Anne Fox, chancellor of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). As UCSD chancellor, Fox is an architect and leader of one of the nation’s foremost initiatives in embryonic stem cell research, the San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, which will open its $115 million facility at UCSD by 2010. UCSD research is partly funded by California’s $3 billion grant program for embryonic stem cell research, independent of ethical restrictions that President George W. Bush has tied to federal funding.
It is one thing to engage in dialogue with a world which is increasingly hostile to Catholicism. It is another to let that world advise your young. The world is not a petting zoo, and the sooner these Catholic colleges define themselves as Catholic first and colleges second, the better. Despite their much-vaunted "pursuit of the truth" (which always curiously seems to be defined in mocking or denigrating truths which the Catholic church holds to be revealed), the schools should remember that a college degree is not necessary for salvation. Their work, though useful, is in no way comparable to the work of Christ on the cross. They can add no truth necessary for the salvation of souls; if Catholicism is the meal, they are merely the gravy.