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In November a public
forum during "Rainbow Alliance
Week" involving a Holy Cross professor not only openly dissenting
from teachings of the Catholic Church, but also included a professor advertising
his homosexual lifestyle. James Nickoloff is not only a homosexual man
engaged in a 'marriage' to another man in Massachusetts, but he is a tenured
faculty member at Holy Cross who openly advertises his sexual choices
to other students and then wraps his theological teaching in order to
justify and rationalize those choices. In November, as part of a sponsored
discussion by the campus homosexual group, Nickoloff was very open and
forthcoming about his relationship and made it an issue proving that the
Bible and Catholicism endorsed such behavior by the fact that he was in
the religious studies department.
This goes against Catholic
teaching and also undermines other Church efforts to help those with same-sex
attraction to successfully manage those disorders without succumbing to
sexual temptation. One such church effort
is known as "Courage" based out of New York.
Unspoken but implied
is that physical acts are reduced to unstoppable urges, undermining the
Church's teachings on chastity as well. By making man animalistic in the
pursuit of such urges, it says to young people that the religious life
is unattainable, and rationalizes their pursuit of physical fulfillment
at the expense of emotional fulfillment either in a committed relationship
or through religious vocation.
Actions:
1. Trustees -
Please call one Board of Trustee member, Fr. Philip Boroughs at Georgetown
University <email,
(202)687-1395> to ask them to have the college return its fidelity
to Church teaching especially on this most controversial of topics:
homosexuality.
2. President - Please call President Fr. McFarland <mmcfarland@holycross.edu,
(508)793-2525> and respectfully ask him to provide homosexual-tendency
counseling to students and faculty who are engaged in unhealthy lifestyles.
3. Department - Call the Chair of the Religious Studies Department
Prof. Alan J. Avery-Peck <aavery@holycross.edu or (508)793-3411>
and ask if Pope John Paul II's wonderful "Theology
of the Body" is assigned in any class, and if not, what alumni
and supporters of the college could do to support it and offer it as
a counterpoint to the disordered notions of the body received by faculty
engaged in destructive lifestyles.
4. Pray - Pray
for Prof. Nickoloff, for his soul and his hopeful conversion into a
healthy lifestyle for himself.
And please let us
know what you hear from these individuals. You can reach us at <info@hccns.org
or (508)439-5350>.
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Prof.
James Nickoloff, of the Religious Studies department, is a former
Jesuit priest who told a student group in November that he was personally
engaged in homosexuality and 'married' in the state of Massachusetts
to another man. He implied the sanction of the Catholic Church as
he also identified himself as a professor of religious studies at
a Catholic college. This act undermines the efforts of the Church
to counsel and serve those with homosexual inclinations and to help
them find happiness and fulfillment in Christ through chastity or
in a lifestyle not destructive to both their bodies and souls. |
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St.
Joseph, depicted above with the child Christ, was a heterosexual male
interested in starting a family who was asked to forgo that blessing
in order to care and raise Christ. He remained celibate and is venerated
as a Saint due to his devotion to God over his natural inclinations. |
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The
handout given by Prof. Nickoloff at the meeting undermined the Church's
teaching on homosexual acts. You can download a JPEG
or a PDF
of the handout to see what the College is teaching students. The handout
is clever in that it rightly asserts the dignity of the individual
which is certainly a good, but also promotes confusion by claiming
sodomy is both sinful and yet not sinful. It lacks the clarity needed
to convey the truth of Catholic teaching. |
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