by Kathleen Gilbert
NOTRE DAME, Indiana, March 30, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The University of Notre Dame has stood by its decision to publish a list of “internship opportunities” on its website that includes pro-abortion and leftist organizations, while one professor at the school has lashed out at members of the conservative group petitioning against the listing, calling them “monsters.”
TFP Student Action, the conservative watchdog group that is leading a 10,000-strong petition against the school’s inclusion of pro-abortion groups on an internship web page, reported Friday that not only had Notre Dame kept the listings, but that the school was found to have funded some of the problematic internships.
The school’s Department of Political Science continues to link to groups such as Emily’s List, Feminist Majority Foundation, and the United Nations Population Fund as “Summer Internship Programs.” Since TFP’s petition was launched, however, a sentence has been added to the top of the page stating: “Listing here does not constitute an endorsement of the mission of agenda of these organizations by the department or the University.”
Notre Dame officials had initially criticized TFP for “misrepesenting” the internship listings as a school-sponsored offer, arguing that it was simply a listing of previous internships attended by Notre Dame students. A later message from the office of the president to a TFP supporter posted by the group emphasized that the group’s initial statement, which had been amended by TFP to accommodate the correction, was “false” and “unsubstantiated.”
However, the groups writes: “Those live links are still listed as ‘opportunities.’ And what are students expected to understand from the term ‘opportunity’ other than just that – opportunity?”
Meanwhile, one member of the university’s faculty gave vent to anger at the petitioners: an email from the professor forwarded to LifeSiteNews.com told TFP to “back off, you monsters” and defended organizations such as Emily’s List as doing “fabulous work.”
“You should be ashamed of yourselves, with your bullying ‘oral’ tactics. Wake up. Do you think only Christians like you have a purchase on morality?” the professor continued. “Remember the Inquisition. Remember the Holocaust when your Pope refused to protect Jews and collaborated with the Nazi [sic]. Remember your priests who even today choose to fondle little boys with no choice in the matter. ... Back off with your morality. You wouldn’t know what it was iof [sic] it was poured over your head.”
“Clearly, not all professors at Notre Dame respect the Catholic faith or the right to life,” remarked TFP on its website.
The group also pointed to the discovery of blogger Kathy Schiffer at Patheos.com that the school had in fact funded internships to questionable groups, including the National Organization for Women in 2008, the Anti-Defamation League of Boston in 2009, and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, which destroys leftover embryos from in-vitro fertilization to conduct some of its research.
TFP Student Action says that it will continue to peacefully petition the school to remove the “internship opportunity” links, which they called “misleading and morally confusing.”
“The fact that Notre Dame students have served as interns for pro-abortion organizations in the past should cause embarrassment, not pride,” said the group.
Contact information:
The University of Notre Dame
Fr. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Phone: 574.631.3903
Email: president@nd.edu
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