State’s Most Pro-Abortion Judge on the Board of Catholic University
July 11, 2008
By Tim Waggoner
MINNEAPOLIS, July 10, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - LifeSiteNews has learned that a notorious abortion advocate and Appeals Court Judge is holding an executive position at a large Catholic university in Minneapolis.
Judge Diana Murphy is the chairwoman of the Executive Committee for the Board of Trustees of the Catholic University of St. Thomas. However, throughout her tenure as a judge with the Eight Circuit U. S. Court of Appeals, she has consistently overturned legislation seeking to further the Culture of Life.
On September 11, 2000, the appeals court judge ruled against multiple legislators, pro-life groups, physicians and citizens, who objected to the State of Minnesota paying for abortions with their tax dollars. The federal government had banned such use of taxpayer funds and so had the Minnesota legislature. Murphy and the State Supreme Court, however, found the State ban on funding to be unconstitutional and ruled the plaintiffs had no standing, preventing the case from being reviewed at higher levels.
On October 25, 2006, Judge Murphy ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood, striking down legislation that would have required doctors to inform women that an abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.
Judge Murphy is also a donor and Vice Chair of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), which, according to Dr. David Pence of the DocSociety, is intent on severing the university’s ties with the Church. According to its website, DocSociety is “a brotherhood of Catholic men working to restore fatherhood and fraternity among Catholic priests and laymen.”
Dr. Pence and the DocSociety have been for years closely monitoring the questionable happenings at St. Thomas University.
“Why is a notorious pro-abortionist judge holding a executive position at a Catholic University?” asked Pence in a LifeSiteNews interview.
Pence said that one might expect that given that the chairman and vice-chairman of the university Board of Trustees are the former Catholic bishop of the diocese, Archbishop Flynn, and former Vicar General of the diocese, Rev. Kevin McDonough, the board of the Catholic university would be composed of members who preserve Catholic teachings.
But considering the track record of Archbishop Flynn and Rev. McDonough, Pence said he is not surprised that pro-abortion Judge Murphy is chairing the Executive Committee for the Board.
Archbishop Flynn retired from the diocese after years of complaints by faithful Catholics over his handling of a host of scandals involving homosexual activists both within and without the archdiocesan administration.
Under his rule, a notoriously pro-homosexual parish, St. Joan of Arc, was allowed to continue openly supporting the Gay Pride parades and the homosexual lifestyle. The parish’s opposition to Catholic teaching was so brazen that it resulted in a 2004 rare direct intervention by the Vatican.
Flynn was named by homosexual political activists as one of the US’s four most “gay friendly” bishops.
McDonough came under fire in 2006 after he attempted to brush off the rampant homosexuality in the diocese, stating, “I don’t believe in this archdiocese there has ever been an active subculture of homosexual priests who were sexually active and justifying their behavior.”
McDonough’s public assertion was surprising, especially since his own brother William McDonough, a priest (active as such at least until 1998) in the diocese, is on public record going against Church teaching on homosexuality.
To add to the controversy, LifeSiteNews covered a story in November of 2007 that saw the board vote unanimously to remove a 125 year-old bylaw that declared the chairman and vice-chairman of the board should be the sitting Bishop and Vicar General of the Diocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis. The board, headed by Flynn and McDonough, made this strategic move just five months before Archbishop Nienstedt was to be installed as the new archbishop of the Minneapolis diocese, thereby preventing him from assuming the position of chairman of the Board of Trustees of St. Thomas University.
The board of directors also voted to re-install Flynn and McDonough as chairman and vice-chairman for an extended five year term. The move was feared to be an effort by the university to override the authority of and possible reforms by Archbishop Nienstedt, Flynn’s more orthodox Catholic coadjutor bishop who has since succeeded him as head of the archdiocese.
The vote thereby extended the contracts of chairman Flynn and vice-chairman McDonough for five more years, after which the board could vote in whomever they desire to fulfill the roles - essentially eliminating the Church’s and, more specifically, Nienstedt’s role in the university.
Archbishop Nienstedt’s authentic Catholicity was not welcomed by the Board of Trustees after he said he would not accept a proposed plan by one of the board members that sought to merge the school with a medical association, because the move would involve teaching abortion procedures as part of the curriculum. This happened only weeks before the vote was cast that saw the removal of the bylaw.
The spokesperson for St. Thomas University did not respond to calls by press time.
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SENAKI, Georgia — Russia issued an ultimatum to Georgia on Monday to disarm its troops along the boundary with the pro-Russian separatist enclave of Abkhazia as Russian tanks rolled across the border and occupied a military base in western Georgia.
The move was a sign that fighting could escalate on a second, western front after the conflict initially broke out last week around South Ossetia, the separatist enclave further east.
President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia said its forces had “completed a significant part of the operations to oblige Georgia, the Georgian authorities, to restore peace to South Ossetia,” according to a transcript of his remarks with Anatoly Serdyukov, the defense minister, on the Kremlin Web site.
Separately, Russia said it was seeking an emergency meeting with NATO to discuss the Georgian crisis.
But the Russian Defense Ministry said that armored vehicles and troops had overrun a military base in the Georgian town of Senaki, 25 miles south of the Abkhazian border, suggesting that Russian troops had already begun to move south from the enclave into Georgia proper.
The Russian ultimatum, issued by Maj. Gen. Sergei Chaban, commander of Russian peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia, called for Georgian troops to disarm in the Zugdidi District, along the border between Abkhazia and Georgia.
Russia has poured extra forces into Abkhazia, where it now has at least 9,000 troops and 350 armored vehicles.
Giga Bokeria, a Georgian official close to the president, said the ultimatum raised alarms that Russian troops would now make a broader push into Georgian territory in the west of the country. Many Georgian troops have been tied up in fighting farther east near South Ossetia.
A pivotal question in the conflict, which has involved heavy fighting since late last week, is whether Russia would push beyond these regions and farther into Georgia.
On Sunday, a reporter for The New York Times saw an armored personnel carrier emblazoned with the letters MT, the Russian abbreviation for peacekeepers, on the street in Senaki and on Monday saw tanks and troops occupying the military base there. However, there was no immediate sign of fighting.
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