Pro-Homosexual Keillor to Speak at Catholic Education Conference in St. Paul Archdiocese

What's really a reminder about the depressing state of Catholic Education in the United States, and the failure of lay-leadership in general, a suitably inter-faith-like event is about to take place in April, and pro-abortion/pro-homosexual Garrison Keillor is its Keynote Speaker.

Garrison Keillor is the man in Minnesota, and he's the goto guy if you want to host something that demeans Catholicsm and promote smug scandanavian liberal values. The Modernist Benedictine Monastery in Collegeville loves him and trots him out to assuage the anger of the local populace whenever they have PR troubles.

Well, NCEA, an organization founded, suspiciously, around the same time the forerunner of the USCCB was founded, is hosting a convention dealing with "education" this April. There will be talks by David Haas and some heretical Taize music.

"9 am to 1015 am – Keynote address – Garrison Keillor – Convention Center
1015 am to 1045 am – Meet & Greet/Photo Op with Garrison Keillor – Invitation Only"

The real question is whether or not Garrison Keillor will be permitted to speak at a Diocesan event featuring the Catholic Church in Archbishop Nienstedt's Archdiocese, given the speaker policy in place which is selectively enforced, if it is enforced at all, and you'd hope that it would prevent a pro-homosexuality, pro-abortion Garrison Keillor, at least from speaking. After all, other Bishops disinvited pro-homosexual +Gumbleton, why not condemn the NCEA?

In any event, Colleen Perfect has already contacted Archbishop Nienstedt and he has responded with his complaint:

It is scandalous that Garrison Keillor has been invited to be a keynote speaker for the National Catholic Education Convention. It is only right that Mr. Keillor's invitation be rescinded and that he be removed as a speaker from the Convention this April.

We have already contacted Archbishop John Nienstedt. He was very gracious and responded immediately to our concern. He reported that the decision was made at the national level of the NCEA and he was only informed of it afterwards. The Archbishop told us he has contacted the NCEA with his own criticism of their decision to select Garrison Keillor as keynote speaker.

The Archbishop also encouraged us to contact the NCEA and express our opinion. He included the following address:

Dr. Karen M. Ristau, Ed.D.
President, National Catholic Educational Association
1005 North Glebe Road
Arlington, VA 22201

Interestingly, teachers can use title-II funds associated with "No Child Left Behind" to attend the parts of this conference which are secular. It all looks secular, so perhaps it can all be written off?

Even Garrison Keillor Angers Jews

image credit soulintention


YES!

NPR is going to be so angry. Perhaps Garrison wants to go out in a blaze of glory?

We can't wait till Garrison appears before a press conference to offer a contrite apology to his masters. Perhaps he couldn't take it anymore and he was off steam and what was intended as toungue in cheek showed his underlying ire.

How about a little sympathy for a man who's just suffered a stroke?


Garrison Keillor, self-appointed cultural representative of regular old Americans, ruffled some feathers yesterday with a mildly xenophobic rant about Christmas. After lambasting a Unitarian church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for “spiritual piracy and cultural elitism”—tweaking the lyrics of “Silent Night” for a singalong, in layman’s terms—he turned his ire in a different direction:

And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write ‘Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’? No, we didn’t. Christmas is a Christian holiday—if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.

The Baltimore Sun got some angry letters about this, and understandably so. Hating on Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” is, in a way, the same thing as the American Family Association’s boycott of the Gap for its “failure” to use the word Christmas in ads: both actions reject a dilution of Christmas by outsiders, just in slightly different ways. It certainly does not accord with the generous holiday spirit. And anyway: “Dreck?” Really? Who’s co-opting whom?