Matter of principle
Fay Vincent, 67, the former baseball commissioner, has turned down an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Sacred Heart University, and also resigned from the Board of Trustees of Fairfield University, citing the Vatican's recent firing of the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the magazine America.
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I've been a supporter of America for 25 years," Vincent said in an interview from his Greenwich home on Monday. "This thing really bothered me terribly. I have read the magazine carefully and it was always respectful to the church. For me, not taking the degree was a matter of principle."
Well I guess he wasn't that careful of a reader since being respectful to the Church does not include advocating positions at odds with Church teaching and showing these positions as having equally valid weight. The response to the resigning of Fr. Reese continues to amaze me. I even saw a reference to it in Rolling Stone mixed in with music news. It is amazing that colleges and universities can ignore Church teaching and mock the latest papal encyclical and it doesn't bother many people. This university also has coed dormitories and this is no longer a shock to anybody but is the practice of the majority of Catholic schools. But if an editor of a magazine is forced to resign because of questionable editorial practices someone will shun an honorary degree. Talk about mixed priorities.
Known as 
Dude, Fay's a man.
Talk about solidarity! These "dissidents" of the Big Time Academic / MSM Axis are hunkering down. The press doesn't even pretend to be objective anymore when one of the Axis's enemies is in its crosshairs. The gloves are definitely off in what may be the final battles of the Forty Year Culture War.
Vincent is the only one who looses out here. He obviously bought into this rag of a magazine by Reese. Vincent should have asked Sister Kateri Mitchell (aka Redfeather)to show up in full indian attire, to decline the honor.( Kind of a Marlin Brando kind of a thing.) Fay baby, No one cares.....
So he resigned from the Board of Trustees of Fairfield University? Good. One down, thousands more to go who cloud Catholic identity.
File this under "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face".
I've never known what anybody wants with an honorary degree from anywhere. That and a farecard will get you on the Metro. Is it an awful lot of fun to wear a hood you didn't earn and make a speech to a class you didn't belong to? Beats me.
Elinor, I think you get an extra line or two in your obituary. Personally, certificates and awards mean extra dusting to me, although I confess to secretly wanting to be part of the Lolipop Guild.