{"id":4811,"date":"2006-05-23T19:14:30","date_gmt":"2006-05-24T00:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2006\/05\/23\/contracepton-and-food-fights\/"},"modified":"2006-05-23T19:14:30","modified_gmt":"2006-05-24T00:14:30","slug":"contracepton-and-food-fights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2006\/05\/contracepton-and-food-fights\/","title":{"rendered":"Contracepton and food fights"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reader sent me the following story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A University of St. Thomas honors graduate who scolded his fellow seniors at Saturday’s commencement ceremony for being "selfish" apologized Monday for offending people during his politically charged speech.<\/p>\n

Ben Kessler, an academic All-America football player who plans to become a priest, chastised students for using birth control, criticized them for a recent food fight and upheld the St. Paul university’s controversial policy against allowing unmarried faculty and staff members in romantic relationships to room together on school trips that involve students.<\/p>\n

"Then he got into other failures of society, and one of my classmates next to me stood up and left," said Daphne Ho, a graduating senior whose family traveled from Hong Kong for the celebration.<\/p>\n

In a prepared statement released Monday by St. Thomas, Kessler said that he had tried in his speech to look back at some issues faced by the university and society and then look ahead.<\/p>\n

"Instead of providing hope for all, I offended some by my words," Kessler said. "I sincerely apologize to each person I offended."<\/p>\n

…"Dozens of students literally started walking out when he brought up birth control issues and, at one point, I thought a riot would break out," Mileski said. "I give him credit because he kept on going when everyone started booing and heckling. <\/p>\n

Well a graduation speech is probably not a prudent place to bring up this subject. But to me it seems something is seriously wrong with people graduation from a Catholic school crying when the issue of birth control is brought up. The subject of selfishness and the contraceptive attitude that goes with it should should be something already familiar in a Catholic school. Though the issue of the student body using contraception should go hand and hand with also chastising about fornicating in the first place. I also wonder about how talking about contraception, food fights, a faculty cohabitation would be considered a politically charged speech. Theologically charged perhaps. But it does have to be one of the strange combinations for a graduation speech I have heard of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reader sent me the following story: A University of St. Thomas honors graduate who scolded his fellow seniors at Saturday’s commencement ceremony for being "selfish" apologized Monday for offending…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punditry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}