The following comes from an Oct. 7 story in the Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Los Angeles’ South Bay region.
After weeks of campus-wide debate, trustees at Loyola Marymount University voted late Monday to end university-paid insurance coverage for elective abortions for faculty and staff in 2014.
But in a concession that could wind up making both sides unhappy, the university will offer a policy administrated by a third party — not using LMU dollars — that will include abortion coverage for a higher premium, according to a written statement from university President David Burcham and co-signed by board Chairwoman Kathleen Aikenhead to faculty and staff.
“No LMU dollars will be spent paying for the additional coverage,” Burcham and Aikenhead wrote in the letter. The University Comprehensive Benefits Committee will review the decision and make benefit recommendations for 2015 and beyond.
The plan managed by the third party will be chosen soon. A “slightly higher premium” is expected for faculty and staff, the letter stated.
One professor on the Westchester campus said the compromise probably guarantees ongoing debate over the issue.
“I don’t think it makes much sense,” said Christopher Kaczor, a Loyola philosophy professor. “It’s like saying abortion is seriously wrong, I will not drive you to the abortion clinic, but wait here and I’ll have my brother drive you — and that somehow gives them clean hands.”
The decision, he said, “doesn’t really work. … It’s a victory for the side that wants LMU to be a secular place.”
Equally dissatisfied on the other side of the debate was associate professor of sociology Anna Muraco, who has written about the issue and said the matter of equity in the workplace has been pushed aside in the debate.
“I work at a Jesuit institution and I understand that,” she said, adding that the trustees’ statement and the debate has dismissed the university’s stated goal of “wanting to educate the whole person,” with an emphasis on social justice.
Removing elective abortions from health care plans, she said, “singles out health coverage that only affects one class of worker.” She also questioned whether the alternative plan premiums would be too high for lower-paid employees.
“We’re missing some of the larger issues that are at stake here — issues like equity” and diversity, she said. Abortion, she said, “is legal and safe. There’s something disingenuous by the way this (issue) has been framed. … They claim to be an institution that respects diversity and religious plurality and we did not have to sign any kind of faith statement like other (Catholic) schools have.
To read the entire story, click here.
There can be no compromise with abortion and shame on LMU for trying to find some wiggle room. LMU needs people who are obsessed, to use the words of Pope Francis, with the horrific nature of abortion and it’s fruits to keep it from it’s students and employees.
Would Loyola Marymount’s Associate Sociology Professor Anna Muraco please tell us where the social justice is in killing babies? Who else does she want to kill and call it social justice?
I am mindful of Our Lord’s passion where the Hebrews wanted crucifixion but could not do it themselves because their law forbade it….and Pilate the Roman who had the power to crucify but did not think Jesus guilty. In the end Pilate washed his hands because (even though he did the deed) he said he was only acting as a third-party for others. Its eerie.
Truly, a well drawn parallel. Here we have the abortion argument:”Now Caiaphas was he, which gave counsel (to the Jews), that it was expedient that one (man) should die for the people.” John 18:14; and here Loyola’s answer:”And Pilate seeing that he prevailed nothing, but that rather a tumult was made; taking water washed his hands before the people, saying: I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to it. ” Matthew 27:24.
I am always mystified by women who give in to their boyfriends and husbands and arrange for the murder of their babies, perhaps hoping to gain traction with these feckless men by so doing. But how can a university that calls itself Catholic wink and offer wiggle room to anyone who wants to arrange a murder and have someone else pay for it besides? Where would these irresponsible, unloving parents be if their own parents had been so murderous? When you murder a child, you also murder all possible future children that would have come into the family if the child had been allowed to live out their natural lives. I can grasp that Obama is cool with murdering his own grandchildren, but a Catholic university?
Loyola Marymount University is now a gateway for the killing of unborn babies. President Obama would be proud of this subterfuge!
Baby killers are not fit to work at a Catholic school.
“… They claim to be an institution that respects diversity and religious plurality and we did not have to sign any kind of faith statement like other (Catholic) schools have.” and there lies the real problem! Loyola is no longer a Catholic Institution. Ms. Muraco should be told to find another job.
My Brother-in Law was first string on the last Football Team Loyola had, and he will not give ONE PENNY to that Secular Institution now.
May God have mercy on an amoral America!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
Kathleen’s head OUGHT to be AIKEN!!
And where is Archbishop Gomez again?
He doesn’t like conflict except with law abiding individuals who are opposed to people illegally squatting on our land.
Bob,
Very good question! Probably at a rally for illegal immigration with pro-abortion, pro-sodomite Demoncrat politicians!
May God have mercy on an amoral America!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc
Social Justice is “social suicide”…these socialist, heretical professor’s think they are advocates for the “poor”…all they do is stir up class and race warfare! I am a behavioral scientist and social scientist…I am also devoutly Catholic…these so called “professor’s” are the putrescent dross that contaminates our Church and poison’s the mind of it’s most vulnerable, by spewing this drivel from an ambo or lectern!…THINK McFLY!…What does Holy Mother Church Teach?…On matters of faith and morals we have our answer…ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?…your conscience is your moral compass…your conscience is a gift from God, the Holy Spirit guides your conscience…
Abortion is the most demonic scourge in our nation…pornography is second…both are gateways to Hell…think about it…
This is no surprise. It is what we have come to expect from “so called” Catholic institutions of higher learning. The Bishops and Cardinals should appeal to the Vatican to have the word Catholic removed from the identity of these schools.
They are no longer Catholic. The Jesuits who administer at LMU evidently missed the lecture in their seminary days on Intrinsic Evils and what they are. There is no debate on the subject of abortion. It is the killing of an innocent child. How does Professor Muraco explain this away? Where in the social justice in this? Professor Muraco must have attended a Jesuit University since she can so easily explain away the actions of LMU and her defense of women’s rights. She is the one who is missing the larger issue of killing. It is murder no matter how you word it. It may be legal but it is morally wrong.
Someone stayed up all night on this one. Loyola just adopted the Obama way of dealing with the contraception plan as their solution to the abortion issue….. pay someone else and your hands are clean. A clean statement that abortion is morally wrong and back it up with a medical plan that says “if you want an abortion, just pay for it yourself” would make sense. This bizarre Loyola plan offends everybody. Who’s brilliant idea was this?
Can anyone tell me why LMU should still be considered a Catholic university? So many schools across the nation that have become a part of the world instead of proclaiming the Good News. Sadly just about all of these schools have apostasized from the Faith and any Catholic considering an actual Catholic education should look into a school such as Thomas Aquinas College.
The Jesuit’s who have embraced modernism are “heretic’s”, nothing more…some of these wayward clerics have even incurred “ipso facto” excommunication by teaching and fomenting heresy in catholic Institution’s such as LMU. It is a travesty, and serious shock to any catholic’s sense of decent shame, that the very men we turn to for spiritual guidance and direction, are “seriously in need of spiritual direction and guidance”, some need it far more than we sinful lay catholic’s! Many 0f these Jesuit cleric’s should leave religious life and be defrocked, as they are incapable of fulfilling the mission of the most sacred office on earth, the ministerial priesthood!
There seems to be a legion of Pontius Pilates around. God help us that we pro lifers stand fast and do not become one. It is so easy to fall down that slippery slope. I know. Many times I have wanted to just give up and fallen along the wayside, only to have the Lord and his saints pick me back up. We should be pulling others over to our side, not drifting off into theirs. The road is rough and narrow and the way dark, Lord Jesus please light our way and carry us over the rough places.