The Creative Minority Report has a story today about a college professor who was fired because he taught Catholicism…in his Catholicism 101 course.
It’s got to be a joke, right? Unfortunately not.
University of Illinois adjunct professor Kenneth Howell was fired after a student complained about his teaching of the Catholic Church’s doctrine that homosexual acts are gravely wrong.
Nothing to see here people, move on. The Catholic Church has always taught that and it seems to be along the lines of the natural progression of a basic Catholicism class that that particular teaching would be taught.
The anonymous student who complained to the school said that Howell was teaching “hate speech.” Howell has been an adjunct professor at the school for 9 years and was the director of the Institute of Catholic Thought, part of St. John’s Catholic Newman Center on campus and the Catholic Diocese of Peoria.
From the News-Gazette story:
”My responsibility on teaching a class on Catholicism is to teach what the Catholic Church teaches,” Howell said. “I have always made it very, very clear to my students they are never required to believe what I’m teaching and they’ll never be judged on that.”
The Creative Minority Report blog says that the school basically wants to put a warning-label on the class to say it doesn’t reflect the school’s thinking. Read more here on what the school thinks.
This is not only an awful case of political correctness gone wrong but also a lack of a serious backbone in academia. Not really surprising but still outrageous and disappointing.
