Pamela Strakeljahn, the campus minister at the University of Wisconsin’s Platteville campus, wrote a piece in February in the Wisconsin State Journal, that attacked the Catholic Church. Professing to disagree with the Catholic Church’s teachings on qualifications for the priesthood, Strakeljahn blasted the Vatican for having “forgotten the human compassion and unconditional love that Jesus came to deliver.” In a letter to the editor of the newspaper, the league branded this remark as “arrogant and fallacious.”
Even more astounding was Strakeljahn’s comment that if Jesus were here today, He would disagree with the Church’s teachings. “Excuse me,” William Donohue wrote, “but does Strakeljahn have some special pipeline to Jesus that the rest of us have been denied?” He then added, “This absurd statement shows how fundamentalism on the left is no different than fundamentalism on the right-both are born of hubris and both ineluctably express themselves with an animus towards Catholicism.”
What this also goes to show is that those who are hostile to Catholicism not only can get their work published in mainline sources, they can be rewarded with a position as campus minister. Now just how receptive of an ear is Strakeljahn capable of providing Catholic students at her campus? It seems not to matter a whit, not even to the high priests of tolerance in higher education.
