After deep-sixing Anna Maria College’s invitation to Victoria Kennedy to give a commencement address, Worcester Bishop Robert J. McManus finds himself disinvited too.
Raymond L. Delisle, a spokesman for the Diocese of Worcester, said Anna Maria President Jack Calareso and Sr. Yvette Bellerose, the chair of the school’s board of trustees, had a brief meeting Thursday at the chancery.
He said they asked the bishop to consider not attending and he agreed.
“They felt the bishop would be a distraction to the event,” said Mr. Delisle, who described the meeting as cordial. “He was going to attend but that’s not going to happen now.”
You readers know I’m a huge skeptic when it comes to the hermeneutic of subtraction. I think disinvitations are rude and lazy, usually. It should be no surprise to any of you I think both people should have been invited.
On the other hand, commencement is all about students. So maybe the AMC solution of having two students give addresses is a better solution all around.
At some point, the so-called adults in the chanceries and the university offices are going to need to sit down and get past all this nonsense.
9 May 2012 at 3:46 pm
The speaker at my graduation from a super-lefty northeastern liberal arts college was Jerry from Ben & Jerry’s. All I can recall is that he donated tons of free ice cream for senior week and that my dad thought he was a jerk. As far as potential speakers go, I got off easy. A few years later, I think Hillary Clinton or someone equally notable and hideous was the speaker. Needless to say, any potential speaker with but a trace of conservative thinking is going to face a problem at the nation’s purported elite institutions of learning. Many years earler, Bill Buckley was apparently invited to speak then promptly disinvited whereupon he referred to the student body in an NYT article as “ferocious illiterates.”
9 May 2012 at 3:50 pm
Do you have the “Vassar Class of 1980 Class of Ferocious Illiterates” T-Shirt?
9 May 2012 at 5:08 pm
Unfortunately, the best I can say for me and my averse-to-studying buddies is that we were hardly ferocious. It would be nice to get my hands on one of those t-shirts.
11 May 2012 at 5:07 pm
“A bishop never more resembles Jesus Christ than when he has his mouth shut.” (Attributed to St. Ignatius of Antioch)