Officials at a Jesuit-run high school in Phoenix have banned a school alumnus from commenting on their Facebook page after he dared criticize Tim Kaine’s public support for abortion.
Brophy College Preparatory, a Jesuit high school in Phoenix, Arizona and part of the California Province of the Society of Jesus, posted a USA Today column on its Facebook page highlighting Tim Kaine’s Jesuit education.
The column noted how the Virginia senator said he lives by the Jesuit maxim of “men and women for others.”
After reading the piece, Brophy grad Eric J. Halvorson entered a comment observing that Mr. Kaine may be a man for others, but he is certainly not “a man for the unborn,” based on his public record and presidential running mate, the noted abortion supporter Hillary Clinton.
According to an email from Halvorson, several minutes later he received a message from the Brophy Facebook manager requesting that he refrain from making “political” comments on the school’s page—a curious request given that the USA Today article featured a prominent Catholic politician.
Halvorson responded by saying that his comments were not intended to be political, but spoke directly to the sanctity of human life.
Later that afternoon, Halvorson found that he had been permanently removed from the school’s Facebook fans, meaning he was essentially banned from the page and could no longer make comments of any sort.
Halvorson said that “the perception I was left with is that Brophy is OK with featuring and celebrating Mr. Kaine’s Jesuit education experience and service to others despite his public record on abortion.”
The Catholic hierarchy in the United States has been unusually vocal in its criticism of Tim Kaine’s claims to being a faithful Catholic, citing his open dissent from essential moral teachings of the Church.
In his own Facebook post titled “VP Pick, Tim Kaine, a Catholic?” Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence noted that Kaine “has been widely identified as a Roman Catholic” while at the same time “he publicly supports ‘freedom of choice’ for abortion, same-sex marriage, gay adoptions, and the ordination of women as priests.”
“All of these positions are clearly contrary to well-established Catholic teachings; all of them have been opposed by Pope Francis as well,” Tobin wrote, slamming the left’s bizarre claim that Kaine is some kind of “Pope Francis Catholic.”
“Senator Kaine has said, ‘My faith is central to everything I do.’ But apparently, and unfortunately, his faith isn’t central to his public, political life,” Bishop Tobin concluded.
Calling himself “a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade,” Kaine has a perfect pro-abortion voting record in Congress that earned him a 100% rating from abortion giant Planned Parenthood and high praise from the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).
In a recent newspaper column, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput also took issue with Kaine for his open dissent from Catholic teaching, as well as with sitting Vice President, Joe Biden.
These two “prominent Catholics,” the Archbishop said, “both seem to publicly ignore or invent the content of their Catholic faith as they go along.”
Anyone who claims the Catholic label while not actually believing what the Catholic faith holds to be true and letting it guide their thoughts and actions “is simply fooling himself or herself — and even more importantly, misleading others,” he added.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
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