As you may have noticed, inside this 16-page issue of The Warrior is a 12-page advertisement from Pro-Life Wisconsin. Much of The Warrior staff is Catholic. Most of the people who read The Warrior are Catholic. Marquette is, allegedly, Catholic. So the fact that we decided to put this advertisement in shouldn’t be news at all, but it is. And here’s why:
The Marquette Tribune, which receives funding from Marquette University and serves as its sanctioned paper, has twice refused to run pro-life, anti-abortion advertisements this semester. First, it rejected an ad geared towards spring breakers, “Be good to yourself over spring break,” the ad continued, “Make smart choices the night before…that way you won’t have any emergencies to deal with the morning after! ‘Emergency contraception’ is a powerful, high dose of steroids that tricks your body into thinking it is pregnant. These steroids can cause chemical abortions and deadly blood clots” (emphasis in original).
Then — and this is where The Warrior comes in — the Tribune rejected the 12-page insert you see in this issue of The Warrior.
So, in order for Pro-Life Wisconsin to get its message out on a Catholic campus, the group had to come to The Warrior, a paper that is not allowed to be distributed in campus buildings or on campus property. That’s why we have to hand-distribute The Warrior on public property outside of Raynor and Cudahy. To get out a Catholic message on a Catholic campus, they had to come to a paper that accepts no money from Marquette.
It had to come to The Warrior. At a moment like this, you can’t help but say it… We are (Embarrassed for you), Marquette!
In the past, administrators and professors have called The Warrior an “underground” or “rogue” paper. Whatever… The day that a Pro-life group is forced to come to an “underground” or “extreme” paper at a Catholic university, it’s a sad day for Marquette, intellectual honesty and Catholicism as a whole.
As our Business Manager, Katie Wycklendt, said when asked about our decision to run the ad: “The question isn’t why we would run it… The question is why wouldn’t we. One of [The Warrior’s] nine goals is to ‘Cherish Marquette’s Catholic Identity’ and in this instance we have the opportunity to do so while providing students with a very informative and moving piece of literature.”
Kudos, Katie, couldn’t have said it better myself. All these administrators, Jesuits and professors, so caught up in the culture of intolerance towards truth and consequence, refuse to fight for some Catholic principles they so obviously disagree with. But to all you level-headed observers out there, have no fear. Marquette does not simply belong to these liberal “adults.” It has students who understand right from wrong, who recognize foolish arguments and who will always fight to keep Marquette truly Catholic — true to the Pope and Catechism.
And if us running this advertisement changes one woman’s mind about killing her offspring, I say it’s all worth it.
Late Breaking News: According to Warrior reporter Remington Tonar, the Marquette Tribune will be running a full-page pro-life ad on Thursday that will highlight the fact that babies feel pain during abortions.
Assuming this is, indeed, the case, congratulations. I still wonder why it took three tries to put a pro-life ad in a school newspaper at a Catholic school. I’d be willing to guess that enough people with common sense were disgusted and complained that they had to run it.
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