‘Social Justice’ Activist Receives Honorary Degree from Catholic University, Our Lady of the Lake

Our Lady of the Lake University honored one of their own! The administration of the Sisters of Divine Providence must be quite enamored with the Castros and their progressive agenda because on May 14 they awarded an honorary Ph.D. to Rosie Castro, the mother of Julian and Joaquin Castro.  The Castros twins were introduced to the political arena and ‘Raza Unida’ at an early age by their very liberal mother.
 
Julian Castro, former Mayor of San Antonio and a hardnosed progressive, gave the commencement speech on May 14 to the graduates of OLLU, supposedly a Catholic institution!  The vice president of institutional advancement, Dan Yoxall, had this to say about why Castro was selected to speak, as quoted in an article written by Sylvia Foster-Frau in the Express News.  “He has a lot in common with our students — that was the No. 1 factor why he was selected. We try to find speakers whose lives resonate with the lives of our students.”  If it’s a ‘social justice’ role model they seek, Julian is the man because he is certainly not in sync with the teachings of the Catholic Church!
 
Julian, supposedly a Roman Catholic, was talking about abortion when he was quoted as saying, “We disagree on this, the pope and I.” This quote appeared in an article in the New York Times in 2010.  He is also the first San Antonio Mayor to be the grand marshal for the gay rights parade, again making a very notable division about his abortion and same-sex marriage stance and that of the Catholic Church.   This is the ‘role model’ that was selected to address the 500 or so graduates who received their diploma from OLLU.     
 
There are many one on one interviews with Rosie Castro, so it’s not difficult to know who she is by her own words.  I have never met her, but I have met her sons who are very suave in meeting the public.  Rosie attended Our Lady of the Lake University where she earned two degrees, one in Spanish and one in Sociology.  She received a master’s degree from the University of Texas in San Antonio and spent her early years at Little Flower High School and Little Flower Elementary, according to the oral history interview for Tejano Voices with Rosie Castro in 1996. 
 
Rosie formed her opinion of her native San Antonio and the Alamo at an early age when going to visit the Alamo with her school as she said in her oral history.  “Some of my early memories in school, in elementary and in junior high and high school with the Alamo is, you know, I really, like a lot of kids that were into the Davy Crockett thing. You know that was the myth and how, how great Davy Crockett was and stuff. And so, as you start getting older, you suddenly, I can remember in high school, you know, going to the Alamo and reading some of the stuff that it said there and just being in total shock and never really wanting to go back again. And pretty much, I haven't. The whole idea that this, the Alamo was all about conquering of people and it talked about the Mexicans and terrible. I think it is probably been removed since then, but terrible ways, you know, and so the Alamo was not something that, that I really appreciated.”
 
In a 2010 article with the New York Times Magazine she was quoted as saying,“They used to take us there (The Alamo) when we were school children.  They told us how glorious that battle was. When I grew up I learned that the ‘heroes’ of the Alamo were a bunch of drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them. But as a little girl I got the message — we were losers. I can truly say that I hate that place and everything it stands for.”
 
My research of Rosie Castro led me to her association with the very radical group, the Raza Unida Party, which is now nonexistent, co-founded by Jose Angel Gutierrez.   Rosie was, in fact, the first chairwoman of the Bexar County chapter.   It seems the Raza Unida Party has been whitewashed to lead readers to believe that this group wanted to ‘help’ Mexican Americans achieve their American dream.   Gutierrez was also the head of MAYO, Mexican American Youth Organization before he led Raza Unida.
 
On the contrary, many believed that the group was ‘anti-American’ and way too militant. Even the late Congressman Henry Gonzalez thought that, “MAYO styles itself the embodiment of good and the Anglo-American as the incarnation of evil. That is not merely ridiculous; it is drawing fire from the deepest wellsprings of hate. The San Antonio leader of MAYO, Jose Angel Gutierrez, may think himself something of a hero, but he is, in fact, only a benighted soul if he believes that in the espousal of hatred he will find love. He is simply deluded if he believes that the wearing of fatigues . . . makes his followers revolutionaries . . . One cannot fan the flames of bigotry one moment and expect them to disappear the next.”  
 
In an interview with the Texas Observer in 2015, Rosie said, People said it was radical, but for me, it wasn’t radical, in that the United States is a democracy based on electoral politics, a representation. That’s where we were coming from. We had no representation across the state on city councils, on the state Legislature, on county commissioners’ courts, school boards. We understood that as long as that was the case, you would not get the public policy that helped your community.”  This is a very telling comment signifying that she has not regretted her involvement with Raza Unida and its progressive views.  
 
Researching further, I found that the Raza Unida Party started in Crystal City, Texas at the Campestre Hall by two radicals, Gutierrez and Mario Compean. Gutierrez is the more well-known of the two and was a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. In one of his most contemptible statements he said, “The border remains a military zone.  We remain a hunted people.  Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in this land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years, and we’re a new Mestizo nation.  And they want us to discuss civil rights.  Civil Rights!  What law made by white men to oppress all of us of color female and male!  This is our homeland.  We cannot, we will not, and we must not be made illegal in in our own homeland.  We are not im-mi-grants that came from another country to another country; we are migrants, free to travel the length and breadth of the Americas because we belong here.  We are millions.  We just have to survive.  We have an aging white America.   They are not making babies.  They are dying.  It’s a matter of time.  (Laughter) The explosion is in our population.”  Audio clip http://americanaction.us/index.php/other-matters/evil-organizations/la-r...
 
Gutierrez in his own words: “I was the head of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) in Texas in 1969 having just return from military duty during the Vietnam War. I held a press conference in San Antonio, Texas on April 11, 1969 to announce our organizational plans.”  
 
This is what I said:  (Excerpts)
 
“Only through this program, we of MAYO, see the possibility of surviving this century as a free and complete family of Mexicanos. We will not try to assimilate into this gringo society in Texas, nor will we encourage anybody else to do so.”
 
Questions followed the press statement, particularly from Kemper Diehl, a reporter with the San Antonio Express News. He wrote an article on the press conference and printed his version of an exchange:
 
Q: What do you mean by ‘eliminate the gringo?’
 
A: “You can eliminate an individual in various ways. You can certainly kill him but that is not our intent at this moment. You can remove the base of support that he operates from be it economic, political, social. That is what we intend to do.”
 
Kemper Diehl wrote more: “Gutierrez was again pressed as to intentions of killing gringos ‘if worst comes to worst.’ He replied ‘If worst comes to worst and we have to resort to that means, it would be self-defense. https://texascivilrightsreview.org/2010/07/21/j-a-gutierrez-on-the-origi...
 
What Raza Unida and Jose Angel Gutierrez and in essence Rosie Castro wanted to see happen was the eradication of the ‘Anglo’ in Texas.   From the Castros stance on Catholic teachings it goes without saying that the Catholic Church and its doctrine should also fade away in spite of their Catholic upbringing.   What a merry-go-round with ‘these’ people.  The interviewer for the University of Texas library oral history on Rosie Castro is none other than her friend and mentor Jose Angel Gutierrez. 
 
It used to be that parents would send their children to Catholic schools for a quality education and a solid foundation in the Catholic faith.  It appears that is no longer the case in some instances.  The Castros and their ilk may claim to be Catholic and they may belong to a Catholic parish, but they are not Catholic—not if they advocate what I have outlined above.
 
Surely, in a city of 1.3 million people, OLLU could find commencement speakers and honorees that more closely reflect the Catholic ideals that they are supposed to promote.  There is absolutely no mention about teaching ‘Catholic’ Doctrine, like prolife or traditional marriage at the university.  No, that is not why OLLU exists....’Social Justice’ is the primary reason why the university is attracting so many ‘new’ students and why it might survive.   Again Yoxall was quoted as saying in the Express News that the the growing number of programs there —including an online master’s in social work program that has more than 900 students across 45 states enrolled - likely led to the 100 plus increase in student graduates this commencement compared to previous years.”  If Yoxall has his way, OLLU will be ‘whipping out’ hundreds of ‘social justice activists’ in the future. But the question should be, is this in keeping with Catholic teaching?
 
OLLU proudly states that it is a ‘Catholic’ Institution but fails to promote life by inviting speakers who advocate prochoice.  It follows the guidelines of government Nondiscrimination Policy, Title IX, and sweeps prolife and traditional marriage under the rug.   OLLU has invested their time and energy in indoctrinating students to liberalism, social justice, prochoice and equality for LGBTQ.  This is not what Catholic doctrine is about.     
 
The Catechism of the Catholic Church firmly states:
 
2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.
 
2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
 
2358 Homosexuals must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.
 
The situation in San Antonio of promoting speakers and honoring those that do not respect our Texas history or our American way of life and Catholic faith by ‘Catholic’ universities can only have a negative impact in the community.  There is purpose to OLLU’s promotion of Rosie Castro.  The same article from the Express News states, “She (Rosie) is leading the effort to host symposium next year honoring the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearings that took place on OLLU’s campus.”
 
Just Curious, how long will OLLU be able to get away with their ‘social justice’ politicking before the Catholic faithful catch on and the pendulum swings back to teaching Catholic values so that the students can reach their final destination, heaven?
VIVA LA RAZA????
OLLU NEWS
CASTRO STORY from Express News
 
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