U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is set to receive an award from Catholic Memorial despite supporting policies opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
The all-boys preparatory school in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston plans to honor Walsh at its annual gala on Thursday, April 1. CM will give the Dorchester native, who served as Boston’s mayor from 2014 to 2021, the school’s Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice Medal.
Rice (1762-1844) is the founder of the Irish Christian Brothers. the Catholic religious order that founded and sponsors Catholic Memorial.
Catholic Memorial praises Walsh, who identifies as Catholic, but makes no reference to his view of social issues — where which includes enthusiastic support for legal and publicly funded abortion and for homosexuality advocacy.
“A lifelong champion of equity and fairness, and a proud product of the City of Boston, Secretary Walsh leads the U.S. Department of Labor with a strong connection to working people, and a commitment to creating an economy that works for all,” Catholic Memorial’s event page says of Walsh.
Catholic Action League executive director and Catholic Memorial alumnus C. J. Doyle expressed his disappointment with the school’s decision in a statement he emailed to NewBostonPost:
The decision of Catholic Memorial to confer an award on Marty Walsh — a militant proponent of abortion — is a grave scandal and a treacherous betrayal of perennial Catholic teaching about the sanctity of innocent human life from conception to natural death. It is a cruel abandonment of the helpless unborn and a callous insult to the faithful Catholics of the pro-life movement.
This decision is also a flagrant violation of the explicit provisions of the 2004 directive from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholics in Political Life, which states: The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.
The message CM is sending to its students is toxic. By this award, CM is telling its students that support for the mass murder of the unborn is morally acceptable, that those who advocate such killings are respectable members of the Catholic community, and that those who reject Catholic principles, to conform to the dominant secular culture, are role models to be emulated.
No rational person can be reasonably expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to abortion when an elite Catholic institution confers an award, named after a future saint, to a politician who wanted to make Boston a sanctuary city for abortions.
Thomas Harvey, chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance to Stop Public Funding of Abortion told NewBostonPost that Walsh’s getting an award from a Catholic school on April 1 is good timing.
“The president of Catholic Memorial School has called Marty Walsh an ‘incredible role model for our students’,” Harvey said by email. “That statement itself is incredible — especially considering it came from the president of a Catholic school. Walsh is a role model only if you want your students to be ardent supporters of the bloody business of killing helpless babies in the womb. Appropriately enough, Walsh is getting the big award on April Fools Day.”
Robert Joyce, president of the Pro-Life Legal Defense Fund, told NewBostonPost that Catholic Memorial should reverse the decision. Joyce said:
As a graduate and long-standing CM supporter – having formerly served as president of its alumni association and on its board of directors – I repeatedly tried to point out the obvious impropriety of CM publicly honoring Martin Walsh. Unfortunately, CM chose not to address the substantive points raised regarding its betrayal of clear and authoritative Catholic guidance.
It should be easy for an institution named Catholic Memorial to steadfastly defend all Catholic teaching. But apparently, and shamefully, it is not.
It is never too late to make the right decision. Even at this late date, either CM should rescind its decision to award Martin Walsh the Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice Medal or he should decline to accept it. Those are the only ways to properly honor CM’s motto, “Conquer Evil by Doing Good.”
Walsh supports legal abortion and efforts to remove restrictions on it. He supported the ROE Act in 2019. The bill lowered the age of girls who need parental or judicial consent to obtain an abortion In Massachusetts from 17 and younger to 15 and younger. It also eliminated language from existing Massachusetts law that requires doctors to try to save the life of a baby born alive after an attempted abortion.
Walsh also supported the original version of the bill that would have eliminated parental or judicial consent for girls of any age.
As mayor, he renamed Worcester Square in the city’s South End to honor abortionist Kenneth Edelin, who was convicted of suffocating a baby following a failed abortion in 1975. In November 2016, he also said that Boston should become a sanctuary city for abortion, if Roe v. Wade were overturned.
Walsh also supports pro-homosexuality and pro-transgenderism advocacy. He supported same-sex marriage as a member of the Massachusetts legislature, as early as 2004. He signed onto an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage in 2017. And in 2018, he supported Question 3 on the November ballot. It affirmed gender identity as a protected class in the Commonwealth.
Walsh has advocated against the Catholic Church’s teachings on contraception. He supported condom distribution in Boston Public Schools.
Terrence Donilon, Secretary for Communications & Public Affairs for the Archdiocese of Boston, would not comment on the matter. He told NewBostonPost in an email message, “I need to refer you back to CM.”
Catholic Memorial communications director Michael Persson defended the school’s decision in an email message to NewBostonPost.
“We are aware that one of our alumni has gone public with his opinion of the school’s selection of Secretary of Labor and former Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh as the recipient of one of our key awards at Catholic Memorial’s Spring 2022 Gala,” Persson wrote. “A few hundred alumni, school families and generous supporters are helping us raise much needed scholarship funds, which are given to more than 60% of our students, many of whom would not be able to attend our school without the aid.”
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