The Real Deal: How a Philosophy Professor With a Checkered Past ...

[struggle4progress]

... Became the Most Influential Catholic Layman in George W. Bush's Washington


Deal Hudson

By Joe Feuerherd
Washington

Editor's note: Deal Hudson announced Aug. 18 that he would be giving up his position with the Republican National Committee in reaction to questions posed by "a liberal Catholic publication."
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Hudson's rise to influence and his status as public arbiter of Catholic morals is all the more remarkable given that almost 10 years to the day of the 2004 St. Patrick's Day celebration, the then-Fordham University philosophy professor stood accused of breaching the bounds of the professor-student relationship. According to documents obtained by NCR, Hudson invited a vulnerable freshman undergraduate, Cara Poppas, to join a group of older students for a pre-Lenten "Fat Tuesday" night of partying at a Greenwich Village bar. The night concluded after midnight in Hudson's Fordham office, where he and the drunken 18-year-old exchanged sexual favors. The fallout would force his resignation from a tenured position at the Jesuit school, cost him $30,000, and derail a promising academic career.
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Today, his columns and e-mail missives can get a staff person at the U.S. bishop's conference removed from a job or force a response from the conference's general secretary on the bishops' commitment to support the Federal Marriage Amendment; a year ago, his pique over a meeting between some American bishops and a group of "dissidents" led leaders of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy to spend a day with their conservative critics.
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Says a conservative Catholic activist: "The White House has a Catholic strategy and its name is Deal Hudson."
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http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/bn081904.htm

[cindyw]

1. You alll know that this guy got an employee of the Bishop's council fired

for supporting Kerry. This man is the leader of the Catholics for Kerry yahoo group and Hudson saw his comments and put on pressure till he lost his job. This person is one of us. He is an internet activist. If it can happen to him it can happen to all of us. This man Ono, is a wonderful person and has continued to help in the effort, even after his sacrifice.

>>Still, Hudson does not shy away from the political limelight. In May he told the Washington Post that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry should be denounced from the pulpit "whenever and wherever he campaigns as a Catholic." Politics and religion fully meshed earlier this year when Hudson led an effort to oust a low level employee, Ono Ekeh, from his job at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for African American Catholics (NCR, April 23) because Ekeh hosted a "Catholics for Kerry" Web site.

"Look," wrote Hudson in his widely circulated e-mail column, "it's one thing for a Catholic to be a pro-life Democrat -- that in itself is a perfectly legitimate position and consistent with our Catholic faith. However, it's completely unacceptable to follow Ekeh and trade away our pro-life responsibilities."

Ekeh was forced to resign.

Politics aside, did Hudson have any personal regret that Ekeh, a father of three young children, had lost his job? Not in the least.

"If you're going to play in the sandbox," Hudson told NCR, "then you have to take the consequences of your public utterances and your public actions." In a recent fundraising letter, Hudson pledged that Crisis would be taking "a close look at some of the bishops who are allowing their local politicians to get away with" the "deception" of calling themselves Catholic while voting for abortion rights.<<

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Why am I not surprised that this guy has a shady sexual history?

:shrug:

[KoKo]

3. :kick:

:kick:

[Fovea]

4. Because you don't do as I do

you do as I say, or we will fuck you up.

Welcome to the theocracy, chumps.