ARTICLES
July/August 2003 ARTICLES
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
No Clue
How Catholic is Mount Saint Mary's?
By Maria Kennedy
On May 10, pro-abortion congresswomen Loretta and Linda Sanchez gave the commencement speech at Mount Saint Mary's College in Los Angeles. Mount Saint Mary's is a Catholic college, under the auspices of the Congregation of Saint Joseph, and serves mostly women. The choice of the Sanchez sisters generated controversy among faithful Catholics, some of whom demonstrated at the commencement.
A college press release explained that it chose the Sanchez sisters in recognition of their "achievement." This achievement, said the May 10 press release, "does not imply an endorsement of their political views but, rather, recognizes how women of humble immigrant heritage can earn a place alongside their fellow citizens at the seat of our democracy -- the United States Congress." College literature frequently says how it educates under-represented Latinas, who most often are the first in their families to attend college.
How did a Catholic college come to invite pro-abortion speakers for its commencement? The May 10 press release, handed out at the commencement, explained the speaker selection process. According to the press release, the selection of the speakers "is a collaborative process that begins with nominations by our students and by members of our Board of Trustees. Final selection is by a committee of the Board of Trustees, which comprises many prominent Catholics." According to a May 7 Los Angeles Times story, Judge Terry Hatter, Jr., a member of the board, had employed Linda Sanchez as a law clerk. "I know Linda and Loretta, and they are just wonderful people," said Hatter. According to the August 31, 1993 San Francisco Examiner, as U.S. district judge, Hatter, in January 1993, had struck down the Pentagon's 50-year-old policy excluding homosexuals from the military and forbade the defense department from discharging or denying enlistment to homosexuals.
One student who graduated from Mount Saint Mary's this spring -- and who asked not to be named "until after they mail my diploma" -- said that the graduates had not indicated they wanted the Sanchez sisters to give the commencement. The student said that, at the beginning of the academic year, "an e-mail was sent out to all of the seniors asking us to choose from three speakers. Maria Shriver was one; I think the other one was Barbara Boxer. I don't remember the third one, but it was someone like Diane Feinstein. I know the Sanchez sisters were not on the list." The student said that it wasn't until two weeks before commencement that the student body knew who the speakers would be. The students, she said, "had no clue who the Sanchez sisters were."
The archdiocese's newspaper, the Tidings, ran a story by Congregation of Saint Joseph sister Nancy Munro on the Mount Saint Mary's commencement and the Sanchez controversy. The student, who had graduated that day, said that, prior to the baccalaureate Mass, Sister Nancy was in the chapel looking for people to interview for her story on the commencement. According to the student, when Munro asked the students about the Sanchez sisters, they didn't know much about them. When she asked the student who was interviewed for this story, the student told her that she was appalled that the Sanchez sisters would be asked to give the commencement speech, given their staunch support of abortion and Loretta Sanchez's insistence on holding a funding raiser at the Playboy mansion during the 2000 presidential campaign. According to the student, Munro seemed to become uncomfortable at her answer. The Tidings did not use the student's quote.
Because the May 10 commencement was marked by pro-life demonstrators outside the campus entrance, police officers were interspersed throughout the campus, some officers standing on rooftops, holding rifles.
Perhaps as odd as the college's choice of commencement speakers was the fact that, at the baccalaureate Mass, board chair, Sister Jill Napier, of the Congregation of Saint Joseph, proclaimed the Gospel. The student I interviewed laughed when asked about this liturgical aberration. "Oh that's nothing," she said. "At the beginning of every semester, Dr. Doud reads the Gospel and gives the homily," said the student. Dr. Doud is Jaqueline Powers Doud, Mount Saint Mary's president.
According to the student, Doud is not well known by the students. "She really didn't mix with us," the student said. Doud became the president of Mount Saint Mary's in 2000, among great fanfare that she would be the first non-religious to head up the institution. A January 5, 2000 Los Angeles Times article said that Doud "was the inside candidate in the seven-month nationwide search. She has spent the last nine years at Mount Saint Mary's, rising from the dean of the faculty and academic vice president to the No. 2 job on campus as provost." The article goes on to say that Doud had been a nun, having "spent the first fifteen years of her adult life as a nun." The article notes that Doud professed vows with the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Doud taught French at Loyola University of Chicago's Mundelein College, which had been staffed by her order at the time. In 1973, Doud decided to leave the order and enrolled at the Claremont School of Theology. "Basically, I wanted to be open to the possibility of marriage," she told the Times in the 2000 interview. Doud married Robert Doud four years later, while she was teaching at the University of La Verne.
Robert Doud was at one time Father Doud, a Missionary Servant of the Most Holy Trinity. Doud had attended the Claremont School of Theology, most likely beginning in 1972. The 1972 P.J. Kenedy directory lists Father Doud as being in residence at St. Madeleine's Catholic Church in Pomona, near the School of Theology in the neighboring city of Claremont. The P.J. Kenedy directory for the previous year, 1971, shows Father Doud residing at the Servants of the Most Holy Trinity House of Residence (for seminarians attending Loyola University).
In 1973, Father Doud was in residence in the diocese of Orange at the Holy Spirit Missionary Cenacle. If Jacqueline married Doud four years after she left her order, the date of their marriage would be 1977. A review of the J.P. Kennedy directory shows no listing for Father Doud for 1977. This writer has not been able to establish whether or not Doud was ever laicized.
As for the situation of an ex-nun being married to an-ex priest, Jacqueline Doud told the Times, "there are lots of my kind around who used to lead a religious life. We are doing a lot of the same things that we used to do in education and health care."
Calls to President Doud's office for comment on this story were not returned.