A Catholic priest holding a crucifix and a dozen laymen protested a talk by Dylan Mulvaney, one of America’s most controversial transgender celebrities, at St. Louis University, a Jesuit institution, on Monday.

The Catholic university refused to cancel the event, defying Pope Francis’s recent denunciation of gender theory and gender transitioning as “extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”

Mulvaney, a biological male who identifies as a woman, shot to fame after being featured in an advertising campaign for Bud Light, a popular beer brewed by Anheuser-Busch. The brewery lost $4 billion amid boycotts of the brand after showcasing the gay TikTok influencer.

Conservative Speaker Denied

Alexandra Leung, the president of SLU’s chapter of College Republicans, told media the university was not only contradicting Catholic teaching but had rebuffed conservative students who asked permission to host Paula Scanlan, a women’s sports activist, a day after Mulvaney’s talk.

Scanlan, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer, began campaigning for women’s sports to be protected from infiltration by biological males identifying as women after her school allowed transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete on the women’s team and to change in the women’s locker room.

Despite violating Catholic teaching, SLU insists it is “guided by the Roman Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus” and “committed to Catholic education at all levels” while being the “first Jesuit institution to receive the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity award.”

Two Directions at Once

The Jesuit university promotes itself as “one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious Catholic universities.” Since its founding in 1818, “the Catholic and Jesuit traditions have guided the University to serve a higher purpose and to seek the greater good,” it boasts.

According to the university’s website, 50 Jesuits teach and minister at SLU, and the school offers “ample opportunities to worship, participate in the sacraments and grow in faith,” including a Sunday evening student Mass which “consistently draws more than 800 students each week.”

However, in 2021 The College Fix reported that SLU’s health insurance plan was helping pay for students’ gender-reassignment treatments, as well as the full cost of sterilization for female students — both acts the Catholic Church considers to be gravely sinful.

‘Woke Crap’

Leftist activists, meanwhile, praised the school for its decision.

Micah Ballard, director of development and finance at St. Louis’s Metro Trans Umbrella Group, said that “giving a voice to trans people at a Jesuit institution is a big deal” and “cool” since it offers “a very different perspective students aren’t used to.”

Robert Fischer, the spokesperson for Missouri’s LGBTQ+ advocacy group PROMO, said SLU is “walking the walk” as one of many religious communities “that celebrate and showcase trans and LGBTQ communities” as “sometimes those speakers or voices are left out.”

Meanwhile, others took note of the school’s hypocritical stance.

“Who’s paying for this? I hope Missouri taxpayers aren’t paying for this woke crap through some grant,” state Senator Denny Hoskins tweeted.

Mulvaney’s agent, Crista Spadafore, earlier confirmed the school paid a $40,000 honorarium to Mulvaney — “nearly twice as much as it was just a few months ago when he delivered a one-off speech at the University of Pittsburgh for $26,250.”

“Why is he a speaker?” a commentor asked on X. “He brings nothing intellectual to a university or anywhere for that matter. He always begged for attention, and he found that by putting on makeup, wearing women’s clothing and mocking womanhood, he could get it.”

‘Stop Enabling Dylan Mulvaney’

Although event organizers did not make the speech public, according to SLU’s website, Mulvaney was planning to speak on “her experiences as a trans actress, activist, and content creator.”

Mulvaney’s talk was organized by the school’s Great Issues Committee, which aims “to stimulate insightful, provocative debate on current issues that will inform and educate, as a service to the St. Louis University community.”

In 2023, Attitude, Britain’s leading gay men’s magazine, named the 26-year-old Mulvaney its first ever Woman of the Year.

“We need to stop enabling Dylan Mulvaney,” the British magazine Spiked warned in response to the award, noting that the transgender influencer’s success is more evidence “that the once progressive LGBT movement has imploded.”

“It used to fight for the rights and acceptance of same-sex-attracted people and allied itself with women’s equality,” columnist Malcolm Clark wrote. “Now it’s an embarrassment. The LGBT lobby has become a ridiculous parody — a bit like Mulvaney himself.”

Catholic Schools Fund Abortion

Several Catholic universities have gone “woke,” even pandering to radical Islam and funding the killing of unborn babies.

The University of San Diego, which ranks as one of America’s top ten Catholic universities and the third best Catholic school in California, reportedly paid 100% of the negotiated charge in its 2023 Aetna health insurance plan for students seeking to abort their babies.

The prestigious Catholic university, which advertises itself as offering 16 Masses a week and 11 retreats a year, also funds gender-transition surgery, voluntary sterilizations, and surgical and hormone replacement therapy for students intending to change their gender.

USD insists it “cherishes its Roman Catholic heritage” and “supports pro-life tenets,” but also funds female contraceptive prescription drugs and devices as well as sterilization for male and female students.

In 2020, the USD removed the statue of St. Junipero Serra after other statues of the saint were vandalized. The statue remains in cold storage, and the university has refused to say when it will return the statue to its original place.

SLU Hit by Reparations Advocacy

Meanwhile, an advocacy lobby calling itself “The Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved group” demanded in February that the SLU pay $74 billion in reparations to the descendants of slaves who supposedly built the Jesuit school.

“SLU’s participation in the institution of slavery was a grave sin. We acknowledge that progress on our efforts to reconcile with this shameful history has been slow, and we regret the hurt and frustration this has caused,” the university said in a statement, while refusing to commit itself to paying any portion of the sum.

St. Louis University falls within the jurisdiction of the archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri, which is led by Archbishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, a prelate who was lauded by the notorious pro-LGBT Catholic New Ways Ministry for apologizing to lesbian and gay people for the Church having historically “hurt and alienated” them.

 

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.