Remember that famously former Catholic University that insists that it still has a Catholic and Jesuit “Identity”? (Whatever that means)
Well here is your Catholic “Identity” at work. From Julia Duin at the Washington Times.
Last week, I got a curious tip. Protestants at Georgetown University have been directed to sponsor an event to be “welcoming” to the new campus gay rights center.
Leaders of Georgetown’s council of 12 Protestant ministries are meeting Jan. 12 to discuss just how to do this.
I began calling around. Four evangelical Protestant chaplains, all of whom are from ministries that believe homosexual activity is sinful, confirmed they got this mandate from the Rev. Constance C. Wheeler, the lead Protestant chaplain, who was passing along instructions from the president of Georgetown University, John J. DeGioia.
Yeah yeah. What is an identity after all? The dictionary says that identity can be defined as “the state or fact of being the same one as described.” But that definition is way too limiting. Obviously, Georgetown is not the same as described. The say Catholic but do un-Catholic things. They even make other people do un-Catholic things.
Can we all do this? Can I be un-something but still claim to have a something identity?
If I steal things, curse at passers by, and occasionally key cars in the McDonald’s parking lot can I still have an identity of a good person? Why not.
Oh I know, I want to have a identity of a small Asian woman. No wait, that is weird. Scratch that. Perhaps I can have a super hero identity or a evil genius identity or a Ted Danson identity. If Georgetown can make up an identity, why can’t I?
The possibilities are endless.
January 8, 2009 at 3:10 am
From a comment I left on another blog last year:
…a distressing note about Georgetown University. My dad got his PhD there in 1968, and man, has that place changed. I arrived a little early yesterday and thought I would visit the Blessed Sacrament in Dhalgren Chapel. Sorry! Chapel’s closed. I guess they’re renovating it inside, but that’s just a guess. There are no signs posted, just a KEEP OUT on the front door. Well, I’d really lost my temper in the morning and felt bad about it. A good sacramental confession was in order. Dropped by the Campus Ministry office which is hard by the registration tables for the debate. The young lady in there looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if there was a priest available for confession. She suggested I walk over to the Jesuit residence. Well, they used to live next to the chapel, but they’ve moved into a new building down on the other end of the campus. I walked down there, and you can’t get inside without being buzzed in. There’s an apartment-building-style directory with buttons on the front door. One button was marked “Minister,” so I pushed it. Just as I pushed it, a woman saw me through the glass and opened the door a crack. Could she help me? I told her what I wanted and she told me to go to the Campus Ministry office. I said that they’d sent me. She sighed and said she would have to talk to them about that, because they shouldn’t be sending people here, etc. No priests available. I said “You can’t visit the Blessed Sacrament. You can’t make a confession. Is this or is this not a Catholic university?” She also looked at me like I was some kind of nut and closed the door with a quick “sorry.” Well, they’re building huge new buildings all over the campus, which these days resembles a small city, and there are cops everywhere. As I walked back to Healy Hall, I saw Ramadan posters everywhere, and passed the meditation and yoga center, which is run by the inter-religious dialogue center, and which was open, of course. Back at Healy Hall, a group of about twenty students wearing pro-gay t-shirts and carrying a rainbow flag were attempting to storm the entrance, and were being kept out by a cordon of
campus police. They were chanting and raising a ruckus. I don’t know what they wanted–but I can guess.
[Of course, now I know what they wanted: a campus gay center. And they got it.]
January 8, 2009 at 7:39 am
interesting; and yet they allow more EF masses a week than notre dame and ave maria
January 8, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Darn those public schools.
— Mack
January 9, 2009 at 12:30 am
I won’t make too many excuses for Georgetown’s Catholic identity, but in my (very recent) experience as a student there, Dahlgren Chapel was always open, with the exception of many Saturday afternoons when it was being used for weddings. There was a period of time during the ’07-’08 school year when the chapel was suddenly and unexpectedly closed because part of the back wall collapsed during Mass. It was a Sunday; the remainder of Masses for that day were hastily moved to Gaston Hall, and Masses for the rest of the time that the chapel was closed were rescheduled to Holy Trinity across the street. If memory serves, yes, this was approximately around the time that the President’s office was being stormed by PRIDE groups, so that may have been what you encountered as far as not being able to visit the Blessed Sacrament. I can’t answer to anything else you experienced, except that I don’t believe that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with yoga and Ramadan posters at a Catholic University.
January 9, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Scarlett,
You mean you don’t see anything wrong with yoga and Ramadan advertisements on a Catholic University apart from the fact that yoga is one of the main proselytizing efforts of Hinduism (also known as paganism – remember Hinduism holds that Jesus might be divine, in which case he would be just one among many, like the 12-armed goddess of death or the giant elephant god of generosity) and that Ramadan is a key holiday for a war cult that has been repeatedly and vociferously condemned by popes for the past 1200 years? Apart from that, right? Then I agree with you.
January 9, 2009 at 1:08 pm
This comment has been removed by the author.
January 9, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I agree with Scarlett. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with those things on campus. I merely mentioned them to illustrate some irony, that they are readily available while the Catholic sacraments seemed not to be.