Former Student Defends Georgetown
Georgetown is accused of not being ‘Catholic,’ but it may be the best of example of what the church is supposed to be
Wiliam Blatty, author of The Exorcist and well-known Georgetown alum, recently grabbed media attention when he filed a petition calling for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC to discipline his alma mater. The Jesuit university, the ‘Exorcist’ author claims, no longer merits its Catholic designation due to long-standing patterns of dissent against church teaching. The petition’s Web site
names a litany of offenses the university has committed in
contradiction to its Catholic identity, including Georgetown’s refusal
to submit to the Vatican’s canonical norms for Catholic universities,
hosting controversial student-led plays such as The Vagina Monologues,
and inviting pro-choice speakers such as Kathleen Sebelius to speak at
commencement. So far, the petition’s Web site
claims that some “1200 alumni, students, faculty, (and) parents” have
signed on to “address repeated scandals, dissidence and non-compliance
with church law.”
While Blatty freely names the controversies that offend his
sensibilities, he neglects to mention the groups and activities on
campus that uphold traditional Catholic teaching. Thus, while H*yas for
Choice has a tolerated, but not official, presence on campus, the
Georgetown Right to Life is one of the most active and influential
pro-life groups in the country, host to the annual Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life,
which draws thousands of students during the yearly commemoration of
Roe v. Wade. While Blatty singles out Georgetown’s non-compliance with
Ex Corde Ecclesia, the Vatican’s 1990 set of guidelines for Catholic
universities, he fails to mention the vibrant spiritual life in campus
ministry and countless theology courses that inculcate deep love for
Roman Catholic religious traditions.
Georgetown is, ultimately, a university of political,
religious, and intercultural dialogue. It was there that, nearly 10
years ago, I arrived as a naïve freshman from rural Ohio, where I had
grown up in a world governed by religious and political fundamentalism.
At Georgetown, my friendships with other students, the challenges of
critical coursework, and the open-minded atmosphere on campus challenged
my uncritical assumptions about the nature of truth and life with
others in a pluralistic world. It was this process of spiritual,
intellectual, and social questioning that first led me to a dialogue
with, and then embrace of, the Roman Catholic Church.
The church, Georgetown showed me, is not an exclusive
society of like-minded individuals closed in on itself. It does not
retreat into a world of its own making, but rather engages humanity
through conversation with diverse cultures and current concerns. At
Georgetown, Catholic faith is a lively and dynamic force that
interrogates the presuppositions of all those who are willing to engage
it. Religion’s role in the modern world is everywhere questioned and
tried: in the theology department,
the simple mischaracterizations of other religions are deconstructed
through work in comparative theology and pluralism; at the Berkley Center,
the relationship between faith and public life is considered in terms
of ethical responsibility and the contemporary situation; campus
ministries and programs for members of all religious backgrounds give
students the chance to engage questions of social justice in service to
the poor and vulnerable. All of these university functions, along with
many others, exemplify Georgetown’s mission to form women and men in
service to others for the greater glory of God.
Christianity, indeed, has a long history of interaction
with the world that challenges the status quo. From the first Church
Council of Jerusalem, where the earliest generation of Christian leaders
decided to open the faith to non-practitioners of Judaism, to the
proclamation of Vatican II, where, in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
Catholic bishops called for the church to preserve and encourage the
“genius and talents of the various races and peoples,” Christianity is a
faith that continuously evaluates its message in relationship to the
world and the experiences of ordinary people. The church’s original
mission, given by Christ in Mark 16:15, is to “Go into all the world and
preach the gospel to all creation.” The spirit of the Gospel sends
Christians to interact with and to transform the world, not to reject
and condemn it.
In order to effectively accomplish this task, Christians
employ a wide variety of charisms, or gifts of faith, that God gives
them. Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 how, “There are
different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There
are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different
kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same
God at work.” Paul likens the church to a body: when all of its
individual parts work together, it can effectively spread the good news
of faith. To function properly, however, each part of the church must
recognize and accept the right functioning of other parts. Christians
and their many roles in the faith are not uniform.
William Blatty’s petition does not recognize the value of
diversity within the church. His understanding of Catholicism rejects
its catholicity—that is, its universal nature—by rejecting engagement
with the world and a plurality of spiritual charisms. His
characterization of the faith as an internally-focused religious system
does not reflect Christian commitments to diversity and the need for
dialogue with others. The Catholic faith that I have come to know—a
faith that Georgetown gave me—is far more broad, open-minded, and able
to reach out the world in service. It is this Catholicism, beautiful and
charismatic in its diversity, that fulfills Christ’s call to change the
world with the love of God.
Jason Steidl is a PhD student in Systematic Theology at Fordham University.Labels: Blatty, catholic universities, Exorcist, Fordham, Georgetown
posted by A Jesuit's Jottings at
Thursday, June 13, 2013
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