That God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ -- that he was
crucified, died
and rose again to redeem mankind -- is the core belief of Roman
Catholicism.
To testify to those truths and spread that faith, French Jesuits
were among the first
Europeans to come to an American wilderness to convert the Indians.
The stories of
heroes like Fr. Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil, Jean de Brebeuf and the
other North
American martyrs canonized in 1930 were once taught in all
parochial schools.
If you wish to see evidence of the moral confusion of today's
Society of Jesus,
consider: At Georgetown University, the Jesuits are conflicted over
whether or not
crucifixes -- the defining symbol of their faith -- even belong in
university classrooms.
Georgetown's students who raised the matter of the missing
crucifixes in 90 percent
of the classrooms, even non-Catholics, seem to understand the issue
better than the
agonized Jesuit community.
"When you apply to this university, you realize that this is a
Catholic university," said
junior Edwan Fadzillah, a Muslim from Malaysia. "I think it is a
great opportunity for
people of other faiths to gain an appreciation of Catholicism."
"It's a litmus test for Georgetown University," said senior Marcus
Ellison, who
belongs to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The school
"either embraces
Catholicism, or it rejects it."
Exactly. Why would a Catholic university refuse to display the
symbolic expression of
its faith? Rabbi Harold White, who teaches theology and heads the
Jewish ministry at
Georgetown, blurted the truth, "I think they are very afraid that
(putting up crucifixes)
will alienate faculty and staff and students who are not Catholic."
The rabbi was politely told to shut up. For the cosmopolitan
Jesuits of Georgetown
wish to be seen as part of a community of progressive scholars, and
today, it is the
mark of the intellectual that he does not assert truths but is
"tolerant," "open" and
"searching." The Jesuits, however, have two problems. First, the
Church teaches that
its truths are infallible, to be proclaimed to the world. Second,
there is a warning from
the New Testament: If you deny me before men, I will deny you
before my Father in
heaven.
The source of the paralysis in settling the crucifix question is
Fr. Leo O'Donovan, the
university president who is presiding over a lengthy colloquy over
what to do. But
what's to discuss? If Jesuits take permanent vows of poverty,
chastity and obedience
to witness to and proclaim the truths of Catholicism, what is there
to debate? The
Catholic Church is not a democracy that decides where it stands by
majority vote.
And if Georgetown's Jesuits are fearful they will make themselves
unpopular, or
non-believers uncomfortable, how can they call themselves a
Catholic university?
"Frankly, I can't imagine why a university, run by the Society of
Jesus and operating
under a pontifical charter, would have to debate the issue," writes
Cardinal James A.
Hickey of Washington. "The crucifix is a basic, identifying
Catholic symbol. ... It
offends only those who are intolerant of the Catholic faith."
The cardinal may have had in mind the writer at Washington Jewish
Week who, in an
editorial mockingly titled "Don't Crucify Georgetown," declared:
"For many Jews,
Jesus on the cross is a repugnant symbol. It represents two
millennia of bloody
crusades and pogroms that directly led to the Holocaust and Vatican
indifference to
it."
WJW rapped Georgetown's Rabbi White for his "shocking" statement
that "It's good
for our students, through the crucifix, to know that suffering
exists in our world" and
suggested that Georgetown expose its Catholic students to "what
Jews feel when they
see a crucifix hanging in a classroom."
Fr. Thomas Reese of the campus-based Woodstock Theological Center
offered this
explanation for Georgetown's paralysis. "What we're trying to deal
with at a Catholic
university," he said, is "how you intelligently dialogue from
Christian tradition with a
pluralistic culture." But what is there to "dialogue" about if, on
the matter of Catholic
beliefs that the crucifix symbolizes, you have been given, by God
himself, the infallible
truth?
While Georgetown pathetically agonizes over whether to hang
crucifixes in its
classrooms, Alabama high school students are witnessing to their
Christian faith by
defying a federal judge to pray in their classrooms.
"It's rearranging chairs on the Titanic," says an exasperated Fr.
Reese. Unfortunately,
the ill-fated Cunard liner of Fr. Reese's metaphor seems to be
Ignatius Loyola's
Society of Jesus.
