The author of The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty, has filed a complaint with the archbishop of Washington, DC, because he doesn’t think that Georgetown University (above), his alma mater, is being Catholic enough.
According to an article in the Washington Post:
The author says that Georgetown has violated church teaching for decades by inviting speakers who support abortion rights and refusing to obey instructions the late Pope John Paul II issued in 1990 to church-affiliated colleges and universities.
Georgetown should amend its ways or stop calling itself a Catholic or Jesuit institution, Blatty said.
Just imagine how the Baptists feel about Brown University….
Blatty’s petition, signed by about 1,200 other Catholics, complains that Georgetown is not in compliance with Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II’s 1991 statement about Catholic-affiliated institutions of higher learning.
Blatty maintains that recent Georgetown behavior, including staging a performance of the Vagina Monologues, teaching sex education, hosting openly gay Georgetown alumnus Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), and inviting Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak to graduating public policy students last month, violiate the 1991 decree.
Like with diversity recommendations, however, precisely what the late pope’s directive entails is a little ambiguous.
Ex Corde Ecclesiae is full of statements about the importance of Catholic institutions integrating “religious and moral principles with their academic study and non-academic activities” and how “the university community should give a practical demonstration of its faith in its daily activity,” but it doesn’t get all that precise in the details.
There are no specific prohibitions against performance art celebrating the vagina, inviting homosexuals to speak on campus, or even providing instruction about contraception. [Image via]
