SAY WHAT? Georgetown’s Catholic Identity “Has Never Been Stronger”?

Tim Drake, writing in the Catholic Education Daily, reports that Georgetown University has responded to the canon law petition submitted last week to Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington.  The petition, originated by The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty, called for the University to either comply with canon law or be stripped of its right to call itself a “Catholic” institution.

Drake explains:

“Our Catholic and Jesuit identity on campus has never been stronger,” Rachel Pugh, director of communications told the student newspaper The Hoya. “Academically, we remain committed to the Catholic intellectual tradition. We are proud of the countless ways that our students put their faith into action through service and justice programs.”

The completed petition documents abuses of Catholic identity at Georgetown University and non-compliance with Church law for Catholic universities. The group is seeking remedies “including, if made necessary, the removal or suspension of top-ranked Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic and Jesuit in its fundraising and representations to applicants,” according to leaders.

But wait: 

• Isn’t this the university which removed the crosses from its classroom walls, so as not to offend Muslims and others?
• The university which invited pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius, head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the architect of the controversial birth control mandate, to speak at commencement?
• The university which now offers health care benefits to the same-sex partners of its faculty?
• The university with a pro-abortion student group, H*yas for Choice, which offers on-line instruction on how and where to obtain condoms, birth control pills, “emergency contraception,” and abortions, and which promotes internships with almost every major pro-abortion advocacy organization and political committee?
• Isn’t this the university attended by Sandra Fluke, the poster woman for contraception who testified before Congress, asking that the government pay for her birth control?
• This is the university where some 70 faculty members signed a letter of complaint after Cardinal Francis Arinze told graduates and others at the 2003 commencement ceremony about Church teaching regarding the family.  Cardinal Arinze’s “offensive” statement, which resulted in some faculty and students walking out, was:

“In many parts of the world, the family is under siege.  It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.  It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by Divorce.”

Yes, I thought so.

Here is my original post, explaining Blatty’s campaign to force the Cardinal’s hand, in an attempt to make his alma mater Georgetown University step in line with the Church whose name it holds.