At the request of the White House, Georgetown University covered upall the symbols in Gaston Hall, before the Great Man spoke, includingIHS, the millennia-old monogram for the name of Jesus Christ.
Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, had adopted themonogram in his seal and it became an emblem of the Jesuit order.
When it comes to rendering unto Caesar, Georgetown is not going tobe outshone by Notre Dame, which stole a march by offering the nation’savatar of abortion a doctorate of laws degree, honoris causa.
Actually, it is regrettable the IHS in Gaston Hall was not coveredup in shame the first week of Lent. For that week Georgetown’s feministand homosexual clubs, such as GU Pride, put on a Gomorrah festivalabout alternative lifestyles called “Sex Positive Week.”
Monday, according to The Newman Club, featured a speaker for BlackRose, which “provides a forum for many different expressions of powerin love and play. This can include dominance & submission, bondageand discipline, fetishism, cross-dressing, to name a few.”
Ash Wednesday’s talk was “Torn About Porn,” advertised as a“discussion about arguably alternative forms of pornography that arenot supposed to be exploitative, but rather radical and empowering.”
Saturday’s talk was by a pornographic film director and was titled “Relationships Beyond Monogamy.”
At Loyola of Chicago that week, the Student Diversity and CulturalAffairs Office presented “Brother to Brother,” a film the NewmanSociety reports, about “a homosexual African-American who istransported in time to cavort with the allegedly homosexual LangstonHughes.”
The movie is said to be part of “a semester-long ‘Color of Queer Film Series,’ sponsored by the university.”
At Catholic Seattle University, that first week of Lent was“Transgender Awareness Week,” featuring a “session on allegedlytransgender Bible heroes and heroines and ‘Criss-Cross Day’ wherestudents are encouraged to ‘come dressed for the day in your bestgender-bending outfit.”
This is surely anecdotal evidence to confirm Newsweek in theconclusion reached in its cover story of Holy Week, “The End ofChristian America.”
Indeed, not only are many once-Catholic colleges and universitiesnow wandering in what Pope Benedict XVI calls a “desert ofgodlessness,” Catholic belief and practice are not remotely what theywere before Vatican II. Where three-fourth of Catholics attended massweekly in the 1950s, today it is one-fourth. A third of all Catholicsraised in the Faith have fallen away.
One in ten American adults is a lapsed Catholic. Catholicism’squarter of the population is maintained only by mass immigration and,secondarily, by conversions.
Self-identified Christians in the United States have fallen from 86percent of the population in 1990 to 76 percent today. Those who saythey have no religion have doubled as a share of the nation from 8 to16 percent. Where 69 percent of Americans said we are a Christiancountry in 1990, only 62 percent say that today.
America is being systematically de-Christianized and secularized.
For the social, moral and cultural revolution of the 1960s, rootedin non- and anti-Christian beliefs and values, has captured theculture, and converted many of the young. Among Americans 18 to 29, afourth profess to be atheist, agnostic, or of no religious faith.
The figure is surely higher among the college young.
Second reason for the triumph of secularism is that it long agocaptured the Supreme Court. Since the Everson decision of 1947,justices have expunged Christianity and all its books and symbols fromthe public square and public schools.
Voluntary prayer, the Ten Commandments, Bible reading, Christmasplays and carols, Nativity scenes, Easter vacation, before-gameprayers, benedictions at graduations — all have been ordered terminatedby unelected judges — against the will of the majority.
Abortion on demand, too, was imposed by judicial fiat.
Thus, as America ceases to be a Christian country, it is ceasing to be a democratic one.
Consider. In every referendum in 16 states, where homosexualmarriage has been on the ballot, majorities ranging from 52 to 86percent have voted to outlaw it as an absurdity and an abomination.
Yet, in Massachusetts, California and Iowa, unelected judges haveimposed it, as they will in other states, regardless of what the peoplewant or how the people vote. For secularism has become the establishedreligion of the American state and judges are the high priests of thenew order.
Yet, one wonders if they know what lies at the end of the road upon which they have set the nation.
For five decades, Americans resisted Godless Communism. If they cometo realize they did so to save Godless Capitalism, or GodlessSocialism, what happens to loyalty and love of country?
To love one’s country, said Edmund Burke, one’s country ought to belovely. If this is not God’s country anymore, whose country is it?
