Did you read The New York Times’ piece, “A Rainbow Over Catholic Colleges: How Georgetown became a gay-friendly campus, despite doctrine, dissent, and ‘The Exorcist” (Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013)? The story highlights the advancement of the my-rights movement on the campus of Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest Roman Catholic University.
Much of the article focused on Georgetown stude
nt Nate Tisa who in March became the first openly gay student body president of the University. To get an idea of how gay-rights leadership writes off, discredits and disregards anyone who opposes them, take note of Tisa’s comments throughout the article.
For example:
Shortly after Mr. Tisa’s victory, William Peter Blatty, the octogenarian author of “The Exorcist,” and Manuel A. Miranda, a fellow alumnus, circulated a petition and 198-page memorandum condemning Georgetown for promoting a culture of “moral relativism” and an ideology of “radical autonomy.” More than 2,000 alumni have signed the petition, which was sent in May to Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, archbishop of Washington. The petition calls on the archbishop to better regulate the university or strip it of its Catholic identity, an unlikely but technically possible outcome.
In other words, Blatty is calling on Georgetown to either get in line with official church doctrine and practice, or to stop identifying itself as Roman Catholic. As the moniker for his “Father King Society” states, he wants to make Georgetown “honest, Catholic, and better.”
When Tisa was asked about the petition, he responded: “They just don’t get it.”
That’s the counter to 192 pages of an official canon lawsuit? — “They just don’t get it”?
The “it” the traditionalists apparently “don’t get” is that these changes are going to come whether the old “octogenarians” (as the NYT writer made a point of calling Blatty) like it or not.
Never mind the fact that God’s complementary design of man and woman, thousands of years of Judeo-Christian sexual ethics or the Bible itself run counter to his own practice, the NYT articles states that “It has taken Mr. Tisa years of reflection to work through how his sexual orientation and his Catholic faith can co-exist.”
Apparently, the “years of reflection” which an undergraduate has already spent in rationalizing his own personal proclivity to sin is worth more than the more than eight decades another alum has spent considering the call to holy living whatever the personal cost. The undergrad’s “years of reflection” are apparently also worth more than the thousands of years of cumulative moral tradition of the Church.
As Tisa clearly states: “We need to bring the Catholic identity into the 21st century.” Or, “Society is changing. And God is in that change.”
To read Tisa is to peer into the vapidness of the my-rights argument.
But not all Hoya students feel compelled to acquiesce to the peer pressure of the gay or my-rights movement. One such student, Andrew Schilling, penned a well-argued editorial for the campus newspaper, “Marriage an Institution Defined by Procreation,” in which he wrote: “True compassion for our L.G.B.T. friends does not mean turning marriage into a legal tool for social inclusion.”
Take note, such open advocacy for “traditional marriage” will become increasingly rare in the coming years, even on the campuses of universities with religious affiliation. After all, those who stand in opposition to the gay-rights or my-rights agenda “just don’t get it” — so the new narrative goes.