What To Do About GU? | R. Michael Dunnigan | Catholic World Report
Some are ready to declare canonical penalties against Georgetown “dead on arrival.” They shouldn’t be.
“The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.” — Mark Twain
Father Michael Orsi argues in a June 4, 2012 article for Crisis that, although Exorcist author William Peter Blatty’s contemplated canonical action against Georgetown University “is both noble and correct,” it nonetheless “will be dead on arrival.” Father Orsi does well to point out some of the hurdles that an action like this one faces, but in the final analysis, his judgment is too defeatist and too pessimistic. Blatty’s Georgetown action is by no means “DOA.”
To begin, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I am a canonist and have consulted with some of the organizers who are assisting Mr. Blatty. However, I have never spoken with Mr. Blatty and have not been asked to represent him.
Last month, Blatty—a writer and filmmaker who graduated from Georgetown in 1950—launched a website devoted to collecting signatures for a petition expressing “grave concerns” about the university’s “twenty-one year refusal to comply fully with the law of the Church through the implementation of the general norms of Ex corde Ecclesiae and its eleven year non-compliance with certain particular norms adopted for the United States.” Blatty also posted a letter on the site stating that he is looking into canonical penalties against Georgetown “that will include, among others, that Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic and Jesuit be revoked or suspended for a time.”
I believe that any judgment on Blatty’s action against Georgetown is premature for the simple reason that there is no such action yet. He is indeed contemplating a canonical procedure against Georgetown, but his public letter makes clear that a formal petition is only a possibility at this point (“We may choose to file…” [emphasis added]). Moreover, that public letter also suggests that Blatty is willing to engage in a dialogue with Georgetown about the issues. In fact, I suspect that he greatly would prefer, not to deprive Georgetown of its Catholic identity, but rather to see his alma mater once again embrace that identity with affection and ardor.
Why do some Georgetown students and alumni believe that their university has compromised its Catholic identity? One could point to several recent events that mark the nation’s oldest Catholic university as more of a counter-witness than a witness to its faith:
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