What do the evil undead and university professors have in common? Almost sounds like I'm leading into a joke, but I'm not. For this post is inspired by the outrage over Catholic Crucifixes that appeared suddenly on the walls of classrooms in a Catholic university."[A]ll the sudden, without any discussion, without any warning, without any intellectual debate, literally during the middle of the night during a break, these icons appear," he said.
Who would have thought it, the one icon that separates the Catholic world from the Christian and secular - the crucifix, appears during the middle of the night in a Catholic university.
Dwayne Eugène Carpenter, chair of the romance languages and literatures department and co-director of the Jewish studies program, thinks the the crucifix is divisive.
"I think it's naive to believe that affixing crucifixes is going to fan the flames of religious devotion. On the other hand, it can have a negative effect on students" who may see the art as an unwelcome sign, he said.
Carpenter told the online magazine the university's department chairs debated the issue in a recent meeting and that he'd like an open forum on the matter.
"It's a Jesuit institution and as such it has every right to place images wherever it wants," he said. "It's just that it's not a very smart thing to do."
Carpenter referred to the issue as an "identity crisis" because the school wants to declare its Catholic affiliation while also appealing to a wide range of prospective students.
"You can't recruit the best by placing crucifixes in every classroom," he said. "You're simply going to limit the number of people who will come here. And I've already heard of several faculty who have said, 'You know, this is not a welcoming place, this is not the place that hired me, and I'll be looking for a job elsewhere.'"
Well, you've got to give the man credit for speaking his mind. The crucifix is divisive, it is offensive, it is confrontational. It shows God, become man, dying in a horrific manner. Most people like their gods sanitised or invisible. Showing God in such a way cuts through the crap. It separates. Nothing wrong with that. You'd kind of expect to find crucifixes in a Catholic university, don't you think?
Which brings me to a joke...
Little Tommy was doing very badly in math. His parents had tried everything; tutors, flash cards, special learning centers, in short, everything they could think of. Finally in a last ditch effort, they took Tommy down & enrolled him in the local Catholic School.
After the first day, little Tommy comes home with a very serious look on his face. He doesn't kiss his mother hello. Instead,he goes straight to his room & starts studying. Books & papers are spread out all over the room and little Tommy is hard at work. His mother is amazed. She calls him down to dinner and to her shock, the minute he is done he marches back to his room without a word and in no time he is back hitting the books as hard as before. This goes on for sometime, day after day while the mother tries to understand what made all the difference.
Finally, little Tommy brings home his report card. He quietly lays it on the table and goes up to his room and hits the books. With great trepidation, his mom looks at it and to her surprise, little Tommy got an A in math. She can no longer hold her curiosity. She goes to his room and says: "Son, what was it? Was it the nuns?" Little Tommy looks at her and shakes his head. "Well then," she replies, "was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms, WHAT was it?" Little Tommy looks at her and says, "Well, on the first day of school, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren't fooling around."
Related Link: Outrage! Crucifixes appear at Catholic university
Professors in distress after Christian symbols found on classroom walls ~ WND