{"id":274,"date":"2009-02-15T21:08:26","date_gmt":"2009-02-15T21:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html"},"modified":"2009-02-15T21:08:26","modified_gmt":"2009-02-15T21:08:26","slug":"cross-purposes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html","title":{"rendered":"Cross Purposes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"St.<\/span>Is Boston College Catholic? No, that’s not a joke, at least not to those whose hackles start raising at the phrase “in the Jesuit tradition.” But it seems BC, and specifically its president, Fr. William P. Leahy, SJ, are moving to re-emphasize the Jesuit school’s Catholic bona fides by installing crucifixes or religious art in all 151 classrooms. The administration is also installing religious art (such as the statue of St. Ignatius, which I like, in this Globe photo) around campus.
\nThe crucifixes were put up over the Christmas break, and reactions have started bubbling up in news coverage. At his blog, Globe religion reporter Michael Paulson<\/a> notes “Cardinal Sean’s” online appreciation<\/a> for the move, as well as Michael’s own Globe story<\/a>, plus a Herald story<\/a> that (no surprise) stresses the conflictual angle more.
\nNon-Catholic, primarily Jewish faculty seem to be those most offended, understandably so, in my view. It’s hard to tell how deep the controversy runs–BC’s student body is 70 percent Catholic. But I think in such matters the sensibilities of the minority, especially Jews for whom the crucifix is a symbol with terrible historical echoes, have to be taken into consideration.
\nThe crowing by some (like the folks at the Cardinal Newman Society) and others in the conservative Catholic blogosphere about a victory for their side and against Jesuitical laxness is an unseemly triumphalism, to me. Using the cross as a battle standard isn’t my idea of what Jesus had in mind. The (apparent) abruptness of the crucifix installation without widespread consultation seems to have been a mistake, if that was the case. Though I wonder if this move could ever have been made without controversy.
\nAll that said, I like the idea of a visible Catholic identity like this, and I think the BC move a good one. I don’t see how crucifixes in classrooms would automatically turn a first-rate university into a parochial backwater, intellectually (one of the critics’ arguments). A Catholic university can be mediocre with or without crucifixes in classrooms. And it seems to me crucifixes aren’t talismans that guarantee a school’s Catholicity or fidelity or whatever some think they will do. But they are reminders of a school’s heritage, its orientation today, and of course a larger spiritual and Catholic vision of education and life–as well as the most profound sort of mnemonic for those who believe in the Cross.
\nHow to take other views into accountin a genuine way? I don’t know. But it is a Catholic university, and presumably students and faculty know that when they apply. I do recall hearing a fairly convincing argument as to why crucifixes should not be part of classroom decor, but the fact that I can’t recall the reasoning or its source means it didn’t make that much of an impression. (Besides, I forget everything these days.)
\nIn any case, I welcome dissenting views or enlightenment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Boston College Catholic? No, that’s not a joke, at least not to those whose hackles start raising at the phrase “in the Jesuit tradition.” But it seems BC, and specifically its president, Fr. William P. Leahy, SJ, are moving to re-emphasize the Jesuit school’s Catholic bona fides by installing crucifixes or religious art in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nCross Purposes - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cross Purposes - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Is Boston College Catholic? 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No, that’s not a joke, at least not to those whose hackles start raising at the phrase “in the Jesuit tradition.” But it seems BC, and specifically its president, Fr. William P. Leahy, SJ, are moving to re-emphasize the Jesuit school’s Catholic bona fides by installing crucifixes or religious art in…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html","og_site_name":"Pontifications","article_published_time":"2009-02-15T21:08:26+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/St.%20Ignatius%20at%20BC--Globe%20foto.jpg"}],"author":"David Gibson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html","name":"Cross Purposes - Pontifications","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/St.%20Ignatius%20at%20BC--Globe%20foto.jpg","datePublished":"2009-02-15T21:08:26+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-15T21:08:26+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/St.%20Ignatius%20at%20BC--Globe%20foto.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/files\/import\/imgs\/St.%20Ignatius%20at%20BC--Globe%20foto.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/cross-purposes.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Cross Purposes"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/","name":"Pontifications","description":"Catholic Faith and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/122b0877ab87552bb8f14c366dd43e71","name":"David Gibson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/19b\/19bb39c535cd2d776c73c7941f42622cx96.jpg","caption":"David Gibson"},"description":"DAVID GIBSON is an award-winning religion journalist, author, filmmaker, and a convert to Catholicism. He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}