{"id":6282,"date":"2006-08-28T09:57:46","date_gmt":"2006-08-28T09:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/georgetown-blues.html"},"modified":"2006-08-28T09:57:46","modified_gmt":"2006-08-28T09:57:46","slug":"georgetown-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/georgetown-blues.html","title":{"rendered":"Georgetown Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jody Bottum at First Things comments on Georgetown U. rediscovering its Catholic identity:<\/a><\/p>\n

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But now, at last, Georgetown has rediscovered its Catholicism, at least long enough for a Protestant employee of Campus Ministries to send a letter to six evangelical groups, kicking them off campus. The story made the Washington Post<\/span><\/a><\/em> and the Washington Times<\/span><\/a><\/em> this weekend, with the kind of headlines the public-relations office hates to see: \u201cGeorgetown Bars Ministries from Campus,\u201d \u201cGeorgetown U. Ejects Private Ministry Groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Washington Times<\/em>, \u201cthe decision\u2014which affects a few hundred students belonging to six Christian groups\u2014forbids the ministries from having any \u2018activity or presence\u2019 on campus, including worship services, retreats or helping students move into their dorms. The groups also are prohibited from using the Georgetown name in publicity.\u201d<\/p>\n

You always have to be a little wary of campus fights. American colleges invariably have their infighting\u2014and when it spills over into public view, conflicts of personality and battles over turf can clothe themselves in grand claims of principle. Still, there was something odd going on last year when Campus Ministries demanded that the evangelical groups sign a statement promising not to \u201cproselytize nor undermine another faith community.\u201d And there was something even odder when it was done in the name of the school\u2019s Catholic tradition\u2014by the Protestant chaplains in the official Georgetown office.<\/p>\n

The problem, of course, finally boils down to this: The evangelical groups represent only a few hundred students, but they are strongly pro-life and opposed to homosexual marriage. The mainline Protestant employees of Campus Ministry find such things embarrassing, and so they kick the evangelicals off campus, employing the power of the officially Catholic chaplain\u2019s office and the rhetoric of the school\u2019s Catholic identity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jody Bottum at First Things comments on Georgetown U. rediscovering its Catholic identity: But now, at last, Georgetown has rediscovered its Catholicism, at least long enough for a Protestant employee of Campus Ministries to send a letter to six evangelical groups, kicking them off campus. The story made the Washington Post and the Washington Times…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGeorgetown Blues - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/georgetown-blues.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Georgetown Blues - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jody Bottum at First Things comments on Georgetown U. rediscovering its Catholic identity: But now, at last, Georgetown has rediscovered its Catholicism, at least long enough for a Protestant employee of Campus Ministries to send a letter to six evangelical groups, kicking them off campus. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}