Only Room for One Messiah

Obama comes, Jesus goes. At Georgetown University, Our Lord gets sent to His room when the quality arrives.

From Julia Dunn's story in the Washington Times:

"Julie Bataille from the university's press office e-mailed me that the White House had asked that all university signage and symbols behind the stage in Gaston Hall be covered.

'The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they've done for other policy speeches,' she wrote. 'Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn't high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context.' ("Respectful" to whom? And what is meant here by "out of context"?)

Ms. Dunn continues:

I also noticed the Free Republic blog had photos comparing "before" and "after" depictions of the unfortunate monogram, which the university covered with what looks like a black cloth.

Not every Catholic institution would have caved to quite this extent. Victor Nakas, spokesman for Catholic University, e-mailed me to say several presidents have visited CUA and the most recent administration official to speak there was then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

'I can’t imagine, as the bishops’ university and the national university of the Catholic Church, that we would ever cover up our religious art or signage for any reason,' Mr. Nakas wrote. 'Our Catholic faith is integral to our identity as an institution of higher education.'"

The Drudge Report linked to a similar story on the Catholic News Service website, but the link apparently caused more traffic than the CNS site could handle. It should be live again before to long.

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney