February 2002

Has the "Holy Cross" In Holy Cross College Been Crossed Out?

Is my alma mater, Holy Cross College, Catholic anymore? I understand that students need take only one course from the “Religious Studies” Department (no longer called the Theology Department) in order to graduate, and that single course can be “Islam.”

In surfing the A-Z site index at www.holycross.edu, one can obtain details about “Abigale” (the association of bisexuals, gays, and lesbians) and also learn about “ALLIES,” which is the support group for Abigale at Holy Cross. A visit to “Admissions” reveals a list of “alumni of distinction,” wherein David Holmes (’94), a disc jockey for MTV, is given equal billing with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (’71). (According to the Wall Street Journal, MTV broadcasts “gross humor, sex and worse to teenagers.”)

Four alumni of Holy Cross have become so fed up with the deterioration and secularization of the school that they have written a letter of appeal, for which they are gathering signatures, to be sent to the College’s President and Trustees. According to the letter, half or more of the faculty (it controls the curriculum) is non-Catholic, even though 95 percent of the student body is Catholic. Homosexual and bisexual groups are actually funded by the College. In October, a month the Church dedicates to the Virgin Mary, the College observes Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Week. Then there is the “student profile” from the Chaplain’s office, which is included in the letter from the four alumni, according to which students do not do the following: “go to mass regularly,” “go to confession,” “hold themselves accountable to much church teaching.” But, hey, they are “very active sexually.” Well, you get the idea.

Those Holy Cross alumni who wish to see the letter and sign it should write to: Four Alumni of the College of the Holy Cross, c/o E. Kerby, 379 Harvard St., Whitman MA 02382.

While we wait for Holy Cross to get back to the Truth, who is Jesus, I urge Catholic parents of bright high school students to consider Thomas Aquinas College, Christendom College, or Steubenville. Or, if they seek a university, send them out here to the University of Nebraska, where the on-campus Newman Center offers two Masses daily (three on Sunday), Confessions 6½ hours a week, and whose members pray 24 hours a day, seven days a week, outside Lincoln’s Planned Parenthood abortuary throughout Lent.

Walter V. O'Farrell

Lincoln, Nebraska

Expose the Works of Darkness

Thank you for your courageous apostolate. Don’t let anyone convince you that you are too hard-edged or caustic. Such are the intimidation tactics of our enemies and their useful idiots. If anything, you are too restrained, given the dark hour our beloved Church is living through. The heretics would love nothing more than our timidity or silence.

Robert Carballo

Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Stolinsky's Thesis Confirmed

Your December issue carried six letters responding to David Stolinsky’s article “‘Except Jews’: A Double Standard for Israel” (NOR, Oct.). I was surprised and dismayed by these letters. They make me wonder if Catholic anti-Semitism — something I had thought largely cast aside in the wake of the Holocaust and under the leadership of John Paul II — still infects us. It is hard to imagine any other explanation for such unfair and scornful treatment of Israel.

Many of the letters claim that the territory of Israel was “stolen” from the Palestinians. That is a gross distortion, and one for which there is today little excuse. There was never a “Palestinian nation,” and Jews bought thousands of acres in the area before the State of Israel existed. But this is not the place to recount Middle East history; mountains of information are available on the Web and elsewhere. But does such information matter to the authors of these letters? None of them reflects much interest or awareness of Israeli/Jewish answers to their accusations.

Letter-writer Albert Doyle claims that “Israel is in no danger from its neighbors.” That a man could write such a thing after those neighbors have repeatedly launched wars against Israel is incredible. It is more amazing in light of the implacable hostility against Israel in the government-controlled Arab media, hostility which one may review any day at the “MEMRI” webpage.

One may criticize Israeli policies on various points; many supporters of Israel have done so. But elemental fairness demands that one remember that those are the policies, or mistakes, of a state which must concern itself every day with survival, and which almost daily loses women and children to terrorists. After September 11th most Americans support vigorous action against terrorists at home and abroad. Such action is the right duty of any people attacked in this way. Except, it seems, the Jews. I’m very sorry to see Stolinsky’s thesis confirmed by those letters.

James F. O'Callaghan

Maple Valley, Washington