Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Removing the murals of Columbus at Notre Dame

It w as a bad week for Catholic education—teen boys at a Catholic high school have had their lives threatened after being accosted by both blacks and Indians,  and the most prestigious Catholic university was accused of racism, insensitivity, and worse because of murals.  We all know from the removal of the post Civil War statues of Confederate heroes, and removing the name of a modern day hero (Ben Carson) from a school because of his association with the President, that it won’t end here. Robert Royal comments:

“And there’s another side to this story [murals], because slavery and human sacrifice were common in the areas the Spaniards first explored. As Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican novelist and no great friend to Christianity, put it: “One can only imagine the astonishment of the hundreds and thousands of Indians who asked for baptism as they came to realize that they were being asked to adore a god who sacrificed himself for men instead of asking men to sacrifice themselves to gods.”

Still, I would not much defend those murals. They’re mediocre portrayals of a fantasy version of Columbus bringing the Faith to the New World. In purely historical terms, the cringing and humiliated Native Americans correspond to nothing.

My worry is that something larger is afoot.  Because if Notre Dame is going down this path, it might just as well also cover up all the crucifixes and depictions of Christ on campus. Because some might feel excluded and marginalized by them, in our current dispensation.

Jesus, after all, was a “homophobe” who warned, “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law.” (Matthew 5:17) The Mosaic Law calls homosexual acts an “abomination.” It also says “male and female he created them,” clearly the source of that widespread mental illness “transphobia.””

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2019/01/23/our-tribal-warfare/?

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