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Do Words Count?
The article from an independent newspaper catering to students at Notre Dame University announces the Second Annual “Notre Dame *** Film Festival.”
Catholic Exchange, Oswald Sobrino, 11.29.2005
catholicexchange.org/vm/index.asp?vm_id=1&art_id=30961
It’s not a series about eccentric films. It’s a gay film series bolstered with “two [discussion] panels with acclaimed writers and directors.” Now, since Notre Dame claims to be a first-class academic university, let’s pose some philosophical questions about language — a lot of modern academic philosophy is, after all, focused on language. I am sure Notre Dame’s academic offices have their share of philosophers of language.
So it’s a “gay” film series. No more homosexuals, just “gays.” Of course, the name has an agenda: we are free, happy, and liberated; our detractors are cramped, joyless, and repressed. It’s also called a “” film series. Forget about Fred MacMurray as the innocently funny absent-minded professor (1961) or Jerry Lewis as the heterosexual nutty professor (1963), “” now becomes a forcibly cozy term for homosexuals in general. Finally, we come to the really serious move in the language game: it’s the Notre Dame *** Film Festival. It’s not Latin. It’s French for “Our Lady,” the ever-virgin Mother of God, the recognized icon for centuries for purity of mind and body. You don’t have to be Catholic or even Christian to see the deep irony at play here. Even Muslims venerate the Virgin Mary. Everyone remotely familiar with Western culture knows what she represents
. . .
There is indeed a totalitarian agenda here. It is the agenda that seeks to erase what Catholicism has always taught as a matter of divine revelation: the marital act is a heterosexual act. It is totalitarian because it lies, just as the rulers in Orwell’s 1984 built their entire society on lies. The great lie is that this South Bend school can define Catholicism. The great truth is that God defines Catholicism. Education is about leading us out of misconceptions and lies into the truth, a truth that we do not invent but rather receive. What is going on in South Bend is miseducation worthy of the propaganda efforts Orwell described in his famous novel. I submit that the South Bend school has become a mirage: it looks like a Catholic educational oasis, when in fact it is a wasteland. But I think many of my readers knew that already.
The article from an independent newspaper catering to students at Notre Dame University announces the Second Annual “Notre Dame *** Film Festival.”
Catholic Exchange, Oswald Sobrino, 11.29.2005
catholicexchange.org/vm/index.asp?vm_id=1&art_id=30961
It’s not a series about eccentric films. It’s a gay film series bolstered with “two [discussion] panels with acclaimed writers and directors.” Now, since Notre Dame claims to be a first-class academic university, let’s pose some philosophical questions about language — a lot of modern academic philosophy is, after all, focused on language. I am sure Notre Dame’s academic offices have their share of philosophers of language.
So it’s a “gay” film series. No more homosexuals, just “gays.” Of course, the name has an agenda: we are free, happy, and liberated; our detractors are cramped, joyless, and repressed. It’s also called a “” film series. Forget about Fred MacMurray as the innocently funny absent-minded professor (1961) or Jerry Lewis as the heterosexual nutty professor (1963), “” now becomes a forcibly cozy term for homosexuals in general. Finally, we come to the really serious move in the language game: it’s the Notre Dame *** Film Festival. It’s not Latin. It’s French for “Our Lady,” the ever-virgin Mother of God, the recognized icon for centuries for purity of mind and body. You don’t have to be Catholic or even Christian to see the deep irony at play here. Even Muslims venerate the Virgin Mary. Everyone remotely familiar with Western culture knows what she represents
. . .
There is indeed a totalitarian agenda here. It is the agenda that seeks to erase what Catholicism has always taught as a matter of divine revelation: the marital act is a heterosexual act. It is totalitarian because it lies, just as the rulers in Orwell’s 1984 built their entire society on lies. The great lie is that this South Bend school can define Catholicism. The great truth is that God defines Catholicism. Education is about leading us out of misconceptions and lies into the truth, a truth that we do not invent but rather receive. What is going on in South Bend is miseducation worthy of the propaganda efforts Orwell described in his famous novel. I submit that the South Bend school has become a mirage: it looks like a Catholic educational oasis, when in fact it is a wasteland. But I think many of my readers knew that already.