(Posted 05/06/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) Now that Pope Benedict has unchained the traditional Latin Mass and rehabilitated the Society of St. Pius X, perhaps he can begin cleaning up the Church in America. The top priorities are these: first, purging the perverts from the chanceries and turning them over to police where necessary; second, scouring the Catholic universities that are molesting the minds of the students who attend them. Taking care of the first will help take care of the second, and Benedict XVI has shown Catholics that he listens.

The Church’s homosexual problem is well known. The priesthood is plagued with sexual libertines who have undermined the prestige, authority and sanctity of the Church. The problem with colleges is less well known, but because colleges shape minds, the damage done to the Church spiritually might be much greater, and it needs the kind of exposure the dastardly Paul Shanley received. One hopes the Holy Father is aware of the carnal shenanigans with which Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic college in America, opened Lent. Or that two days after Easter, the university infamously covered up the Jesuit IHS monogram, which symbolizes the name of Jesus, for President Barack Hussein Obama’s speech on economics at Gaston Hall. And that Catholic colleges routinely invite pro-abortion politicians to deliver speeches. The latest affront to Catholic sensibility in that regard is Notre Dame University’s invitation to Obama, a radical supporter of abortion, to give the commencement address at Notre Dame University on May 17.

Anyone who doesn’t know about the Catholic college problem can check in with the Cardinal Newman Society, which monitors such doings. And Catholics who want to rectify it must speak up. Catholics could rid the Church and its universities of these problems by waging a campaign against them with the same tenacity as the one they waged for the Latin Mass.

‘Sex Positive’ Week

Catholic Hoyas who aren’t hip to the campus obsession with sexual deviance were forced to endure “Sex Positive Week.” The best description of this lubricious insanity is to quote the Vox Populi blog of the Georgetown Voice, the campus newspaper, which published the week’s roster of speakers:

Tristan Taormino. The self-proclaimed “anal sexpert,” author, and pornographic director will be speaking in ICC 115 on Saturday at the event “Relationships Beyond Monogamy.” Her racy bibliography includes Opening Up:  A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships and True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion. [The day before the Georgetown event, Taormino offered a talk on “Anal Pleasure, 101 in downtown Washington, D.C.]

Jenny Block. The author of Open: Love, Sex & Life in an Open Marriage will be speaking at the same event. But if the first chapter of her book (PDF), which sincerely discusses the difficulties of modern women, is any indication, she won’t be anything like Taormino.

Last night’s “Torn about Porn” event, a discussion about whether images from No Fauxxx shown in a slideshow are “Sex Positive”—that is, affirming rather than objectifying or exploitative, like sex-negative porn. I attended this for tomorrow’s article. While you can construe the ten or so images in the slideshow as ‘offensive,’ the conversation was grounded, with most students concluding that porn is porn, and these images in particular are just “porn with hipsters in it.’

Mitzi from Black Rose, a D.C.-based bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism organization “that hosts, among other things, educational classes revolving around BDSM activities, issues, and safety.” She spoke at Monday night’s “Sex Positive … What’s that?”

Ricci Levy of the Woohull Freedom Foundation, a group which “educate[s] the public on the importance and value of sexual freedom and counter the arguments of groups seeking to restrict sexual rights” (think Lawrence v. Texas) and “oppose[s] abstinence-only sex ‘education’ and endorse an age-appropriate, comprehensive approach to sex education.” She also appeared at Monday night’s “Sex Positive … What’s that?”

Unsurprisingly, a statue of the Virgin Mary was vandalized at the school, and given the menu of perversion listed above and the school’s proximity to this country’s leftist Catholics in politics, it would be even less surprising if the vandal were a Catholic. No matter. God knows who the culprit is.

Elsewhere in the country, Loyola University of Chicago sponsored a semester-long film series called The Color Of Queer, which you can learn about at a “queer events” link at the school’s official Web site. The day before Lent began, Loyola prepared its Catholic students for the 40 days of fasting, abstinence and penance by showing Brother to Brother, a film about black homosexuals. As the website says, the film:

explores the life and struggles of black, gay artists in the present and past. Anthony Mackie stars as Perry Williams, a young man dealing with the strife involved with being both African-American and a homosexual in contemporary New York. He is shunned by his father for his sexual identity and wary of being viewed as a sell-out by black peers when his work gains a white audience. When Williams meets an aging poet who was involved in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s, he suddenly finds himself transported back in time and cavorting with the likes of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Among such legends, Williams is able to gain perspective about his own life.

The trailer on YouTube quite naturally equates racial prejudice with what we now call “homophobia.”

Last in this rogues’ gallery of Catholic campuses is Seattle University. This estimable institution put together Transgender Awareness Week,” which  began two days before Ash Wednesday. It was nothing to be alarmed about, however. The offering to raise “awareness” on Feb. 24 was a “Transgender Bible Study” that presented “trans Bible heroes and heroines” for those who “wondered whether there was a connection between transgender people and the Bible.”

Most normal people haven’t wondered that. Neither have most Catholic collegians. And what that “connection” is would likely mystify most biblical scholars who can’t divine what “heroes” of the Bible were afflicted with the desire to mutilate themselves.

Sadly enough, none of these “student activities” are new. For years, the Newman Society, with some degree of success, has been fighting the presentation of The Vagina Monologues on Catholic campuses. Fewer Catholic colleges are showing this pornography to their students, down from a high of 32 in 2003 to just 15 in 2009. Then again, as one commenter at a website observed, the horse is out of the barn. The V-Day phenomenon the “play” inspired is now world-wide, according to its site.

How inspiring. The president of Notre Dame University, Father John Jenkins, refused to cancel the play in 2006. “‘The Vagina Monologues’,” he said, “can bring certain perspectives on important issues into a constructive and fruitful dialogue with the Catholic tradition.” Frighteningly, despite a character who says her seduction by an adult lesbian was liberating, and despite the play's flatly revolting language and images, this priest wrote that the important issues were “academic freedom” and reinforcing the play's putative purpose: to combat violence against women. This last, of course, is an egregious lie.  Despite the play’s obvious hostility to the Faith and normal healthy sexuality, it is not “overt and insistent in its contempt for the values and sensibilities of this University.” Project Sycamore, which seeks to restore Notre Dame’s Catholic identity, features excerpts from this “play” on its website. Reading the material invites the question of whether Jenkins is living on the same planet as normal Catholics. As the website suggests, “imagine your daughter reciting” the script. “Someone’s daughter has been since 2002.”

No wonder Jenkins took his rejection of Church teaching a step farther by offering the commencement speech and an honorary degree to Obama. As with “The Vagina Monologues,” he isn’t likely to back down, despite the clear admonition of the bishop who runs the diocese, John D’Arcy. The Cardinal Newman Society is trying to stop the speech. That isn’t likely to happen. Short of papal intervention, Notre Dame will not rescind an invitation to the president, and even then, Jenkins might refuse to obey the Holy Father. Non serviam, as someone once said.

What Can Be Done

The upshot of all this? Catholic universities are promoting pornography, deviance and abortion with the permission and encouragement of school authorities. One simple way to begin resolving the problem is for Catholic alumni to cut off contributions to the schools. But more must be done. Again, serious Catholics have the obligation to attack these schools with the same fervor with which they sought the Latin Mass. Direct appeals must go to bishops, and failing success there, directly to the Holy Father. He listens to the faithful and will always act for the good of the Church and her faithful.

A good priest once observed that the great heresies throughout the centuries arose not from lay people, but from the ranks of priests and bishops. This is the source of the problem here, as all these activities occur with the knowledge and support of clergy who administer and teach at these universities. With the prayers and help of the lay faithful, the popes of old crushed or eliminated bygone heresies, and Benedict may well follow their example, as his action on the SSPX and Latin Mass well shows.

The principle task for Catholic Americans is to begin a spiritual war against this heresy and scandal. That involves prayer. Then, they must launch a relentless counteroffensive. That involves speaking out. Benedict is listening.

R. Cort Kirkwood, a columnist for The Remnant, last wrote about the Freedom of Choice Act.

He is the author of Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans To Know And Admire.