Georgetown Alum William Peter Blatty Says Canon Law Suit “Our Only Hope” (author "The Exorcist")

Cardnal Newman Society ^ | 5-31-12

[STARWISE]

William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel The Exorcist—which went on to become an Oscar-winning movie—depicts an epic battle of good versus evil waged under the auspices of the Catholic Church.

Reportedly based on a real exorcism Blatty heard about as an undergraduate on a scholarship at Georgetown University, the novel is steeped in Catholicism. Indeed, the “hero” of The Exorcist is the fictional Father Damien Karras, a Georgetown Jesuit, who, at great personal cost, drives out the demon.

Now Blatty, a longtime financial contributor to his alma mater, says that Georgetown is no longer true to the Catholic identity he knew there as a member of the class of 1950.

In this interview, Blatty, now retired and living in Maryland, explains why he and a group of other concerned alumni have filed a canon law lawsuit to pressure the Jesuit university either to reclaim its Catholic identity or cease to call itself a Catholic institution.

Here is the full interview:

Q. You have put together an impressive website at WWW.GUPETITION.ORG, and you’re developing a case under the Catholic Church’s canon law. You certainly look to be very serious about this. How far are you willing to go to return Georgetown to its Catholic roots?

A. To quote from the Georgetown Alumni Song, “Until the sun grows cold.”

I am ready to go all the way for as long as it takes, and if something happens to me, other Father King Society members will take the baton. I know that canon procedure can be murky, but I have great faith in the Holy Spirit that churchmen will do the right thing. I have faith, most of all, in the Holy Father. He knows that 21 years of ignoring Ex corde Ecclesiae makes a mockery of our Church and of Christ Himself.

Q. So you must be pretty steamed about the situation at Georgetown to be doing all of this instead of enjoying your retirement with your lovely wife! What motivates you?

A. What motivates me? Love. In the middle of my senior year at Brooklyn Prep, my mother and I lived in poverty, so that without the full scholarship Georgetown gave me, I would likely never have been able to go to college. Every blessing that I have, in particular my strong faith, I owe to my mother and to my alma mater whom I love and want back: beautiful, healthy and, above all, faithful.

I am not “steamed.” I am aggrieved. And I finally came to realize that I have only one more important thing that I can do, and this is it.

Q. I understand that you are an alumnus and have donated generously to Georgetown in the past. Have things really changed so much that you would now publicly challenge the university to return to its Catholic roots?

A. Yes, of course. I considered even asking them to give my money back to transfer to a scholarship fund in my son’s name at an actually Catholic school. The change crept in over many years. It was disguised by talk that sounded right but hid secondary motives.

Even now, Georgetown puts up a Potemkin village. It points to its chaplains, its Masses, its Knights of Columbus Chapter. At alumni dinners, they will make sure there is a Jesuit in a collar at every table, like the floral arrangement. But they refuse to recruit Catholics, and the faculty is now at 20 percent Catholic!

Catholic students have to live as if they are in a foreign country, where all around them everyone is treating them like strangers. Just for being authentically Catholic! If we do not all act now we will lose the great universities. I refuse to accept that.

I believe the Church should be clear that our universities are still Church property, and that we should go to court if necessary to undo all the unauthorized legal gymnastics that claimed to transfer Church property to civil corporations. If that does not work, then the Church should be clear that you can’t get club privileges without paying the dues.

Let me speak to the latest scandal, the invitation to Kathleen Sebelius to speak on commencement weekend.

Let’s not shield our eyes or mind from the brutal details of what occurs in a partial birth abortion. First, surgical scissors are banged down into the infant’s head, after which the abortionist scrapes it around in order to widen the hole enough so it can accept a vacuum tube, which is then used to suck out the baby’s brains. You know all this?

Good. But did you also know that a consensus of pediatric neurologists are now agreed that by 20 weeks — and a few say even as early as six weeks! — the infant not only feels the excruciating pain, but feels it far more than would an adult?

As governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius vetoed a bill that would have banned this demonic practice! And a supposedly Catholic university, if not merely a humane one, honors her?

Rest @ link

[STARWISE]

"William Peter Blatty (born January 7, 1928) is an American writer and filmmaker. The novel The Exorcist, written in 1971, is his magnum opus; he also penned the subsequent screenplay version of the film, for which he won an Academy Award. His most recent works include the novels Elsewhere (2009), Dimiter (2010) and Crazy (2010). He is also featured in the upcoming 2012 Smoke And Mirrors anthology, featuring the teleplay "Hell Hospital" and the treatment "Faith".

Blatty was born in New York City, the son of Lebanese parents who came to America on a cattle boat, Mary (née Mouakad) and Peter Blatty, a cloth cutter in a garment factory. His father left home when William was three years old. Raised in what he described as "comfortable destitution" by his deeply religious Catholic mother, whose sole support came from peddling homemade quince jelly in the streets of New York (his mother once offered a jar of it to FDR when the President was cutting the ribbon for the Queens Midtown Tunnel, telling him, "For when you have company"), he lived at twenty-eight different addresses during his childhood due to constant evictions by landlords for non-payment of rent. ..."

~~~~

God bless him. Georgetown's sanction of the heretic Sebelius is beyond reprehensible. They no longer exist or operate as a Catholic institution .. they need to go on their scandalous ways without that imprimatur. I pray for strength, courage and fortitude in the Church to withstand the intentional attacks on it that will likely only continue to grow. Lord, have mercy.

[STARWISE]

..Ping

[C19fan]

If you want to go to a Catholic Univ in Washington, DC the only choice seems to be Catholic Univ which at least brought back single sex dorms. Georgetown is CINO and if you judge an institution by its fruits two of Trinity Univ’s infamous alumni are Nancy Pelosi and Sibelius.

[Mr. K]

I LOVE THIS!!!!!!

Go WPB!

who knew “The Exorcist” writer was so devout, and knew enough about the internal ‘law’ of the church to invoke this?

I did not even know there was such a thing as this church canonical court.

[JoeProBono]

[STARWISE]

I know ...! How can they NOT be banished from their Catholic affiliation? They’re blatant, arrogant betrayers to the faith .. kick them out! Sickening, to listen (and read below) to such disgusting, self-centered hedonists like Sandra Fluke, atudents at alleged Catholic institutions .. what are these institutions thinking??

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/304550-1

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Contracep

http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=45763&wf=rsscol

[STARWISE]

Wonderful to see his faith filled activism. Pray ..

Canon law

http://www.canonlaw.info/canonlaw.htm

[STARWISE]

Aaah, yes.

FYI -
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/3360839-418/grob-evil-exorcist-church-devil.html

[ex91B10]

"William Peter Blatty Says Canon Law Suit “Our Only Hope”..."

I beg to differ