Posted on 05/12/2014 6:00:39 PM PDT by narses
What’s so naive?
Your own account is not so far off from mine. Except you credit Harvard, and everyone else here mostly credits the Church and her highly ordinated, for providing the people’s resistance, for once.
I said that Harvard showed “reluctance” to this event. (It’s unpleasant and there’s donors to consider, naturally.)
I said the “study group” suffered “mounting pressure”, but that was from Catholics gathering in force at prayer vigils.
You said the study group left “voluntarily”. I agree. They didn’t see the Harvard suits coming, they saw Catholics.
Harvard administration got what it wanted alright, but it was the Catholic Church that delivered it to them.
It was nice the Harvard president could attend and extend solidarity with the Church, and still leave as she began,...with “free expression” on her forehead and in her resume.
Policy trumped the sacred at Harvard. But that’s just me. I would have brought in the Hell’s Angels AND the National Guard. (Just kidding.)
And yet huge swaths of USA sacrifice their babies to the demon god, Molock; happily aborting them for an easier and more prosperous life?
Ping.
[not that I’m up to speed on research today ...]
Also ...
A ‘nightmare becoming reality’? Iran unveils American drone replica.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3155249/posts
"Except you credit Harvard, and everyone else here mostly credits the Church and her highly ordinated, for providing the people’s resistance, for once."
Except, you're wrong.
Obviously, without the opposition of the Church, this wouldn't have gone anywhere.
But it was the measured opposition of the Harvard administration that brought about the final result, which was, considering the circumstances, as close to the ideal as possible.
First, let's view the results:
- The "Harvard Extension School Students Cultural Studies Club" did not hold a "black mass," either with or without a consecrated host;
- The satanists were actually run off campus, without any further association with Harvard or the Harvard community;
- The Harvard community very clearly was just about completely unified in its horror and aversion to this event;
- Thousands of Catholics and non-Catholics, and even non-believers united behind the rejection of anti-Catholic bigotry;
- The hearts of many Catholics and non-Catholics were touched by the effects of the Procession and Holy Hour, and the Real Presence, especially;
- All of Cambridge, and beyond, was evangelized;
- The faith of many Catholics was strengthened.
Not too bad for a long weekend's work. My hat's off to President Faust.
Opposition of the Church and all the Catholics and all the Catholic-friendly folks was actually one of the consequences for which the night schoolers were looking. Their opposition isn't what dislodged the night schoolers, nor the only ingredient to the final outcome (although I'm sure Cardinal Sean planned the Church's response in some detail with President Drew, and thus, kudos to both). The decisive element was the loss of any sort of meaningful support from the administration, which also influenced the opinion of many on campus neutral to the Church.
The first posters seemed to have appeared on campus on May 6. At least, that's when my son got hold of one. By May 7, the first statement by the Extension School was posted on their website denouncing the event as hateful, even while upholding the right of the students to free expression.
I imagine this came as a shock to the night schoolers. After all, they probably thought, of COURSE Harvard must let the event go on! We have a contract! If they cancel our rental, we'll take 'em to court! We'll crucify 'em in the press! We'll run PR rings around them! They probably expected acquiescence from the administration, and were probably hoping for some grudging admiration for taking on the big, bad, old Catholic Church. Because, after all, no good-thinking, liberated liberal like Drew Faust could think well of the Catholics.
So many miscalculations.
The fact is, many of us Catholics here at FR criticize our hierarchs often for being too worldly, for hobnobbing too easily with the movers and the shakers, the ruling elite. But the flip side of that is that our hierarchs are often very good buddies with members of the ruling elite, including the president of Harvard. I'd bet money that ol' Drew and Cardinal Sean are BFFs. The fact is, in launching this half-assed, mildly-insane, entirely-stupid attack on the Catholic Church, the night schoolers were also attacking Friends of Drew and of other Harvard administrators, MANY OF WHOM ARE PRACTICING CATHOLICS.
So the emotional motivation for the administration to support these half-wit wannabes was precisely 0. The problem was, the folks who run Harvard actually do believe in academic freedom and freedom of expression. As well, there are plenty of folks on campus who are either neutral, or even hostile to Catholicism, and I believe the goal of the Faust administration was to get as many of these folks to hop on the bandwagon of sympathy for the Church (as opposed to sympathy for the devil) as possible. The problem became, how to both vindicate the principle and keeping those not necessarily inclined toward Catholicism while still chasing off these misfits and malcontents.
The students expected support from the adminsitration, but the administration didn't. Support them. The administration waved a hand at the notion of "academic freedom" and all, but in rather direct and brutal terms denounced the night schooler knuckleheads as pigs. Leaving the dimbulbs' asses hanging out, swinging in the wind.
By the way, I've actually seen the social media musings of neutral and mildly-hostile non-Catholics, and the administration's decision to uphold academic freedom helped frame the debate in their minds as 1) the university is respecting the students, 2) the Church, in answering through prayer is having their say, but respecting the students, 3) the students are disrespecting the Catholics. Making one atheist in particular conclude: "In this, I stand with the Catholics."
Harvard's support for the students' freedom of expression was crucial to the equation.
Harvard probably showed a little steel behind the scenes in initial meetings by informing the so-called students that there would be no consecrated host, and that Harvard would ensure that to be the case (possibly by providing an unconsecrated host from Harvard to the students at the commencement of the event). The students may have protested, and Harvard may have then told them, well then, we'll just cancel your contract, here and now. You can't do that! We'll sue! replied the morons. Go ahead, replied Drew. We have a lawyer or two, ourselves. And our PR angle will be, "After all, we weren't stopping the event from occurring, only preventing the use of a consecrated host, which would have been akin to burning an actual Koran. And we can't have that, can we?"
And it began to dawn on the students that they'd overplayed their hand, bitten off more than they could chew, and were making a losing play.
And Harvard did nothing to reduce the pressure over time on the student group. Meanwhile, the students were doing what they could to save their own sorry asses, including pleading for anonymity from the administration, among other things. If the students had forced the issue, Harvard may have, indeed, found some cause to cancel the rental, and then, just to be sure, filed for an injunction against the club and the individual students to stay away from Memorial Hall at the given time and hour, of course, naming names in the court filings.
Might have also threatened filing for an injunction against the use of subterfuge to substitute a real, consecrated host for an unconsecrated one.
We don't really know the amount of pressure that Harvard heaped upon these wretches behind the scenes. What we know is that Harvard heaped enough pressure on them that they were entirely, completely routed, not only giving up their paid-for space on campus, not only failing to procure another site, but actually disavowing their association with the satanic temple folks and the event itself.
I wouldn't be especially shocked if this group of students ultimately offers a bland, public apology for their actions.
Without Harvard's stiff condemnation of this event, it would have gone forward. For the morons, Harvard's position actually changed the valance of all the other opposition to the event.
If Harvard had even remained neutral, the students' narrative would have been:
Free Thinkers and Their Defenders Defying the Catholic Church and All Its Evil Allies
If Harvard had canceled the event directly, the student's narrative would have still been:
Free Thinkers and Their Defenders Oppressed by Harvard Establishment in Collusion with Evil Catholic Church
Instead, because of Harvard's immediate and increasing denunciation and mounting pressure, what they got was:
Anti-Catholic Haters Committing Acts of Anti-Catholic Bigotry Against All the Catholics & Everyone Else, Including, and Especially the Suits at Harvard
The frogs jumped. As Harvard intended.
sitetest
I know.
The organizers of this event are clearly a bunch of racists...
I think we stes a list of names of the pr stes of this travsety.
Their careers need to be closely followed, unlike the Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohron types who melted into academia, and the Jihadis and campus radicals who flooded the White House and federal regulatory offices upon O’s ordination.
I am grateful for this report of yours. I still have neither read it nor heard it anywhere else.
But having neither read nor heard of any heroics on the part of the prez Drew, outside of inferring her obvious discomfort, and having read and heard plenty on the well documented call to arms, singularly, by the Catholic Church, doesn’t make one “naive”.
You should write an editorial that accounts for what more Ms. Faust heroically mustered, beyond first emphasizing “free expression” for satanism, under Harvard’s banner name.
It was laudible that she was reluctant to advance that ridiculous theme any further in the face of Catholic donors, only to drop it quickly and entirely and high tail it to the Church to be with many of them.
On moral grounds, it’s hard to credit her for anything. On strategy, she should be complimented for not going wobbly very long, and for keeping the coffers at the forefront of her usefulness to Harvard.
I remain very proud of your son and those who followed the call of the Church in such great numbers and enthusiasm.
You are so correct on the heroic witness of the Church to the observers of this story. :D
Rita
First, some of my post is my own speculation or surmise about what happened behind the scenes, and clearly marked as my own speculation about what happened over the past few days. As well, although I think the administration handled it pretty well, I don't know that anyone did anything particularly heroic. Also, although I'm sure she was involved and gave approval to every major act, remember that I'm personifying the actions of the entire administration when I mention President Faust.
Although I'd bet money that Cardinal O’Malley is on her speed dial. ;-)
But we know that those behind the scenes actions took place, since they're reflected in public statements and actions. What we know publicly is that the administration took certain actions, and we know when they took them. We also can see the public actions of the night schoolers. We can add in what we know about how Harvard works, and what the community looks like.
Most or all of that is public. I'm not sure what you think I've reported here that isn't otherwise “out there” that's particularly crucial to my arguments herein.
I don't know why you think Faust, or the administration, was wobbly at all. They enunciated two principles from start to finish: the planned “black mass” was extremely offensive, but assuming no consecrated host, it would be permitted on the grounds of permitting free expression.
Free expressions isn't really free if the powers-that-be are permitted to peer inside the expression to evaluate it on its content, and to ban it if it's not acceptable to those powers. Free expression is actually free when the powers-that-be do not act against expression even when it's not acceptable to them.
In the meanwhile, the administration of Harvard agreed with the Catholic Church that the event was “abhorrent,” along with a few other nasty adjectives.
Although we don't know the details, we absolutely know that there were discussions between the night schoolers and the administration. We know because it's actually reflected in their respective statements. We know that the night schoolers were heavily pressured because they gave in on any number of issues, including agreeing to not use a consecrated host, and in agreeing to approach campus Catholic groups to engage in dialogue to better understand the views of Catholics, etc. We know that the night schoolers eventually gave up their paid space, and then disassociated themselves with the satanists. This has all been reported in the press or contained in web pages on Harvard's sites, available to the public.
The only things I've added are connecting the dots with speculation on what happened privately to force the students to give up on the whole endeavor.
It certainly wasn't the result merely of Catholic reaction which, by itself, would have been precisely the effect for which they'd been looking.
sitetest
Not really.
Rather it will help spread the Christian faith BIGTIME and lead to many, many conversions to the Lord and His Gospel.
You misinterpret. Norm Lenhart thinks that the depth of depravity should be spelled out, so that curious onlookers will be clear about why the threat of such an event was so profound.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the best Democrats of the old school. He had many valuable insights. In particular, he was greatly concerned and predicted the demise of the black family unit back in the 60s, when the black illegitimacy rate was significantly less than the white illegitimacy rate today, and a fraction of today’s black illegitimacy rate. He was against the rule that the husband and/or father must not live in the home in order for a mother and child[ren] to receive welfare, believing it would destroy the institution of marriage among the poor. Looks like he was right about that.
Am I reading you correctly? There was a huge eucharistic parade and mass devoted to adoration of the host that was celebrated (at the same hour as the proposed Satanic event) at a nearby Catholic Church, which had overflowing attendance. It was mentioned in the article.
A pox on all houses of worship that are opulent for opulence’s sake.
Babies are killed every day in this country. Disgrace.
No one has yet mentioned Dan Brown and the popularizing of such ideas in his revolting "fiction", so I thought I'd denounce him here, as well as Tom Hanks, star of the Hollywood version of Da Vinci Code.
Please beg her not to, and pray for her. You could even put up a thread here to have others pray for her. Let her know the larger Body of Christ will always suffer persecutions, but we would not want her to give up the race to the end. Tell her to study Revelation, where John is writing to all the early churches who are suffering persecution, yet persevere in faith.
Uh -- Harvard never told it to go away; Harvard waffled around and it finally went away on its own after a gazillion tweets and huge petitions delivered directly into Dr. Faust's hands, as the article clearly states:
Harvard senior Aurora Griffin told CNA that she presented university president Drew Faust with petitions against the event that had garnered more than 60,000 signatures.
Not exactly the clear, decisive response any commonsense person would want.
I was particularly revolted by the fact that the hall at Harvard where the Satanic event would have been held was built as a memorial to Harvard's Civil War dead. Disgraceful that the University had even one moment of doubt about whether it should be allowed there.
Some speech is legally regarded as toxic:
Shouting fire in a crowded theater
While most of us favor unrestricted free speech, the definition of what constitutes "speech" and whether it presents certain defined or extreme dangers, are what is at issue. For example, there are still laws that allow law enforcement to obtain warrants and search their property when people speak about explosives. There are laws allowing officials to commit a person when the person makes a credible threat of suicide, etc.
Your screen name is so appropriate in this discussion, in view of post 20.
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