Photo via Warner Bros.
William Peter Blatty, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Exorcist and the novel from which it’s adapted from, recently delivered a petition to his alma mater, Georgetown University, faulting it for not being Catholic enough.
The petition, which claims to represent “more than 1,200 alumni, students, parents, teachers, and other laity from around the world,” states that in recent decades the prominent Jesuit and Catholic university doesn’t comply with the “Ex corde Ecclesiae,” Pope John Paul II’s 1990 Apostolic Constitution that decrees the standard behavior and practices in Catholic universities be consistent with the norms and morality of the Church.
“The Scandals that Georgetown has given to the faithful are too many to count, and too many to ignore any longer,” Blatty said. He continued, comparing the practices of Georgetown to the practices of the Borgia, the prominent 15th and 16th-century Italian family known for producing a pair of corrupt and amoral popes who were suspected of many crimes, including adultery, theft, rape, bribery, incest, and murder. “Georgetown University hardly reflects that of St. Ignatius, who stood preaching in the pouring rains of Paris to stop young men from losing their souls for the sake of carnality,” Blatty said, not sounding like a crazy person. Nope, not at all.
The petition was submitted by “The Father King Society to Make Georgetown Honest, Catholic, and Better,” a group Blatty started a year ago. And it’s a massive petition; At 198 pages, it contains “476 footnotes, 91 appendices, 124 witness statements, a commissioned 120-page institutional audit of Georgetown, a sworn certification of facts, and a legal opinion.” Among the vast amount of violations documented in the petition, Georgetown University student paper The Hoya reports, is the university’s advocacy of contraception use, hosting student performances of “The Vagina Monologues,” a decline of Jesuits on campus and on staff, hosting openly gay speakers on campus, and “the invitation of speakers supportive of abortion rights, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.”
In response to Blatty’s petition, Georgetown University’s Director of Communications Rachel Pugh fired back, attesting to the university’s commitment to Catholic practices and identity, which mandates that all undergrads must take two semesters of theology and two semesters of philosophy in order to graduate.
But Blatty holds steadfast and insists that the university needs to make changes. Changes that presumably can’t be exorcised with an old priest, a young priest, and the compelling power of Christ. Blatty goes on to say that if the university doesn’t make changes soon, it should be stripped of its Jesuit and Catholic affiliation: “What we truly seek is for Georgetown to have the vision and courage to be Catholic, but clearly the slow pastoral approach has not worked. Georgetown is being dishonest. Together, we need to end that.”
