May 12, 2014
Bill Donohue comments on the response of the Harvard
president to the Satanic staging of a "Black Mass" on campus tonight:
After allowing a week to pass without a responsible rejoinder to the
"Black Mass" on the Harvard campus, President Drew Faust issued a
morally defensible letter today. She stated that students have freedom of
speech, but she also spoke against the obscene content of this speech.
President Faust branded the mocking of the Catholic Mass "abhorrent."
She said it was "a fundamental affront to the values of inclusion,
belonging and mutual respect that must define our community." Moreover,
she said it was "deeply regrettable that the organizers of this event [a
student group affiliated with the Harvard
Extension School],
well aware of the offense they are causing so many others, have chosen to
proceed with a form of expression that is so flagrantly disrespectful and
inflammatory."
President Faust said she plans to attend a Eucharistic Holy Hour and
Benediction at St. Paul's
Church on campus this evening. She is doing this "in order to join others
in reaffirming our respect for the Catholic faith at Harvard and to demonstrate
that the most powerful response to offensive speech is not censorship, but
reasoned discourse and robust dissent."
The words and deeds of President Faust are commendable. But she could have done
more. A university is not a theater, an arena, or a public park: such venues
embody no normative significance. Hence, almost all expressions of speech can
and should be tolerated.
A university, however, is first and foremost a community; it is a place where
reasoned discourse is valued as a means toward the pursuit of truth. That means
that speech which is wholly designed to insult, or to intentionally
misrepresent the truth, has no legitimate role to play on campus. Which is why
the Satanists could have been banned without doing violence to Harvard's
mission.
Protest ithttp://www.tfpstudentaction.org/tell-harvard-university-stop-black-mass.html