At Boston College, the placement of Christian art, including crucifixes, in classrooms over winter break has stirred some intense discussions over that particular expression of the Roman Catholic (and catholic) university’s identity. And over whether it’s undergoing an identity crisis.
“A classroom is a place where I am supposed, as a teacher, to teach without any bias, to teach the truth. And when you put an icon or an emblem or a flag, it confuses the matter,” said Amir Hoveyda, the chemistry department chair.
“For 18 years, I taught at a university where I was allowed to teach in an environment where I felt comfortable. And all the sudden, without any discussion, without any warning, without any intellectual debate, literally during the middle of the night during a break, these icons appear,” Hoveyda said.
An icon of Jesus Christ interferes with Amir Hoveyda's ability to teach "the truth"?
What is positively fascinating, is that these people think they are the sharpest tools in the shed:
But Dwayne Eugène Carpenter, chair of the romance languages and literatures department and co-director of the Jewish studies program, said the placement of religious art is in fact divisive. These symbols, he said, are not neutral. “I think it’s naive to believe that affixing crucifixes is going to fan the flames of religious devotion. On the other hand, it can have a negative effect on students” who might see them as creating an unwelcoming environment.
“I think there were many people who were upset.
“I think it’s in an identity crisis,” Carpenter continued, of Boston College. “At the same time that it wants to proclaim its Catholic identity, it also wants to recruit the best. You can’t recruit the best by placing crucifixes in every classroom.
Somewhere, somebody is playing the worlds tiniest violin for Carpenter and his colleagues offended by Christ.
Father Kennedy, who is director of Boston College’s Jesuit Institute and a professor of music, continued: “For the identity of Boston College as a Jesuit and Catholic institution which we so proudly have inherited, and so happily transmit to the next generation of alumni/alumnae, impels us as John Paul also noted, ‘to offer to share the deep desire we have of recognizing ourselves in the crucifix, and of seeing it, not as something that divides, but as something that is to be respected by all, and that in a certain sense can unify.’ ”
A turnaround at BC.
That is pretty amazing.
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