My father graduated from Saint Louis University School of Medicine. It was a Catholic university. It still is, but the word means less now. His diploma is in Latin. It begins: Omnibus has literas visuris salutem in Domino, meaning, “All those who see these letters, greetings in (the name of) the Lord.” My father was very proud of his diploma. The fact that it was issued in the name of the Lord made him more proud.
Things have changed, and not for the better. A student is threatened with expulsion, the most severe penalty possible, because he posted off campus a notice for an off campus talk on the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion, sponsored by campus Republicans. The talk was by pro-life Matt Walsh. One would have thought a talk like that would meet with a Catholic university’s approval. One would be wrong.
We are located in the USA, where freedom of speech and the First Amendment were ingrained into our consciousness. Were. Here we are dealing with something that happened off campus. Unless the activity is illegal, what possible business of the university is it? Its responsibility is to teach, not to enforce thought control.
But even if enforcing thought control were the university’s responsibility, it would be to enforce Catholic ideas, not woke ideas. It would be to enforce pro-life ideas, not pro-choice ideas – which is what Saint Louis University appears to be doing.
“Greetings in the name of the Lord”? No more. Now we have, “You’re expelled in the name of woke.” Frankly, I prefer the older version.