So Why Go There?

Here’s an issue near and dear to my heart as an alum of CUA:

The Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights confirmed that it is investigating allegations that Catholic University violated the human rights of Muslim students by not allowing them to form a Muslim student group and by not providing them rooms without Christian symbols for their daily prayers.

The investigation alleges that Muslim students “must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism – e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate.”

As one of the commenters at the news source said, isn’t this like going to a strip club and being offended by the nudity?  These students didn’t enroll at a Catholic university, they enrolled at The Catholic University of America.  Pretty hard to miss that in the title of the institution, don’t you think?   Fr. Z puts it this way:

Lemme get this straight. They enroll in a Catholic University… and it isn’t a surprise that it is “Catholic” given that it is called “Catholic University of America”. Then they complain that there are Catholic symbols everywhere!

When I was a grad student there I knew a good number of law students.  This was during the time when Doug Kmiec was Dean of the law school and still cared about his faith.  He had instituted a mandatory course requirement that, if I recall correctly, was called Catholic Legal Ethics.  It may had a slightly different name, but it was something along those lines.  My non-Catholic friends complained about the course and being forced to take it.  My response: you’re attending the Catholic University of America law school.  Did you miss  that name when you applied?