Dr. Peter Kreeft of Boston College explains why many Catholic universities removed crucifixes from their classrooms:
No one understood that, so he explained that President Carter's secretary of state, McGeorge Bundy, had brokered a deal by which federal money could go to private schools if and only if those schools were not sectarian, divisive, discriminatory... something like that. And - by coincidence - all 21 Jesuit colleges took down their crucifixes from their classrooms in the year following that decision. So when he explained that to the students, the students were rather scandalized, and one said, "Oh, no, we wouldn't do that for money."
And he said, "Of course you wouldn't, but I hope you got more than thirty pieces of silver this time." Rather wicked... some of them were so biblically illiterate that he had to explain to them that Judas Iscariot was the first Catholic bishop to accept a government grant.
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Correction: Bundy was not Carter's Secy of State, at the time he was in charge of the Ford Foundation. I still like the quote about Judas.
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