A silly and vain culture warrior ethos
At Xavier University last week, students hosted a “sex week” that checked off all the usual desultory boxes—contraception, abortion, casual sex—and did so in a gleeful kind of tawdry spirit: Xavier University is a Catholic institution, and so this weeklong celebration stood opposed to virtually everything that Xavier University teaches about sexuality, sanctity and natural law. That’s the point, of course: convinced that they are doing something truly revolutionary by giggling about sexual promiscuity and IUDs, these students think they’re striking a blow for some kind of modernity against the regressive values of the Church.
They are wrong—the tenets of postmodern sexual politics are, all told, about as regressive as you’re apt to find—but leave that aside for a moment. It is worth asking this question: why do these students attend a Catholic university if they stand so resolutely against many of the core teachings of the Catholic faith?
One must be careful, of course, to avoid the idea that anyone who is merely non-Catholic should be barred from participating in the auxiliary institutions of the Church: that is not the presumption of the Church, after all, in no small part because a Catholic school like Xavier can and surely does function as a doorway to Catholicism itself. But the proactive attack on Catholic values that we see here is another thing entirely. It is one thing to come to a school like Xavier unchurched, perhaps of a different denomination, maybe indifferent to Catholicism but not hostile to it; it is something else to attend a Catholic university and tromp around heralding the splendor of abortion. The one is at least, in theory, not peremptorily opposed to the Church; the other is an eager combatant against it.
And for what purpose? To get clicks on YouTube? It surely does not represent a serious engagement with Church doctrine or philosophy, much less as a compelling case against what the Church teaches.
It is ultimately a juvenile affair, the kind of thing a 15-year-old might think politically clever. People are of course free to disagree with Church doctrine, even if they go to a Catholic university. But hosting a “sex week,” complete with slogans like “Kiss My Pink,” is not in the spirit of ecumenical or ideological dialogue; it is a childish, almost tantrum-y response to the values of an institution which you voluntarily chose to attend. There’s no point to it other than to be loud and provocative, which might net you some social media shares, but very little beyond that.
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IMAGE: Shutterstock / Tatjana Splichal
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