Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
When the experts start talking about elite private universities — non-Atlantic Coast division — Vanderbilt is always near the top of the list. The school is so prominent, especially as a member of a major sports conference, that people often forget that it is, in fact, a private school.
On one level, it’s easy to say that private colleges and universities are voluntary associations and, thus, can limit the freedoms of their students, faculty and staff in a wide variety of ways. After all, students do not have to study there, teachers do not have to teach there and staff members do not have to work there.
Anyone who has been paying attention in recent decades knows that large segments of American Catholic culture — especially in academia — operate with a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when to comes to a variety of doctrinal and social issues. This is the reality, for example, that shaped the fierce debates about the late Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Consitiution Ex Corde Ecclesia, addressing issues linked to Catholic education.
On one level, the ongoing New York Times coverage of the church-state showdown over rental policies in city public schools has shown an admirable interest in the plight of specific churches that are struggling to find new homes.
As you would imagine, the new memoir by former White House intern Mimi Alford about her affair with President John F. Kennedy is causing a lot of buzz, even though the scope of Kennedy’s philandering has long been rumored, documented and then dismissed in Beltway circles.
The clock is ticking in New York City for the many churches that face eviction under the court ruling that states that churches — unlike other non-profits — cannot rent space in public schools. Why? Because worship in a government space fundamentally and, one must assume, supernaturally, changes the nature of that space. Click here and here to revisit that situation.
Back in the Stone Age, when student journalists still cut out headlines with X-Acto knives and pasted chemically drenched text to layout sheets with hot wax, I edited my campus newspaper.
