[Apologetics] U.S. Supreme Court Allows Decision Approving Anti-Catholic Display to Stand

[Art Kelly]

U.S. Supreme Court Allows Decision Approving
Anti-Catholic Display to Stand

Wed, Mar 8, 2006 at
http://www.thomasmore.org/news.html?NewsID=407

Ann Arbor, MI— This week the U. S. Supreme Court
refused to hear an appeal involving a constitutional
challenge to an anti-Catholic statue depicting a Roman
Catholic bishop with a grotesque facial expression
wearing a miter that resembles a phallus. The statue
was entitled “Holier than Thou” and included a plaque
with a denigrating and derisive statement about the
sacrament of penance. It was placed at one of the
busiest locations on the campus of Washburn
University, a tax supported public university located
in Kansas. 
Robert Muise, the Thomas More Law Center attorney who
handled this case, commented, “Incredibly, during the
course of this litigation, university officials
admitted that they would never permit an anti-Jewish,
anti-black, or anti-gay/lesbian statue on campus.
Discrimination against the Catholic faith apparently
promotes the educational mission of Washburn
University. And while the federal judiciary may have
turned a blind eye to this outrage, many Catholics did
not.” 

Many prominent Catholics criticized the statue as
anti-Catholic as soon as the university began the
display on September 20, 2003. Catholic Archbishop
James Keleher of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in
Kansas wrote an open letter to the University
President strongly urging the university to remove
this symbol of anti-Catholicism. He wrote, “I am
extremely disappointed at this present situation that
is an affront to me, to many Catholics and to others
who value decency and respect. I am particularly
concerned for your many Catholic students who see
their faith ridiculed and they themselves
embarrassed.” 

Other prominent Catholic leaders and organizations,
such as William Donohue, president of the Catholic
League, the Kansas State Knights of Columbus, the
president of the Archdiocesan Conference of Catholic
Women, and the Catholic Campus Center at Washburn
University expressed similar concerns about the
offensive display. 

Nonetheless, the University’s President defended the
display as art that has the purpose of engaging the
community intellectually and emotionally, and refused
to remove it. 

As a result of the refusal, the Thomas More Law
Center, a national, public-interest law firm based in
Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf
of Dr. Thomas O’Connor and Andrew Strobl. Dr.
O’Connor, a professor of 39 years at Washburn, and
Strobl, a senior at Washburn at the time of the filing
of the case, are both devout Catholics. The lawsuit
alleged that Washburn’s display of this anti-Catholic
symbol conveyed the impermissible state-sponsored
message of hostility toward the Catholic faith in
violation of the Establishment Clause. 

The case was dismissed by the federal district judge
who ruled that Washburn had a secular purpose for
displaying this sculpture because “[i]t functions to
aesthetically enhance Washburn’s campus[,] broaden the
educational experiences [and] increase the
intellectual capacities of Washburn’s students.” The
judge concluded that the presence of “Holier than
Thou” on “Washburn’s campus would [not] cause a
reasonable observer to believe that [Washburn]
endorsed hostility towards the Catholic religion.” 

In July 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for
the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado, affirmed the
lower court’s ruling that Washburn University did not
violate the constitution even though it prominently
displayed a statue supported with public funds that
mocks the Catholic faith. 

The Thomas More Law Center asked the Supreme Court to
revisit its confusing and inconsistent Establishment
Clause jurisprudence and noted that this “hostility to
religion” case would be a case of first impression.
The Law Center argued that an evenhanded application
of its present muddled jurisprudence compelled the
Court to find that this display was unconstitutional. 

Richard Thompson, the President and Chief Counsel for
the Law Center, commented, “The Supreme Court’s
decision not to hear this case is disappointing, and
it reaffirms the double standard and hypocrisy spawned
by the current Establishment Clause jurisprudence.
Despite giving lip service to the concept of
neutrality towards religion, many federal court
decisions have in fact bristled with hostility to all
things religious, especially those that are Christian.
This double standard is also applied by our nation’s
public universities, which have refused to allow
school newspapers to show the recent controversial
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed because it was
insulting to Muslims.” 

                           
  ART KELLY, ATM-S
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