Covering up Jesus

Pat Buchanan's column today (a searingly serious one), "Rendering Unto Caesar," discusses the request by the White House that Georgetown University's Gaston Hall cover up all symbols, "including IHS, the millenia-old monogram for the name of Jesus Christ" for the occasion of President Obama's recent speech.

Georgetown obliged, no questions asked.

I just watched Governor Tim Kaine, currently on double duty as DNC Chair, be confronted by Joe Scarborough about this. I grinned when cnsnews.com was cited as the source, and Kaine clearly had no idea who that was; he cannily pleaded ignorance to the whole incident, saying he was hearing about it for the first time, but that he knew the White House always requested American flags as a backdrop for speeches.

Kaine was being more coy than he knew he was, perhaps...or not. His explanation is right in line with the current talking point being issued by the White House on this: The coverup of the Jesus Christ symbol by black cloth was an "unintended consequence" of requesting American flags for the platform.

This is all grimly ironic on so many levels; it simply begs for evaluative commentary. For indeed, "unintended consequences" characterize so many political decisions these days, and will continue to do so in the years to come in this Presidency. Yet said consequences are always completely unforeseen, even when covering up a centuries-old religious symbol in favor of the designated tonesetting scenery of the moment.

As Buchanan explains, the IHS has a long and rich history, since it was first implemented by St. Ignatius himself and eventually became a Jesuit symbol. A quick bit of research shows that the latter step occurred in 1541. So the President and his advance men requested that 468 years of honor to the crucified Christ be symbolically obliterated for the visit of today's American Messiah.

Any leftist reading this post will scoff; I have no doubt of that. But in what is becoming a long line of signals and actions being taken by this White House that demonstrate contempt for traditional, Judeo-Christian values, this becomes impossible to shrug off or explain away. It brings to mind what former Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote of a Supreme Court decision to which he dissented: "The court's opinion bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life."

Georgetown University's statement hardly helps. Here it is, from Associate VP Julie Green Bataille: "The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they’ve done for other policy speeches. Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn’t high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context." (emphasis mine)

Who was it that first said that the devil is in the details?